28 Sqn Whirlwind: A highly detailed, shake and bake kit

[Pete in Lincs]

1 hour ago, Martian said:

Sounds more like a Scooby Doo plot than a model build!

Well, it seems to me that some of the kit's he's built have the had moulds designed by a cartoonist.

Besides, there may be snacks. You never know what those darned kids will do next.

[perdu]

Snacks Pete?

I was hoping for a full English, or in Alan's case a full Americo-Ecosse.

 

With morning rolls and tattie pancakes, and that fabulous bread with no crusts down the sides.

 

Two fried eggs too please Alan.

 

I suppose some of you will want syrup and pancakes...

 

Going to be busy in the kitchen Alan.

[heloman1]

Stop it, you're making me hungry and I've just had breakfast...

 

Colin

[Brandy]

Just make sure it's proper back bacon, not that fry-to-a-crisp American stuff. Oh, and black pudding of course!

 

Ian

[perdu]

White's fine too, honest.

[Martian]

I want my Scooby Snacks and I want them now! 

 

Hungry of Mars 👽

[Pete in Lincs]

You'll need to get a haircut first. You're looking Shaggy!

[Wez]

Hendie, what is this obsession with 28 Sqn, are you an ex "My Little Pony Mk2" Sqn Liney/Aircrew or for some random reason, sad obsessive? 

 

For those that don't know, "My Little Pony Mk1" is 18 Sqn in the SH world.

 

Please, please, please, try and keep the raised rivets as depicted, they're far more accurate than the divots many modellers think are rivets (any ex-liney would be filling those holes with a rivet and that includes me, and I'm a fairy (well Nasty actually).

 

Got to love the Whirlwind, it retired before my time on SH in 1985, Odiham's gate guardian was in the OCU hangar post retirement, waiting being used as the the gate guard. 

[Martian]

5 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

You'll need to get a haircut first. You're looking Shaggy!

That's a fair cop, Mrs Martian said exactly the same thing to me only yesterday!

 

Hirsute of Mars 👽

[dnl42]

You're clearly letting this beast know who's the boss! 

[AMB]

On 5/3/2021 at 7:45 AM, Pete in Lincs said:

 

It was alluded to that the '10's' were built in the USA. Someone wrote that the build quality was better than the earlier Airframes.

And that leads us back to this build, in the USA. See what I did there?

Not so, I have an official Westlands photo showing ther HAR.10 production line at Yeovil in 1961 (see my WARPAINT book on the type , P.35).  Not sure where they got that from as Westland's build quality was second-to-none and they converted several piston Whirlwinds to HAR.9/10s with Gnome engines.

[Pete in Lincs]

This was from one of the pilots. They had been used to the earlier models.

It may just have been that the engines in the 10's were more reliable.

I seem to remember there was more power and they said they could carry at least one more soldier.

I did think it was an odd remark at the time. The Wessex was the first real Aircraft I worked on & they were built like brick wossnames!

[Martian]

23 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

This was from one of the pilots. They had been used to the earlier models.

It may just have been that the engines in the 10's were more reliable.

I seem to remember there was more power and they said they could carry at least one more soldier.

I did think it was an odd remark at the time. The Wessex was the first real Aircraft I worked on & they were built like brick wossnames!

There was quite a bit of trouble with the Alvis Leonides engines, apparently it did not adapt well for use in the Whirlwind. I think I read somewhere that it was partly down to the angle that the engine was mounted in the type. Perhaps that what people were referring to rather than the build quality of the helicopter pre-se.

 

On other, more important matters, "Rurry rup riv rem Scooby Snacks Raggy, I'm rungry! 

 

Martian 👽

[heloman1]

A Wessex, a Whirlwind for my Wessex... Unless it's another Whirlwind!

 

Colin

[Space Ranger]

On 5/7/2021 at 12:50 PM, Brandy said:

The schadenfreude has kicked in, you'll find me at the bar with Bill!

Do you mix that schadenfreude with anything, or do you take it straight?

[John_W]

6 hours ago, Space Ranger said:

Do you mix that schadenfreude with anything, or do you take it straight?

Try it with a splash of zeitgeist.

[perdu]

Ice

Should there be ice?

[Biggles87]

Said the starboard lookout, Leading Seaman Goldstein.

[Brandy]

Mixed with just a splash of wry grin.

 

Ian

[Space Ranger]

On 5/9/2021 at 8:32 AM, Brandy said:

Just make sure it's proper back bacon, not that fry-to-a-crisp American stuff. Oh, and black pudding of course!

 

Ian

And what's wrong with "that fry-to-a-crisp American stuff," he asked, indignantly??? And what in blue blazes is "black pudding"??

[Brandy]

American bacon is great on a burger, but not for a fried breakfast. Black pudding is this stuff.

 

Can't have a proper fry up without it!

 

Ian

 

 

[hendie]

Wow.  There's so many replies on this it seems like a Ced thread.  

In the interest of brevity, my sanity, and the next few years of my life,  I'm going to answer most of them without the quotes and (sadly) only quote a select few that require specific answers.

Here's the "without quotes responses":

Yes, 

Yes

Perhaps

without a doubt

My girlfriend keeps filling my trouser pockets with onions

only at the weekends

I should have killed you yesterday (was one of my friends business cards!)

Yes

We have the tech but we're not gonna use it (just yet - with apologies to Fuzzbox)

Yes

Turquoise

 

 

Now to the specifics:

  

On 5/9/2021 at 2:58 PM, Wez said:

Hendie, what is this obsession with 28 Sqn, are you an ex "My Little Pony Mk2" Sqn Liney/Aircrew or for some random reason, sad obsessive? 

 

Ex WSF (Wessex Servicing Flight as 28 Sqn didn't "officially" have a ground crew) at Sek Kong.  Sad? yes, and obsessive only when required

 

17 hours ago, Space Ranger said:

And what in blue blazes is "black pudding"??

 

All you need to know is that it's better than scrapple, and better than mush. 

For our UK viewers, Scrapple is what they make from the floor sweepings and mouse droppings left over from making sausages. And they can't make sausages in the USA - not real sausages anyway. 

Mush is, well, hard to describe, other than to say it is what it says on the tin...mush.

 

12 hours ago, Brandy said:

Can't have a proper fry up without it!

 

and the best black pudding comes from Stornoway.  Black pudding, square sausage, (real) bacon, fruit pudding, or fried clootie dumpling, tattie scones. Optional slice of fried bread (airmens mess breakfast staple), fried tomato, and some left over beans

 

Now the technical stuff.

As happens in 95% of cases, upon reviewing my work I decided I was not happy with the bulkhead, and was convinced it appeared too short - so off it came!  I moved the gearbox floor height up a few millimeters ("very small bits of inches" for my US colleagues), trimmed a bit off the gearbox housing, and rebuilt what I previously thought I was happy with.

I think this looks much better

 

 

I then dived (dove? duv?) into the rear bulkhead.  Using the same profile obtaining method I described a few posts ago, I got a decent fitting bulkhead all ready to be greebled.

I have a few photos of the rear bulkhead, but most of them have small differences, and in some cases I'm not sure exactly what mark of whirlwind they are from.  Therefore, making an executive decision, I decided to opt for modelers licence and just greeble it up to look sort of rear bulkhead'ish

To begin with, there are two prominent panels on the bulkhead with those strengthening fluted whatjamacallits (wish I could remember the tech term for them).  I spent ages scribing a groove in some scrap card to get some plastic rod to lie in. It looked okay'ish but cutting the grooves into the card deformed it - but still usable thankfully.

 

 

But for the second one I got fed up and just glued the rod directly on to the card and you can only just make out the difference. Other greebles were added from leftover Wessex/UH34 bits and who knows what else. 

Now I look at this photo I realize that I added more greebles later, but didn't take a snapshot

 

 

THough sometimes I wonder why I bother as this is about as much as you are going to see once it's all closed up... you'll see less actually as there will be seats and a door in the way

 

 

As I think about this build and the sequencing, I realized that I can't close up the fuselage until some of the windows are in place, and some of the windows have to go in before the interior is fitted, and upon examining the drawings I realized that as it stands now, some of the windows don't even have places to go.  On the WW there are a couple of small windows above the driver and his chum - those were not molded on this classic, therefore, they had to be made.

As I began to mark out the positions, there was some holes in the way, so next up was the usual drill of filling holes and making more holes. Runner goop was used as per SOP (pencil marks show window locations). I also took the opportunity when the goop was out to fill the gaps in the tail boom

 

 

Referring to the drawings, I cut one of the copies up and used it as a template to mark out the window location. As luck would have it, I had a brass template that gave me the perfect window size

 

 

Window number 1 achieved.

 

 

At this point I glanced at my reference photos and realized that the drawings were wrong!   

The window (as per the drawing) extended too far towards the centerline of the aircraft and wasn't close enough to the sliding window rail. Fun and games was had while I glued yet more scrap back into the hole I had just cut, and when that had set up I recut the hole in a more accurate position (I think)

 

 

Cutting the holes was the easy part.  I now had to figure out how to make those titchy little windows.  Over the next day or so I had a number of ideas, all of which sounded promising - as they do when they're in your head.  Once they get out and start to get put into practice, oftentimes they are not so promising.

One of my brainwaves was to use epoxy resin.  I reasoned that I could simply fill the void up with this epoxy, then file and sand back to a window like finish. Easy huh?  I have some "crystal clear" epoxy, so slapped some aluminum tape on the back side of the window and proceeded to fill the void. 

It looked great and was certainly crystal clear.  The issue was that I could not get the bubbles imbibed my the mixing process out of the resin.  Fail 1

 

 

Plan B:  I had in my stash some casting resin - also listed as crystal clear.  Unfortunately it has been in my possession for some time and when I went to mix it, it was clear (ha! see what I did there) that it had life ex'd and was no longer clear.  Fail 2

 

 

Plan C  - I have some thin clear styrene sheet... Fail 3 - I couldn't get the curvature to hold, and I wasn't prepared to start vacforming for something as small as this.

 

Plan D  - More of a fallback than an actual plan.  What about using the kit windows to make a window?  (stay with me on this one).  It was obvious I was never going to use the kit windows for their intended purpose, but maybe I could use bits of them to make these small windows? The idiot self in me told me it could be done.

Cure razor saw and sliced fingers

 

 

The biggest problem facing me was the curvature of the fuselage.  I had kept the edge of the window aperture perpendicular to the surface - it was the only way it looked decent - and was a real pig to achieve since the plastic is so thick.  This was definitely not a 10 minute job.  

I realized I was never going to get a good fit on all sides of the window, but reckoned that if I could make a "wedge" shaped window that I could get close enough to jam into the aperture, I could file of any excess and polish up what's left.

Have you ever tried to hold a teensy weensy little piece of plastic and file angles and radii on the little sucker?

Like this...

 

 

I have now!

 

Once I thought I had a decent "fit", i jammed the plastic into the hole and ran superglue around the outside edges to fix it (hopefully) in place.

As you can see it's not pretty, but some of the window is in the hole and that's all I need.

 

 

Some filing and micromeshing later - they look clear enough to pass muster for me (you can see just how far out my first location was by the infill segment of plastic

 

 

Both port and starboard side are eventually done

 

 

As I was thinking about how to write this up it dawned on me that I also need to figure out how to replicate the prominent rubber seal around the windows. After much thought, the only feasible solution I have come up with so far is by masking.  i.e. mask the windows, then mask the paintwork leaving a small gap between the two which I can fill with black paint.  Then it dawned on me...

If I am using masking to cover the window and provide the outline for the rubber seal, why did I go to all the bother of cutting 4 ridiculously small windows which were a real pain to get looking right when I could just have cut a huge chunk of plastic out of the roof, and filled it with one larger clear part, and sanded all that to the roof profile?  The windows and surrounds would still be achieved by masking.     That job would have been a whole lot simpler and much easier to achieve, and I wouldn't have wasted several modeling sessions getting razor saw cuts and eye strain.

Well, I'm not going through that again.

 

But now that idea is starting to gnaw at me.

 

 

To stop thinking about windows I located the vent tube in the bearbox housing

 

 

Which brought me back to windows.

 

Those fuselage windows require to be fitted before I can fit the gearbox housing and close up the fuselage etc. etc. (I think we've been here before). Okay, it would be possible later but it would be a whole lot more complex, and this is a fun build right?

The front window is the sliding door - that can be done later. The center window is just a flat plane, again, easy to do later, but that rearmost window is the culprit.  It wraps around the upper deck curving in several planes simultaneously.  Drats!

A quick ratch around the spares box provided these likely candidates. These windows already have compound curves in them and I was hoping that there was enough curvature in them for me to apply the same process as before - cut them to shape, wedge them in, then sand off any excess, and polish up what's left.  Never mind the green - that was a test spray of clear green some years ago and I'll be sanding these things anyway so can polish of any green remaining (in theory)

 

 

About 45 minutes of fettling later...

 

 

It's a fail!   There's just not enough curvature or thickness to the transparencies to be able to wedge the window in and make contact with the fuselage all the way around.

 

 

So close, yet so far.

On the up side, getting the shape right wasn't too difficult at all, and now I have a "sortof" template I can use for the next iteration of hendie's failed windows attempts.

The other left over windows may have more curvature in them - I'll check those later. I may also have some thicker clear styrene sheet left over from Pegasus that I can dig out and check. I think this idea is doable though. 

 

I'll try and get another update before the end of the weekend - I just found out today that I have to travel again so will be away all of next week. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RichieW]

Modelling use be so simple back in the slap it together and paint it before bedtime days of everybody's childhood! Hope you get another update by the weekend, I'm intrigued by the puzzle of the windows. It looks Vampire like in its challenges!

 

Richie

[The Spadgent]

I’m sure you said words like “nice”, “relaxing” and “fun” when you got this little beauty out of her cardboard coffin. Certainly looks like you’re having fun though. 😀 wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t fettling and sanding eh. 🤔 Those greebles look great on that rear bulk head and the windows seem to be getting to where you need em. Wonderful to watch.  🤗

 

Johnny

[CedB]

11 hours ago, hendie said:

Wow.  There's so many replies on this it seems like a Ced thread.

It does! Except there isn't any mention of saus… oh no, wait… yep, just like it  

 

11 hours ago, hendie said:

My girlfriend keeps filling my trouser pockets with onions

only at the weekends

Ha! I bet you say that to all the girls  

 

 

Great work on the windows hendie - I know you'll get them sorted but what a pane pain!

Have you tried the 'clear' 3D printing resin? Might be worth a try?

 

What about 'vacforming' some thickish plastic into the holes and then sanding it? Would that work? Maybe?

 

Rubber seals? I've tried adding some paint to PVA and (thanks to you) running it thinned into purposely left gaps.

Some success, but not total. Maybe you could scribe a gap?

 

Full of ideas this morning, most of them, probably, useless…