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Westland delanne Wilmington


Adrian Hills

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Tony Buttler’s ‘British Secret Projects…’ has a wonderfully inspiring primitive sketch of a Westland delanne configured heavy bomber.

 

49398903478_7e97b002ef_z.jpgIMG_0187 cropped by arhills, on Flickr

 

A delanne configuration effectively means a biplane with offset wings - the main wing high up at the front and the rear smaller wing set low down.  This configuration was used to add a four gun turret to the back of a Westland Lysander, known as the Wendover.

 

49356458128_42bea503c4_z.jpgWestland-P12-Wendover-4 by arhills, on Flickr

49356456023_48cbc033e4_z.jpgIMG_0303 by arhills, on Flickr

 

I did this Lysander conversion quite a few years ago.

 

The rear turret in the bomber sketch looks like a large flat job which was part of the thinking at the time. Such a turret was fitted to a Wellington and also aerodynamically tested on specially designed aircraft.

 

49399622652_d452681fc8_w.jpgimages by arhills, on Flickr

 

 

My attempt at realising this ‘back of an envelope’ aircraft has used various kits. So far my model has the fuselage of an Airfix Marauder, front wings Airfix Halifax, rear wing Airfix Hurricane, endplates and front turret Airfix Lancaster, lower nose and dorsal turret blanking plate Matchbox Wellington. The rear turret is from an Eaglewall kit base. External turbo charger thingys B17.

 

After a bit more work and a shed load of Milliput the model will be finished in early war temperate land scheme. ie dark earth and dark green with a high wavy demarcation over RDM2 night (matt black). The roundels will reflect early A type with yellow surround on fuselage. Medium sea grey codes and ident red serial

 

49398897253_6ac4fe77a7_z.jpgIMG_0138 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49399582377_e6fa4d2871_z.jpgIMG_0177 by arhills, on Flickr

 

As you can see I spent a bit of time taking the dots off of the Airfix wings

 

49399373886_f4de354fd9_z.jpgIMG_0148 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49398898893_c557577fbd_z.jpgIMG_0155 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49399374216_431277d131_z.jpgIMG_0154 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49398901043_f810b65d5b_z.jpgIMG_0171 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49399579822_b9b4a1d1d8_z.jpgIMG_0158 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49399580867_40fd34131f_z.jpgIMG_0169 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49399378011_4dee17ae76_z.jpgIMG_0183 by arhills, on Flickr

 

The blending in of the wider chord Halifax wings to the Marauder stubs was quite easy with Milliput

 

49399591742_267efa4230_z.jpgIMG_0343 by arhills, on Flickr

 

This is the story so far. I use Gunze Sangyo paint which gives an excellent finish as well as reasonably accurate colours.

 

Oh, and that name. I live in East Sussex not far from the village of Wilmington with its associated chalk hill carving known as "The Long Man of Wilmington". Will look nice as a piece of nose art 🙂

 

49399584397_44064ce680.jpglong-man-of-wilmington by arhills, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cheers Heather.

 

To be pedantic I mentioned the aircraft was like a biplane. With a delanne the rear wing should be about 50% of the main wing ( my model is not that accurate) - perhaps more like a staggered sesquiplane where lower wing is much smaller than upper, like the Armstrong Whitworth Siskin.

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2 minutes ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

And I thought I was mad..........by the way, the Long Man seems to be missing something, or am I thinking of the Cerne Abbas Giant?

As we woke up on April 1st 2018, the ‘Long Man’, really was the long man!!😉

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7 hours ago, Adrian Hills said:

The rear turret is from an Eaglewall kit base.

looks like the base used in Revell 1/144th kits actually...(though they may have copied Eaglewall.) 

 

I remember you bringing an early stage of this along to the club...

looking good here with the progress.   

Have you tried Superglue and talc yet as filler?  Really handy for those times you can't be faffed to mix up some Milliput, and dries much faster...

 

cheers

T

 

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Hi Troy, 

I used the superglue/talc technique many years ago. Got covered in nasty sticky stuff designed to glue flesh together. It is also much harder than surrounding plastic so can cause problems with filing. Milliput works much better as it is easily mouldable with water and hence requires much less filing. It can also easily produce a billiard ball smooth surface which is why I use it for shapes I create over which I pull mould for canopies 😊

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5 hours ago, Adrian Hills said:

It is also much harder than surrounding plastic so can cause problems with filing.

if you let it set too hard,  needs to be sanded it as soon as set.  

More talc seems to soften it.  It's big use is small filling jobs,  agree on Milliput for the big ones and the reasosn sated, SG /Talc is for great for small jobs, as you can fill, and work fast, rather than have set aside waiting for filler to go off. 

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Now I have put the Gunze Dark Earth on I've decided the aircraft looks a bit more sophisticated than very early war so will show it in 1943. That is with a straight line demarcation to underside smooth night, narrow yellow band on fuselage roundels and red codes. I might put on some Rebecca blind landing aerials.

 

49411176386_818ffd5fce_z.jpgIMG_0378 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49411378162_c889337a80_z.jpgIMG_0381 by arhills, on Flickr

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25 minutes ago, PhoenixII said:

@Corsairfoxfouruncle Dennis, have a look at post one. Sketch shows 'end plate' fins and rudders, al la B-24, Lanc, Halibag etc.

Paul

Hi Paul, you must have missed them. The endplates, ie vertical tail surfaces are from a Lanc kit and can be seen alongside the tail in the first image of the kit above. They are to be black so I have left them off at this stage to pre-paint them and then attach - it saves masking. 🙂

 

Paul and Corsairforuncle, sorry about mix-up in my replies 

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Hosed down the bottom with Tamiya semi-gloss black. Shame Gunze don't do this finish.

 

49434627808_209d1281d0_z.jpgIMG_0401 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49435325272_411bc356aa_z.jpgIMG_0402 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49435100206_881e0d87db_z.jpgIMG_0399 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49435324052_cfd26c6a07_z.jpgIMG_0400 by arhills, on Flickr

 

Yet to finish painting endplates and will put some decals on before making it dirty !

 

 

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A little bit more progress. 

 

49452158096_4f51d23d91_z.jpgIMG_0431 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49452389172_3c1f5173d3_z.jpgIMG_0430 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49451677668_bef3b5296d_z.jpgIMG_0428 by arhills, on Flickr

 

49451679203_0968d80cf7_z.jpgIMG_0432 by arhills, on Flickr

 

I broke the horizontal tail surface off accidentally and will use the added space to assist weathering

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Manuel, 

You will note I didn’t confront this problem by making the kit ‘wheels up’ 😉

 

I did read once that experiments were done with the Albermarle tricycle undercart with ‘12ft’ oleo legs. However, in this circumstance that wouldn’t be enough.

 

Shortening the ventral ‘tail’ section, which would shorten the oleo legs, would have put the tops of the tail endplates in the rear turret firing line.  So all in all it was a bit of a pig in a poke !

 

I especially like the Halifax undercarriage doors which allow the tyre to protrude in case of a carriage up landing - totally useless on an aircraft like this.

 

However, building it was a lot of fun and taught me a lot about grafting shapes together 😊😊

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On 15/04/2020 at 09:33, manuel said:

wov👍

The only problem I imagine is the height of the landing gear :)

 

On 15/04/2020 at 10:27, Adrian Hills said:

Manuel, 

You will note I didn’t confront this problem by making the kit ‘wheels up’ 😉

 

I did read once that experiments were done with the Albermarle tricycle undercart with ‘12ft’ oleo legs. However, in this circumstance that wouldn’t be enough.

 

Shortening the ventral ‘tail’ section, which would shorten the oleo legs, would have put the tops of the tail endplates in the rear turret firing line.  So all in all it was a bit of a pig in a poke !

 

where there's a will.... there's a way....

3648027082_f731a6787f_b.jpgStirling weel. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

You missed a trick here Adrian,  you could have grafted on some Stirling bits  :rofl2:

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