Adrian Hills Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 Tony Buttler’s ‘British Secret Projects…’ has a wonderfully inspiring primitive sketch of a Westland delanne configured heavy bomber. IMG_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. Westland-P12-Wendover-4 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_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. images 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 IMG_0138 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0177 by arhills, on Flickr As you can see I spent a bit of time taking the dots off of the Airfix wings IMG_0148 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0155 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0154 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0171 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0158 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0169 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0183 by arhills, on Flickr The blending in of the wider chord Halifax wings to the Marauder stubs was quite easy with Milliput IMG_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 🙂 long-man-of-wilmington by arhills, on Flickr 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heather Kay Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 This is absolutely bonkers, but I love it! I am very much looking forward to seeing how it turns out at the end. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentwaters81tfw Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 17, 2020 Author Share Posted January 17, 2020 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 17, 2020 Author Share Posted January 17, 2020 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!!😉 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcrfan Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 Your having way to much fun there and must have a large model stash to raid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 17, 2020 Author Share Posted January 17, 2020 Dcrfan, actually I keep a lot of scrap! And now I’ve decided to use it 😊😊 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troy Smith Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 18, 2020 Author Share Posted January 18, 2020 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 😊 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troy Smith Posted January 18, 2020 Share Posted January 18, 2020 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 19, 2020 Author Share Posted January 19, 2020 Here is how I used Milliput to blend wings to fuselage IMG_0367 by arhills, on Flickr 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 19, 2020 Author Share Posted January 19, 2020 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. IMG_0378 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0381 by arhills, on Flickr 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsairfoxfouruncle Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 Your paint work is quite good and flawless from what I can see. However I don't see any vertical Stabilizer’s or Rudders, how does it move around ? Dennis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhoenixII Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 @Corsairfoxfouruncle Dennis, have a look at post one. Sketch shows 'end plate' fins and rudders, al la B-24, Lanc, Halibag etc. Paul 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 21, 2020 Author Share Posted January 21, 2020 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 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 24, 2020 Author Share Posted January 24, 2020 Hosed down the bottom with Tamiya semi-gloss black. Shame Gunze don't do this finish. IMG_0401 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0402 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0399 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0400 by arhills, on Flickr Yet to finish painting endplates and will put some decals on before making it dirty ! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted January 27, 2020 Author Share Posted January 27, 2020 A little bit more progress. IMG_0431 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0430 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0428 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0432 by arhills, on Flickr I broke the horizontal tail surface off accidentally and will use the added space to assist weathering 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted March 7, 2020 Author Share Posted March 7, 2020 Will return to my model table next week so time for canopies, props and nose art!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted April 14, 2020 Author Share Posted April 14, 2020 At last, Done it !! IMG_0873 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0881 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0888 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0883 by arhills, on Flickr 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted April 14, 2020 Author Share Posted April 14, 2020 More pics IMG_0870 by arhills, on Flickr IMG_0879 by arhills, on Flickr 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manuel Posted April 15, 2020 Share Posted April 15, 2020 wov👍 The only problem I imagine is the height of the landing gear 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted April 15, 2020 Author Share Posted April 15, 2020 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 😊😊 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Hills Posted April 15, 2020 Author Share Posted April 15, 2020 Today we were lucky enough, and live close enough, to take the puppy out for a walk by the Long Man IMG_0898 by arhills, on Flickr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truro Model Builder Posted April 18, 2020 Share Posted April 18, 2020 Wonderful flight of fancy, Adrian, and with a terrific source of inspiration to go with it. Very nice work indeed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troy Smith Posted April 18, 2020 Share Posted April 18, 2020 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.... Stirling weel. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr You missed a trick here Adrian, you could have grafted on some Stirling bits Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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