Canadas Yellow Peril eh? Definitely not a shag part 2 bigger and better!

[moaning dolphin]

Greetings one and all, its time to kick off the next project and this one will be a big un, ooh errr misses. With the Seahawk Smoker in the final throws of completion it was time to dig out the next project. Here I present the great Airfix 1:48 EH101 Merlin Mk3! Only its not going to be a Merlin Mk3, not even a Merlin, infact technically not even a EH101 or AW101 which ever they call it nowadays. I’m going to try and emulate Canadas very own modern Yellow Peril, the CH149 Cormorant!

 

So a bit of back story, I moved to Nova Scotia in 2012 with a Merlin Mk1 background and started work on the CH149 depth maintenance line here in Halifax Airport. This was the first run through for third line Cormorant work and it was thoroughly enjoyable starting on this project. During the last 9 years Ive spent about half my time on CH149 the rest on CP140, now I find myself in Asset Management for the CH149 controlling all the whirly, noisy stuff that make her fly from the comfort (!?!) of my office.

 

So seeing the aircraft nearly every day, I always look at minute details thinking how to replicate them in a kit. I unfortunately missed the initial release of the Merlin however I did have a go at an Italeri 1:72 version which involved a lot of work and turned out not too bad in the end, you can see that build from a few years ago here

 

Linky

 

 

But it has burned me that I don’t have the 1:48 version so before Christmas I started a big search for a reasonably priced kit and found one on HLJ.com. I didn’t even think they would have it in stock! So I ordered it and waited to see what the postage costs would be. The shipping costs worked out just 5 bucks cheaper than the actual kit!!!! But I though screw it and indulged myself, whats a 95% rise in costs? Just don’t let SWMBO know! The kit only took 3 days to arrive in Halifax from Japan ….. then another 3 days to travel the 20 Kms to my house! but still pretty pronto!

 

I also managed to get a conversion set from Belcher Bits, he had just received a second run so timing was perfect. That was it everything I need to convert this helo. Oh and a shed ton of plastic card, rod, tube and various other bits and bobs to do it.

 

Luckily I do have a great reference material as the real aircraft is only a short walk away and I have access to all the tech info I need (although the latter is surprising inaccurate for model making!). Unfortunately it isn’t something I can share with every one! This will be a long term build as every part of the kit I look at needs some work, that’s the peril of knowing the subject well, sometimes you just get dragged down an endless warren.

 

Another kicker to get this going was only just the other night, 4 Cormorants were scrambled to assist a Trawler in the Atlantic. The weather was atrocious and the aircraft were operating at the edge of their limits. When I returned to work next morning, the 4 aircraft were red (unserviceable), one had to cut both rescue hoist wires and another was stuck in Yarmouth after a hydraulic failure. But with the aid of the US Coastguard all 31 souls onboard were saved, the fishing boat sank several hours later. Theres a link to the story here:

 

Rescue link

 

The video shows the conditions and just how tricky the rescue was. So in honour of the Cormorant SAR crews here is my interpretation of Canadas finest.

First up the boxtop

 

And the sprues

And finally the clear and detached parts, clear parts are nice and clear ..... which is why they are hard to see in this picture 😁

And also the Belcher Bits conversion

The resin parts are really well done and have some lovely detail on them. Theres going to be alot of cutting, bodging together and scratch building on this so please dont expect an update every 10 minutes 😄. More to follow so stay tuned!

Stay safe and have a great weekend!

Bob

Edited March 5, 2021 by moaning dolphin
Fixing links

[phildagreek]

This looks interesting!

[Scott Hemsley]

Following with interest.

 

Scott

[zibbit]

Following for the Canadian content 😛 

 

OP, think you could run a simultaneous thread detailing the CP for me?  lol 

 

I think need to do a trip up to Comox to see if I can perform a walk-around/photo-shoot with one of their AC.  Unfortunately, good online information about them is scarce.  Some days I miss having access to CFTO's and/or the DIN.

Edited March 5, 2021 by zibbit

[moaning dolphin]

Good day one and all again, thanks for joining in and I have some progress for you  😁

Soooo, before I start putting the thing together I need to prep the inside. Airfix have it set up for troop carrying and I need to convert this to a SAR cab, so the first thing to look at is the cabin floor area which is no. 4 in the picture below (I could start with 1 but thought I’d mix it up a bit!)

The floor layout is very similar in that it has the 4 ‘seat rails’ which run fore and aft the whole length of the aircraft about 1/2 a meter apart (these are one piece and need some creative handling when removing/installing in a confined area!) and the centre line of floor panels look the same but thats about it. The Mk 3 is abound with tiedown rings and reinforcing ridges to protect it from heavy footed booties and the like  where as the 149 boards are plain. Luckily the designers have come to the aid of us modellers, to prevent damage to the floorboards a thick floor covering is applied over the top (almost like lino) so this hides all the detail apart from the 4 seat rails, so thats an easy start!

I then need to fill some of the holes along the side of the floor (no. 2). These are for the troop seats which run the whole length of the MK 4. The SAR only has up to half a dozen so most of these can go. I just opened them up a touch and then filled with plastic rod and then cut down to size.

Next to go is the big hole in the middle for load lifting (no. 5), again this isn’t a 149 feature so the kit supplied blank can be fitted and again this is hidden by the lino.

So after a bit of work this is what we have for the cabin floor area (don’t worry about the forward bulkhead, I’ll cover that later!).

The floor lining is just strips of card and the edges have been rounded down. You can see I have also marked out the sea tray, this will be fitted after I have painted the floor area and I’ll cover that build up later.

As for the cockpit floor, not much to change here, just the two boxes (no. 1, top pic) have to go, these will be replaced with a stowage for maps, charts and inflight magazines (no not that sort of mags!). Removing these left a rectangle shaped hole in the floor which was filled with plastic card and filler. Also for the co-pilots station (left hand seat) the box has a protrusion that the collective lever locates onto. I marked this area with a hole to give me a good idea on positioning.

So that’s the floor for now, the next major piece is the bulkhead separating the pilots from the cabin. In reality this is where most of the electronic boxes are housed, a whole pile of magic that no one can understand goes in in there!

So looking at no. 3 in the first picture you can see that Airfix provide some detail. I am not really up to speed on what the Mk 3 looks like, it may be correct but I do know this is not how the Mk 1 or 149 is built up. I decided to build this up from scratch rather than trying to make the kit piece work. I cut the bulkhead using the kit part as a template and then made up some protruding panels for behind the cockpit seats. These panels cover the flying control rods, I made from plastic card shaped and then scored to take the reinforcing ridges. You can see how they differ, the kit one on the co pilots side seems to cover the whole back area. Beside these is a circuit breaker panel which has been squeezed in. I still have some light fittings and wiring to go on there. You can also see here the build up of the map stowages on either side. Obviously the co pilot has more time on their hands so need a larger stowage😄 !, For now I think the cockpit is good for some kit parts to be installed a little later

Finally for this episode, we look at the back side of this bulkhead, and guess what! Its different as well! Here is the kit part,

like I said this is where the avionics are housed and the 149 has a larger one piece door rather than what's pictured. That doorless looking microwave oven above the door needs to be filled in and then I added a new larger door with appropriate features, the panel above the door is good and I just need to add a fire extinguisher to that. On the other side, the lower part of the cabinet needs to be removed. This is a stowage area for aircrew kit and is then blocked off with some panels, to save you scrolling back up, here is the pic again.

in truth you could probably remove the detail on the front, lower and call it quits, but I wanted to make it look like separate panels. How much of it will be seen is up for a debate as you have a seat right infront of it and then a large SAR cabinet, so itll be quite well hidden! But we will know lol!😉 The upper part needs a kit attached to it which is held in place by netting so that will be added a bit later.

Next I will look at priming to make sure there are no obvious flaws, and then painting, simple as that! Who knows I may even have some kit parts glued in by that time (that bulkhead is just slotted in place, needs to be removable for paint. So until that time, stay safe and I’ll be back in a few days, time to dig out another sheet of plasticard lol!

Bob

[moaning dolphin]

On 3/5/2021 at 6:00 PM, zibbit said:

OP, think you could run a simultaneous thread detailing the CP for me?  lol

I did start one quite a few years ago for the Hasegawa P3, never got round to sticking any parts together but did use up alot of plasticard (sounds familiar!). I did try and find it but couldnt, it must be deep within this forum somewhere lol!

[fubar57]

As a Canuck I heartily endorse this thread. I was unaware of the Belcher conversion

[perdu]

As a Brummie I heartily endorse this th...

 

Hell why not, it's a Merlin by any other name

And I may be copying you by doing my new, spare Italeri TT1 as this version

 

Not going to be much after mkt for the 72th scale one though?

[moaning dolphin]

1 hour ago, fubar57 said:

As a Canuck I heartily endorse this thread. I was unaware of the Belcher conversion

Welcome along! Worth looking deeper in Belcher Bits, he does alot of good Canuck conversions and decals sets!

 

52 minutes ago, perdu said:

And I may be copying you by doing my new, spare Italeri TT1 as this version

 

Not going to be much after mkt for the 72th scale one though?

 

Having been through that with the actual Italeri CH149 version, there was quite a bit of work involved (link in 1st post) and I think the TT1 would provide a few more headaches challenges but I'm sure its something you could turn into a silk purse! As far as I know there is only Eduard etch available for this kit and Belcher do a nice set of decals in 1:72

 

For todays update I had a look at the cockpit area and in particular the seats. The kit versions are quite plain and considering what I have already spent on this kit I didn’t want the extra expense of etch seat harnesses especially when I wouldn’t be using much else on the fret. Also, my attempts at doing my own harnesses has never been very good. The Belcher Bits conversion provides us with 3 seats.  seen below with the kit effort.

 

 

These seats are modelled on the FE and SAR Tech positions in the cabin area and are very nicely detailed WITH harnesses but in the cabin two of them wont be very visible which is a waste! I looked at the difference between the cockpit and cabin seats and the only noticeable differences are the arm rests (which are separate resin pieces on the BB set) and the pilots have no head board fitted. So, it’s quite an easy conversion, I will use two of BBs seats in the cockpit and fit the kit seats in the cabin. I will use the third seat for a position adjacent to the cockpit door which will be visible. The other two will sit by the forward bubble windows which will probably have a distorted view anyway!

So back in the cockpit, I made my own seat legs from plastic rod and used the kit cross-beam support for the back of the seat, now here I have a bit of beef with Airfix,

 

 

it seems this part was designed by the Matchbox designer in trying to fit as many spru gates around a fragile part as possible, I’m sure they can squeeze a couple more on there if they tried lol! Luckily I did manage to clean them up with minimal breakages!

The BB seats also come with nicely molded on cables but I removed these to replace with proper wire. They are perfectly acceptable but just my personal preference. I removed the head board, this is very easily done but the only downside to this is I lose a bit of seat harness detail at the top, so will over come this with a bit of thin plastic strip and kind of melt that in position once secure.

 

 

I also got around to gluing some kit parts in! (finally!) I attached the flying controls however the picture makes the gaps around them look hooooge

 

 

but in reality, they are barely noticeable unpainted, still worthy of a fill though.

 

And that is where I got to last night. I might throw some primer on tonight and see how it looks. Still a long way to go on the inside though!

 

So until later, stay safe all!

 

Bob

 

[bigbadbadge]

Nice choice, like the scheme and will try and follow, what a rescue, brave persons flying them. Although I am not Canadian myself,  I am waiting for some fairly recently purchased BB bits to arrive .  Does that help???

Great start .

Chris

[moaning dolphin]

1 minute ago, bigbadbadge said:

I am waiting for some fairly recently purchased BB bits to arrive .  Does that help???

Its a good start!

[bigbadbadge]

14 minutes ago, moaning dolphin said:

Its a good start!

I am also building a very yellow RCAF Ventura TT  that should be more acceptable .

Chris

[moaning dolphin]

3 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

very yellow RCAF Ventura TT  that should be more acceptable .

Absolutely, its a very colourful version

[B_Bogus]

I'd like to pull up a seat and watch along, if I may?

I had the honour of walking around one of the originals when it was in the hangar at Westlands on its ferry flight from Italy to Canada... lordy - over 15 years ago! 

I seem to remember that the procurement of the Cormorant was 'a bit political' so they didn't arrive to a great deal of publicity at the time, which was a shame.

The Belcher Bits upgrade is based on solid research; mostly provided by a former colleague and drinking buddy, who spent quite some time out at Comox, tending the fleet.

 

Off to a great start, and looking forwards to seeing this one progress 

[perdu]

I am presently examining images of the 1/72 Belcher Bits transfers to see if it will be worth me buying it for my possibly forthcoming Cormorant.

 

Even if I can only use the National marks and the stripes it will be a likely purchase.

[moaning dolphin]

3 hours ago, perdu said:

I am presently examining images of the 1/72 Belcher Bits transfers to see if it will be worth me buying it for my possibly forthcoming Cormorant.

 

Even if I can only use the National marks and the stripes it will be a likely purchase.

Let me have a look in my decal stash, i bought the Cormorant italeri kit but used BB decals. Ill have a look tonight to see if i can find them and see what state they're in. If they are usable you are welcome to them!

[moaning dolphin]

Good day! First up one for Mr @perdu, I dug out the decals and seem in good condition. I have only used the ones for the consoles, red borders on the firefighting holes around the engines and the 'Danger' arrows. The downside is the go faster flash stripe is lacking the black border but they are there if you would like them, just let me know!

 

 

So moving on to progress, not much to report after slicing my thumb open. This wasnt a model making injury, more of a washing up injury, hence another nail in the coffin for model makers to partake in domestic duties! But progress was made, I filled the gaps in the cockpit floor and finished off the seats with some cabling, Just a note on those seats. I stuck a small piece of plastic where I removed the head board to replicate the seat harness going over the back of the seat pan (check previous phots). This is wrong however as the seat harness goes through the back of the seat via a small opening. I ripped off the plastic and then drilled a small opening to replicate this. I'm sure this wont be the only time my mind thinks one thing but reality says another!

 

Then these items were taken to the dope shop for a quick prime

 

I also brought out the center console, the remaining cocktail stick holds an electronic box which sits down on the pilots side. All the cockpit parts will end up in various shades of black while the cabin will be medium sea grey but I am going to experiment with different preshading to try and break up the great expanse, but that is all for now. SWMBO is off out tonight so I have a few extra hours of guilt free modeling 

 

Laters all and stay safe!

Bob

[phildagreek]

Looking good!

[moaning dolphin]

Good day again all and welcome along, in this installment we actually progress to a touch of colour! So after I primed I looked at the rear cabin floor, the intent being to add some subtle shades and colour to the blandness of medium sea grey. This was all experimental, I have done some dark preshading of a single colour which works nicely. I started with some highlights with white primer, this was to try and highlight panels underneath the floor covering that have a subtle effect on the lino and to highlight some areas of wear, I then added some blue and finally very dark blue for the seat rail channels, looks a bit messy though!

 

 

The area in the middle where there is no colour will be hidden by a seatray that I will make and fit later. At least with this method if it looks a bit gash I can just add more MSG and cover it over. Also in this picture you can see I've added some yellow primer to the front cockpit, this is in high wear areas where the aircrew rest their weary boots while flying, at the same time I added the same primer to high wear areas of the seats, I then coated this yellow with future polish to give it a bit of resistance when I do the  wear effects

 

 

So it was out with the Medium Sea Grey, I used the Vallejo Air variety and it sprayed on nicely giving me this result

 

 

Nice subtle shades and I have the darker effect for the seat rail, quite happy with that. Again the upper right area will be covered with stuff so not worth shading here. And once again I jumped ahead and painted the cockpit floor and equipment. This is nice and easy as it is all black!

 

 

I used Model Master Acryl interior black for this, and while I was at it I coated the seats and centre console, , the seats turned out really nicely, they have a rugged appearance just like the real thing

 

 

I will highlight the harness and cushion in slightly differing shades of black just to break up the monotony of it all. Then it was out with a bit of nail varnish remover and a cotton bud and A LOT of restraint to apply a bit of wear. This involved just removing a touch of the black.

 

 

it looks ok, I'll dust some pastel dust in there as well to blend it all in and I will also revisit the areas that I can see in the pictures above that I missed with the black but couldnt see in real life!

 

Its starting to come together now, glad to get some colour on it but still a long way off boxing all this stuff in! 

 

Well thats all for now, have a jolly good weekend, stay safe and will hopefully see you all next week! 

Bob

[bigbadbadge]

Looking good so far.  Hope the thumb heal up quickly. 

Chris

[Patrick Martin]

As usual the kit flag and roundels are all wrong

PM

[moaning dolphin]

Good day everyone, just a wee update on progress, a build like this tends to be slow with not much going on over the days but after a week or so there is usually something to report on!

I have been looking at the Cabin internal side panels lately and these require a bit of modification as well. This is what we start with and the main corrections.

The molded detail along the top looks like stowage pockets for equipment / nutty and mags for the troops. These aren’t present on the CH149 so it all comes off, same for the resin insert which has these molded on as well. Seems a shame to remove these but it is surplus.

There is also a square raised area near the aft end, that needs to come off as well. I think this version has a crew seat sited here but for us we need what is basically a back pack stowage. Belcher provides the ‘seat’ part of this but I will need to build up some backs. There are 3 stowages here.

Before I carry on with any major detail I need to chop off the end panel. In this version we have a blank panel and then a doorway, what we need is 2 window panels, again provided by the belcher Bits kit. The instructions provide accurate cut lines so its just a case of chopping of one end panel and then gluing in the resin double panel. Now I wished I had stopped there and took a picture but I got caught up on soundproofing.

This soundproofing is by and large of the soft quilted kind (apart from a couple of panels which I will address in a mo). So what do we use for this quilted pattern? I initially tried tin foil being rubbed down over a mesh. This produced a nice effect but it wasn’t really well defined and I was worried I’d lose it under a coat of paint so there was only one thing for it, some wrapper from a fizzy wine bottle. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any spare so I offered to buy SWMBO a nice bottle of bubbly for Saturday night, which immediately raised suspicions and “what are you after?” Followed by disappointment after I explained! So she plumped for an expensive bottle and I had my quilt effect!

Here is where we are at now then,

I applied the quilted soundproofing, splitting the windows to get the foil to settle more into the window recesses. You can see one panel bare, this is a jettisonable window so is surrounded by a hard panel, the top and bottom are soft panels and you can see I have left my original foil panel in place, we shall see how that goes! The very forward panel is a bubble window and this should by rights be hard as well but I covered it by mistake and didn’t want to rip it up again incase I ruined it and had to buy another bottle of bubbly! I will add a little bit more detail to this later.

Down the other end you can see I added 2 of the seat backs from plastic card. These 2 will be surrounded by quilted panels and then aft of that is solid skinning. Still more work to be done here before I get round to priming but I wanted to show that there was progress going on and to keep the thread current. I’m finding I’m doing lots of little ‘projects’. Make something, put it down, continue with something else, put that down, go back to other pieces, etc. The build progress is a bit of a mess really (like most of my builds lol) but I will try and keep this thread in a logical order ………. 

Still that’s all for now, thanks for tuning in and keep staying safe especially those without a covid jab yet ….. I’m 8 weeks and counting  😩   but we have so few cases in Atlantic Canada that the Province is kind of reopening any way, just have to keep our wits about us and not act too daft!

Until next time, laters!

Bob

Edited March 24, 2021 by moaning dolphin

[bigbadbadge]

Love the wine bottle quilting, that looks great.

Chris

[Head in the clouds.]

Great, caught this on the first page so if I may pay my thruppence for a front row seat I will be happy.

 

I am going to build this kit and morph it around a bit so your build will be immensely helpful for me and after just reading your older 1/72 build of the CH149 I know I am in for a treat and a steep learning curve.

 

Having watched the video it never ceases to amaze me just how much swell you get in rough weather and how much of a threat it could pose to the crew and helicopter. Amazing!

[moaning dolphin]

Good day everyone once again and welcome along @Head in the clouds., its been a bit of time since I last updated. I have been chipping away at various bits and bobs on this which are time consuming but alas not very interesting if I post an update every day or so!

Last update was quilting the port side internal structure. On a similar vein today I will go through the port side external structure. Again this is very different from the Mk3 version, top of the list is blanking off the personnel door and adjacent panel with a bubble window and 2nd window panel (1 in blue in pic below), adding in two recessed refueling points (2), Canada couldn't afford the little panels that cover these points so that complicates the issue a touch, and finally another blank panel requires replacing with a window panel (3). Also the red circled protuberabces need to be hacked off or filled. The main one up top and the bump on the nose will require reinforcing behind to allow the holes to be filled. So for starters ...

Thankfully the Belcher conversion covers the window panels, the parts are very well detailed but there are, here and there, signs the molds are showing their age. This panel had a resin seepage into the  refueling point.

Not a big issue, just drill it out and fit a blank card in the bottom! Now removing all the blue areas leaves the fuselage very floppy and trying to then super glue the holes with resin I found quite problematic. May just be my sausage fingers and my trimming the kit to just accept the new parts, but it did take a battle of wills. After releasing my fingers from the fuselage superglue I ended up with this, shown already filled and dressed out.

Looking ok so far, I will need to go over a few panel lines but we are now cooking on gas! So the reason for this was because some of the internals of this part are seen on the inside and I wanted to paint them both together. The inner part quilting was trimmed and primed, again I applied some preshade for the panel line areas and here we are before we splash the MSG! You can also see on the inner part I have installed the bag shelves in their extended position. This just needs a bit of bracing wire to complete the look.

I haven't yet taken a pic of the internals painted up, that will come along very soon. In the meantime, stay safe all!

Bob