1/48 Westland Wasp HAS1 Op Corporate *** FINISHED ***

[Chewbacca]

6 hours ago, hendie said:

 

and a fine piece of scratching  it  is sir.  Very nice.

I like the sunken area on the transdeck  -  I may steal that idea since I haven't got around to sticking mine down yet.

Thank you for your kind comments. 

Steal away.  I only wish I'd realised there was a well there before I stuck it down.  It would have been  a lot easier to do with access to the underside.  Even though there are no photos I can see that clearly show it, there are plenty to show that the Fujimi hump simply isn't there.  

 

1 hour ago, Gisbod said:

Looks great to me! 
 

re speed, it’s not a race. I seem to be quick, but I don’t feel I’m rushing, I just get on a roll because I’m enjoying it. 
 

Are you ex Lynx crew Chewbacca? I was a (Army) Lynx Pilot back in the day before swopping for airliners.

 

Guy

 

Thanks Guy.  I do realise that and we all work at our own pace.  I guess my frustration comes from knowing that I have so many super models in my stash that I want to get started on yet with BULOLO having taken up my bench for 18 months (that was started as part of a 3 month Group Build in 2018 and is still not quite finished but has been great fun) and then this Wasp being a "this is well over half way through let's get it finished off before I break out something new while I wait for the epoxy resin to finish BULOLO" now turning into another scratch building marathon!  It would also be good that when this lockdown is over and we can get back to our modelling clubs to have something new to present. 

 

And yes, I was a Navy Lynx Observer for many years

 

32 minutes ago, perdu said:

 

You are doing very well here and in decent time considering you have so many time wasting projects to manage too 

 

May I suggest you look at how long mine took.

Sep 17 2016 to Nov 22 2017  

 

You really are doing very well considering all those parasite projects that creep up on us unexpectedly

 

I like the tail rotor gearbox, blooming super

 

You may want to set it a little closer to the tail fairing, there isn't a generous amount of space for it back there

 

Anyway, looking good

Oh I wish you hadn't shown me that.  I was only wondering last night whether or not to throw the Nimbus away and scratch build that as well.  And even though I've not read all 43 pages of that WIP, there was enough on page 1 to show how easy it is in the smaller scale!  That looks like a great build

 

The gearbox was only roughly dry fitted so that can move back.  I've yet to finish the engine mount that sits on top that will define its position but thanks for the heads up.

[speedy]

Sorry to offend but if it helps, I built this years ago but I don’t remember doing a WIP.

 

 

[Chewbacca]

Why would it offend?  That's a cracking model and I certainly hadn't seen that thread so thanks for bringing it to my attention.  I love the W177 but I think given that Wilbur was embarked in HECLA as a hospital ship which had had to land all her weapons apart from a small number of personal sidearms for port security purposes I think I might leave that aspect off mine (regardless of the fact that HECLA had no air weapons magazine of any sort!)

 

I hadn't spotted the bit about the lower windows being too small but it's too late now to do anything about that on mine now.

[Terry1954]

8 hours ago, speedy said:

Sorry to offend but if it helps, I built this years ago but I don’t remember doing a WIP.

 

 

That's a brilliant build Steve, and some fascinating stuff on the WE177. I knew the Wasp could carry it but have always wondered how it might actually use it in anger! I assume it would have been used more as a nuclear depth bomb? Even so, clearing the area in a tiny Wasp was never going to be a fun game I would have thought. I'm sure some of the Ex FAA chaps on here including Ralph and @Ex-FAAWAFU might have more to say!

 

Terry

[Vlamgat9]

High risk of it being a one way mission

[perdu]

Certain to have been one-way.

 

But we had the men who would have done it.

 

Respect to them, all of them.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

WE177 could only be used as an NDB from any RN helicopter.  We used to practice the drills (using a simulator thingy which gave all the right lights etc in the cockpit as the crew went through the drills) regularly.  One thing I’ve never understood about use in the Wasp is that even airborne there were strict two-man rules; it was not possible to drop The Thing unless the P1 AND the Observer both made the right switches in the right order.  The Wasp was a one-person aircraft, especially with a WE177 strapped onto it - endurance must have been a tad constrained (making one- or two-way mission a moot point, really) - so I'm not sure how they implemented this final bureaucratic hurdle on the path to armageddon.

 

To this day the war cries of “Beware beware!” [I’m just about to drop this thing] and “Dustbin dustbin” [I’ve just dropped it] leave me feeling distinctly queasy

Edited May 29, 2020 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Chewbacca]

I seem to recall an old and bold Wasp pilot telling me once that it was 8-10 minutes endurance with one of those!

 

I still have nightmares about the 2-man switches that were part of the safety circuit for it in the Lynx.  Probably unfair of me to go into details here but suffice to say if fitted to the aircraft (not all aircraft were cleared for the 177) they were always active, even when conventional weapons were fitted.  As a student Observer on 702 Sqn they very nearly caused major grief when my Pilot (also a student) forgot to close his switch before a practice torpedo drop...  Suffice to say, as our old Flight Safety magazine used to say, "I learnt about flying from that"!

[Chewbacca]

Almost there with the engine reduction gearbox.  Thought it might be worthwhile a little comparison with the kit part.  Now I know that a, the engine isn't properly mounted on the kit part (the forward mount pushes it too far back) and because I've already filled the locating hole ready for the scratchbuilt gearbox, it's not quite sitting level, but it gives you an idea.  Also, I've yet to attach the rear engine mounting frame to the gearbox which will lift the engine almost horizontal (it will be when I've dropped the front by about 0.5 mm).  I've also not yet attached the rotor brake so that looks a little wonky but it gives you an idea.  The whole gearbox still needs to be moved back by about 0.5 mm which will be sorted when the engine mount is in place.

 

Kit part:

 

 

 

 

Scratch built:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at those photos, looks like I also need to square the hydraulic pump on the stbd side of the gearbox.

 

 

 

[perdu]

The original kit part is an interesting flight of fancy isnt it, yours is going to make it three or four hundred percent better.

 

👍

[Terry1954]

13 minutes ago, perdu said:

The original kit part is an interesting flight of fancy isnt it, yours is going to make it three or four hundred percent better.

 

👍

Echo that. I can almost smell the gearbox oil!

 

Terry

[hendie]

scratch built is definitively way better

[Bell209]

On 5/28/2020 at 4:26 PM, perdu said:

May I suggest you look at how long mine took.

Sep 17 2016 to Nov 22 2017  

Amateur!  😉 I still haven't finished mine yet and I started it Christmas 2016.

[Chewbacca]

Looking at those photos above (macro photography is so unforgiving), I realised that not only was the scratch built gearbox musch better than the kit supplied item, but it also showed quite how bad the kit engine is.  Whilst I am still very tempted by the idea of a 3D resin printer as discussed over in @hendie's Scout conversion thread, and notwithstanding that they are now affordable, I still can't really justify a £239 printer and £40 for resin just at the moment.  And so I thought what would Alan Hall do?  Alan, as most will be aware, was that master of scratch built conversions in Airfix magazine back in the 70s.  He'd make it from balsa or ordinarily household items.  So lets get back to some gold old fashioned scratch building.

 

The tube in which Albion Alloys supply their nickel rod is almost exactly the right diameter for the compressor chamber and I found an old propelling pencil with various profiles and diameters that can provide the combustion chamber and turbine.  Ribs will come from extended sprue or Albion Alloys 0.1mm rod whilst the intake and exhausts will be modified from the kit parts.  I'll have a go at getting one together then see which one I'd prefer to use.

 

Stage 1:

 

[Chewbacca]

Several hours this week before and after work before the increasing number of evening Zoom meetings that I keep being asked to log in to, I think i have come up with a fair representation of the compressor, combustion and turbine chambers of the Nimbus.

 

 

 

It's not perfect, but it looks a darn sight better than Fujimi's original.  especially with a bit of primer on it:

 

 

(sorry, had to use flash on the last one and it's washed out some of the detail.

 

The ribs haven't come out quite as prominent as I would like on the compressor chamber - perhaps with hindsight I would have been better using Albion Alloys rod rather than stretch sprue - but I think I'm happy enough with that now to risk taking the razor saw to the exhausts and intakes

Edited June 4, 2020 by Chewbacca

[hendie]

Ooooh, much better

[perdu]

Much much nicer now.

[Chewbacca]

And now with its first coat of Alclad.  

 

 

Slightly surprised that the Alclad had a slightly grainy finish to it.  I was spraying at 15psi and with several very light misted coats of airframe aluminium over the black base to build up the colour but still allow the black to show through to give a darkened finish, especially on the exhaust and turbine assembly.  I'm not going to worry overly as ultimately the finish is of the real thing isn't high gloss smooth.

 

There are various finishes showing in the online resources for the Wasp, many of which show the entire engine including the exhaust in the same, fairly bland light alloy colour.  I've got no images of XZ720's engine when it was Wilbur.  There are a lot of much later ones, such as this one, because it is one of the restored airframes that is in private ownership and often flies into airshows on the south coast.

 

I could have gone with that, but I prefer the more varied look afforded by this image, and in the absence of anything definitive for Wilbur, this is what I'm going with:

 

After 24 hours masked off the exhaust and turbine and gave it a second coat of airframe aluminium to the compressor and combustion chambers then picked out the details in various shades of Vallejo and Tamiya acrylic:

 

 

I'm going to leave that now for 48 hours or so, then give it a coat of Klear before an enamel wash to bring out the shadows.  In the meantime, i have turned my attention to the gearbox.  Photos to follow of that.

 

 

[Chewbacca]

Started work on the MRGB and added the kit that seems to bolt to ts base.  I thought the one on the stbd side is an alternator but an online cutaway drawing which I can no longer find other than the Spanish version!) captions it as a hydraulic pump.  I cannot see any hydraulic lines coming from it.  Also added some of the other structure around the transmission deck and replaced the forward kit engine mounts with the correct shape.

 

 

 

And now, shock, horror, I found a kit part that is usable.  😮  Well, sort of.  Sad thing is I have no idea what it is is.

 

On the real aircraft it is this cylindrical tube with a rounded front end and what appears to be an air intake at the rear. 

 

 

Firstly, does anyone know what it is but more importantly, does anyone know what happens at the front.  It appears as though it turns inboard through 90 degrees but what happens after that?  Does it drop down into the well or the engine deck?  Does it just stop and is a tank for something else?  The rear is different to the kit part so I have separated the intake and am in the process of rounding that off before rejoining it to the main tank after that's reshaped.  I don't yet know what to do with the front end.

 

 

Second thoughts, it might be easier to scratch build this as well!

 

 

 

 

[Terry1954]

19 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

On the real aircraft it is this cylindrical tube with a rounded front end and what appears to be an air intake at the rear. 

 

 

Firstly, does anyone know what it is but more importantly, does anyone know what happens at the front.

A wild guess on what it might.... I agree with the air intake idea, perhaps feeding cooling air to the gearbox, given that must run from under the engine to drive the rotor ahead of it? No real clue on what happens there at the front though.

 

Excellent work on this are I must say. Bringing it alive.

 

Terry

[dolphin38]

I believe the large cylinder with the fan is the Oil Cooler

 

[Chewbacca]

 Thanks both.  An oil cooler makes sense - though it does seem very large for that.  

 

As far as I can tell, the reduction gearbox (that I scratch built in #59) takes the output from the free-power turbine in the engine.  It then splits that drive into a large main rotor drive shaft that goes forward under the engine to the MRGB mounted ahead of the engine and a much thinner tail rotor driveshaft that disappears under the fairing down to the intermediate gearbox at the base of the tail pylon.

 

On most of the photos of the port side of the engine, there appear to be 2 hoses that come down from the engine and I can just about make out in one of them that they seem to connect to unions on the back of the cooler - which fully supports Dolphin's comment above.

 

After doing a bit more digging through my photo archive, i came across this one of the Wasp in the Boscombe Down collection which funnily enough I originally downloaded from @Julien's excellent series of photos in the Wasp Walkround thread

My assumption therefore, since this is the only image that I have seen that shows the front end of the cooler open like that, is that the cowl at the front end has been turned through 180 degrees and that it should vent under the engine.  Assuming of course that the grille at the rear in the circular fan fairing is the intake? 

 

You can blow up this photo in that same thread and just about make out the manufacturer's label which reads Airscrew Fans.  Airscrew was a British company whose heritage stretched back to the early 1920s  and was originally a prolific manufacturer of wooden propellers - apparently they made the 2 bladed propellers for the earliest Spitfires. In later years they turned their attention to industrial compressors and fans and supplied the electronic bay cooling fans for the prototype Concordes. Here endeth today's history lesson! 

 

I suppose it could be sucking the air from the front across the cooler and venting through the grille, but that makes no great sense.  Who are we to know what was going through the the Saunders Roe/Bristol Siddeley designers' minds 70 odd years ago

 

Anyway, I think I now know where I'm going with this.  It's going to be scratch built!

[Terry1954]

1 hour ago, Chewbacca said:

After doing a bit more digging through my photo archive, i came across this one of the Wasp in the Boscombe Down collection

I think your assumption that this picture shows the cowl at the front having been turned through 180 degrees is likely correct. The intake at the rear looks very much like an impeller to me, and having the grill across it suggests air is being drawn in, rather than blown out? There is probably an oil cooling "radiator" under there somewhere, and this would pull in cooler air to be directed over that?

 

A safe bet to model it that way I would say.

 

Terry

[perdu]

2 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

I think your assumption that this picture shows the cowl at the front having been turned through 180 degrees is likely correct. The intake at the rear looks very much like an impeller to me, and having the grill across it suggests air is being drawn in, rather than blown out? There is probably an oil cooling "radiator" under there somewhere, and this would pull in cooler air to be directed over that?

 

A safe bet to model it that way I would say.

 

Terry

That was the result of all my searching detective work for my Scout and Wasp

The impeller is just like the heating fan on my MG Midget

Probably not much better at flowing air too, but that's a different safari

[Chewbacca]

3 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

A safe bet to model it that way I would say.

That's certainly the way I'm going for now at least.  I've got a basic structure from various bits of Evergreen tube/rod.  When the Vallejo filler's dry I'll start sanding and see how it looks.

 

Definitely a fan in there as this photo without the grille shows:

 

 

1 hour ago, perdu said:

The impeller is just like the heating fan on my MG Midget

Probably not much better at flowing air too, but that's a different safari

It does look about that size of the standard Lucas fan fitted to a lot of British sportscars in the 60s, 70s and early 80s doesn't it?  

Edited June 13, 2020 by Chewbacca