Bristol Sycamore HR.51

[abat]

My contribution to the group build is a Royal Australian Navy Bristol Sycamore HR.51 in 1/72 scale. The kit is from UK manufacturer S&M Models "Specialists in forgotten or ignored British Aircraft, Airlines and Airliners". It is a lovely kit with very finely moulded details and markings for the two models shown on the box top below. 

 

The first 3 Sycamores (HR.50) arrived in Australia aboard HMAS Vengeance in 1951 with an additional 10 (HR.51) subsequently purchased. They initially served in a bare metal finish with 900 series side numbers but took on the two-tone white over Oxford blue scheme from October 1962. The change to 800 series side numbers happened in 1958. I'm still deciding on whether to represent the metal or Oxford blue scheme. 

 

 

Here is a photo of an HR.50 in bare metal finish that I took at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Nowra. The feature that distinguishes the HR.50 most from the HR.51 is the starboard side forward window which is lower than the HR.50 and includes a small viewport above it. There is also no step mounted below this window that suggests that it did not function as as routinely functioning door (although I've seen some photos with the entire forward section removed). 

 

 

And here is an HR.51 from the same museum in Oxford blue. You can see both forward doors now hinge and there is a stirrup step below both. The window on the starboard side is raised to the same level as the port side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a shot of the three sprues. The cockpit sides are moulded in clear plastic, the first time that I've build a kit with this feature. It appears to be quite a simple build but I'm sure getting the cockpit and fuselage to mate nicely will require some thought. Being a short-run kit there are of course no locator pins. 

 

 

Here is progress so far. I've removed the cockpit parts from their sprues and tidied them up. 

 

To fix the sink marks in the seat cushions, I first removed them with a razor saw and then fashioned a new cushion from 1mm plastic card. 

 

Hopefully more to come soon. I just need to locate a can of Tamiya fine surface primer in Sydney so that I can start painting. They seem to be out-of-stock everywhere I look.

Andrew

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Welcome aboard with a fine choice. 

[abat]

12 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Welcome aboard with a fine choice. 

 

Thank you. I'm a little late to the party but have been wrestling with an unruly Grumman Tracker which is having some time on the naughty shelf at present.

[CliffB]

A brilliant choice Andrew 

[abat]

6 hours ago, CliffB said:

A brilliant choice Andrew 

Thanks Cliff. 

[JOCKNEY]

We had a great one of these in the recent Choppers GB.

Really looking forward to seeing this one come to life.

Best of luck 

Cheers Pat 

[abat]

2 hours ago, JOCKNEY said:

We had a great one of these in the recent Choppers GB.

Really looking forward to seeing this one come to life.

Best of luck 

Cheers Pat 

 

Thanks Pat. I'll look up that build in the Choppers GB. It really helps to see other people's work. 

Cheers, Andrew

[abat]

Lots to think about and work out in this build. I've made some progress painting the cockpit. The main colour is Tamiya NATO black and the seats done with Vallejo model colour. A few little bits of scratch-building remain to add other controls and seat belts. I'm also wondering what to do with the instrument panel. The kit offers a nice instrument decal but I don't think it will snug down neatly into the recesses for the dials. I'm contemplating thinning down the existing IP with sandpaper, drilling out the dials, then mounting the decals on a piece of backing plastic. That should work I think.

 

 

You can see that I've dry fitted the fuselage with masking tape. There was a little bit of cutting and adjustment to get all the parts to mate together nicely bit overall the kit is a nice fit. I added a few tabs of plastic behind the rear of the cabin to help with alignment. Apart from testing the fit, the other purpose of this exercise is to assist in attaching the cabin floor to the rear of the cabin. Once I remove the nose I'll be able to put some glue on the attachment point of the floor, insert it inside the fuselage and get the correct alignment.

 

The other thing I'm still contemplating is the actual assembly of the fuselage, i.e. whether the assemble the fuselage halves first and then glue them together, or assemble the rear and front of the fuselage before gluing them together. I'm thinking option 1 has a better chance of getting a good fit between the forward and rear fuselage parts. I'll hopefully make more progress today.

 

[abat]

IP accomplished! The decal is mounted behind the drilled-out gauge positions. For a scale reference the square on the cutting board is 1cm 

 

[JOCKNEY]

Great idea on the IP, looks really effective. 

 

Cheers Pat 

[abat]

Here's the current state of play. I scratch build some pedals and added some etch seat belts from the spares box. The colours are loosely based on the photos of 850 at the top of the post. I've also attached the rear of the gauges to the back of the IP as these can be seen through the front of the cockpit. Next task is to think about detailing the cockpit walls and deciding which doors I'll cut open. The rear starboard door was usually removed for the winch operator so that's a definite, but I might possibly open one of the pilot's doors as well.

 

[Ray S]

This is lovely work, I really like what you did with the instrument panel, and adding the gauge backs has taken it to a new level. I have always liked the Sycamore so this is tempting now.

 

Have you decided whether it will be silver or blue/white yet? The silver looks good to me and, in my opinion, more in keeping with a 50's helicopter (although the blue/white looks good too) (ps - I am not sitting on the fence regarding scheme!)

 

Looking forward to seeing more of this one.

 

All the best,

 

Ray

[abat]

14 hours ago, Ray S said:

This is lovely work, I really like what you did with the instrument panel, and adding the gauge backs has taken it to a new level. I have always liked the Sycamore so this is tempting now.

 

Have you decided whether it will be silver or blue/white yet? The silver looks good to me and, in my opinion, more in keeping with a 50's helicopter (although the blue/white looks good too) (ps - I am not sitting on the fence regarding scheme!)

 

Looking forward to seeing more of this one.

 

All the best,

 

Ray

 

Hi Ray, thank you for your encouragement. I reckon that I'll be doing this in a silver scheme as I'm particularly interested in the early stages of their deployment as the RAN's first commissioned helicopters. I have a sheet of decals from CTA with XD654 / 909 which served briefly on HMAS Vengeance in early 1955 so this will be the airframe. XD654 arrived in Australia alongside XD653 - the blue white airframe with 850 side numbers now in the Nowra museum which I have photos of above.

 

[abat]

I've fashioned some masks for the windows (both internal and external) and applied these in the anticipation of painting the cabin walls. I also added some structural framing from thin plastic to add some interest to the cabin once closed up. Nothing too accurate here as it's all so small and cramped inside.

 

 

Next I decided it was time to join the fuselage. Being short run there's no location pins but it goes together really well with only minimal sanding of seams needed.

 

 

Most of my day was spent opening up the vents on the engine cover. I drilled these with a 0.6mm bit and then carefully opened and shaped them with a no.11 blade and some long, thin strips of sandpaper. The engine cover has now been closed up along with the rotor shaft. I put some NATO black on the cabin walls and highlighted these with some dry-brushing. And lastly I brushed 3 coats of Tamiya transparent orange on the top windows. I've previously had some trouble brushing these transparent paints because they dry so quickly and show brush marks, so this time I added a drop of Windsor and Newton paint retarder and it flowed beautifully and self-levelled nicely.

 

[Ray S]

That is a great tip about the clear paints and retarder, thanks for that!

 

Opening the vents is impressive too, and I love that interior.

 

All the best,

 

Ray

[abat]

Today I finally glued the cabin to the rear fuselage. Next I epoxied a piece of lead sheet underneath the cabin floor to ensure the helicopter is not tail heavy. After taking this photo I added the rotor blades to the rear fuselage and decided to add just a bit more weight - all up it would be less than 10g I think.

 

 

Then came the cabin sides. I elected to glue the sides on individually rather than building up the forward cabin separately and gluing it on as a whole. This enabled me to ensure a nice match with the rear fuselage. I'm hoping only a little sanding is required to smooth the join. Thumbs up to S&M Models for the fit of the kit. I undercoated the cain sides first to enable me to see the fit better. The roof is still just taped on. I want to check the fit before gluing it on tomorrow. As you can see it all balances nicely with the weight under the cabin floor.

 

 

The remaining parts - undercarriage, winch and rotors, etc. are very finely moulded but very delicate so a lot of careful trimming and fettling will be required. There is a white metal set of the undercarriage and rotor head available from Scale Aircraft Conversion which would better take the weight of the weighted fuselage but it is out of stock at my usual stockist in Australia. Something new to ponder.

[abat]

I've now closed up the cabin. The fit is very good and only a little bit of sanding and shaving has been required. I should say that this is the second attempt - the first time I forgot to glue the instrument panel to the front console so I had to prise it open, install the IP and then close it up again. I'll spray some NATO black over the cabin to ensure none of the outside colour is visible through the transparent sides. Next I'll attach the various bit and pieces to the fuselage, give it an undercoat to check fit and finish. 

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Taking shape now.

[abat]

Two steps forward, one step back ...

 

A bit of trouble with the forward undercarriage. The leg snapped when I cut it off the sprue, so I manufactured a replacement, but when I drilled out a hole to fit the diameter of the new support it forced up the cabin floor which hadn't glued itself well enough to the lower fuselage. It also resulted in some plastic shavings inside the cabin glass which had to be removed. So off came the front of the cabin to remove the shavings, re-glue the cabin floor, re-fit the door masking and drill a more secure mounting point for the undercarriage. Now that's all sorted I'll replace the front of the cabin. It's very wet in Sydney this week so it doesn't look like I'll get any painting done for a while.

 

[abat]

It's blue! This took quite a while but I've finally put on the two-tone paint for a late-scheme Sycamore. The deciding factor was that I already had an earlier silver one (the older Glencoe kit) and this would make a nice complement to that. It's hard to make out due to the dark colour but the preparation work included fitting the step below the winch door, replacing the broken front steps with 0.5mm plastic rod, fitting the exhaust protector to the rear starboard undercarriage support leg, fitting a simulated rubber boot to the leg on the port side and repairing the front undercarriage which snapped when removed from he sprue. The kit parts are finely moulded but quite fragile.

 

Once the paint cures, I'll put on the decals, a semi-gloss top coat and fit the winch and wheels. The rotor is providing some food for thought. I'd like to pose it with folded blades, however I'm not quite happy with how to do that at present. If all else fails I can simply mount the rotors in flying position.

 

Looks like I might possibly finish this in time.

 

[Andwil]

Looking really sharp.  The blue and white is so much better than boring silver!

 

AW

[abat]

2 hours ago, Andwil said:

Looking really sharp.  The blue and white is so much better than boring silver!

 

AW

Thanks AW. It’s a great colour combination and will look smart alongside my Wessex and Iroquois in the same scheme. Looking forward to getting the decals on and removing the masking. 

[abat]

I now have the decals on and I'm waiting for my LHS to re-stock their Tamiya paint range so I can put on a top coat of semi-gloss. There appears to be quite a shortage of paint these days. I settled on using the kit decals as the white in the aftermarket ones I had was more a cream and did not match well with topside of the camouflage. I'm wishing the roundel blue was darker but maybe my spares box can accomodate that.  

 

 

In the meantime I've been working on folding the rotors and building the rear trestle support. The hinge on the outermost rotors will be covered by a small plate which should be good enough at this scale. The rotors head was very finely moulded and fragile so I've built up a bit of detail to connect all the arms and rods. I also knocked up a lifebelt for the winch from Tamiya tape and some very fine wire. I'm now off the spray the trestle red and the rotors dull silver on the top side and black underneath.

 

 

 

 

[SteveMc]

Nice progress on the Sycamore. Glad I’m not the only one struggling to find Tamiya paints.

I’ve just bought some SMS lacquers for a future build but haven’t tried them yet.

[zebra]

On 4/21/2021 at 12:01 AM, SteveMc said:

I’ve just bought some SMS lacquers for a future build but haven’t tried them yet.

SMS lacquers are becoming my go-to - I really like them. They don't seem to do a semi-gloss varnish though, which would be helpful.