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


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Just now, perdu said:

Colin, from reading Borneo  Boys it sounds as if some (less vital maintenance, my description) servicing may have been shortened to keep the Whirlys in action at forward bases.

Hence sized blade hinge pins too.

Nah Bill, the crabs weren't into 'aircraft husbandry' as we in the RN were. An easy job to keep the pins from corroding! The fishplate was another story, it's hidden under the crewman's seat. So out of sight...

 

Colin

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Great greeblying, all that added detail looks fantastic. Especially with a shot of primer. Looking forward to your window seals solution, I'm scratching my head and wondering how it can be done. Hopefully the answer is in the next episode.

 

Richie

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On 7/15/2021 at 4:12 AM, TheBaron said:

Zen and the Art of Modelling. 

I wish my thought processes could cut through to the heart of a problem with such clarity and directness.

Translation for the uninitiated,,,,,,,Quote...DOH!...Unquote:doh:

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On 7/17/2021 at 2:33 AM, Martian said:

I think he hired the witches from that Scottish play..........I think it was called Macbeth.

 

Martian 👽

Martian you mean the the witches that recited;

 

Double,double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and wastebin bubble.
Fillet of P38,
In the wastebin to boil and bake;
Eye of scriber and drop of glazing goo,
Wool of batting, and touch of glue,
Adding steering fork and jewelry bling,
Landing leg and Bombers wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like CC's home brew boil and bubble.

 

Double double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and wastebin bubble,
Cool it with Baldricks blood,
Then the model is firm and good.

 

 

To William I'm frightfully sorry, I know your spinning in your grave after this one.
 

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A very nice update with primer, mesh, greeblies and scribing to admire. 

I see the lads have filled the cabin with sandbags. Is it nearly time for a test flight?

I used to hate loading up the Wessex and Puma with the lead weights we used for the max load flights after a servicing.

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2 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

A very nice update with primer, mesh, greeblies and scribing to admire. 

I see the lads have filled the cabin with sandbags. Is it nearly time for a test flight?

I used to hate loading up the Wessex and Puma with the lead weights we used for the max load flights after a servicing.

Me too

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12 hours ago, LorenSharp said:

Martian you mean the the witches that recited;

 

Double,double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and wastebin bubble.
Fillet of P38,
In the wastebin to boil and bake;
Eye of scriber and drop of glazing goo,
Wool of batting, and touch of glue,
Adding steering fork and jewelry bling,
Landing leg and Bombers wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like CC's home brew boil and bubble.

 

Double double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and wastebin bubble,
Cool it with Baldricks blood,
Then the model is firm and good.

 

 

To William I'm frightfully sorry, I know your spinning in your grave after this one.
 

That's the ones. Don't be sorry about upsetting the "Bard" though. One of my favourite Blackadder scenes is in "Blackadder Goes Back and |Forth" where Baldrick's time machine lands him in the court of Elizabeth the First. He meets Shakespeare in a corridor and gives him a good knee in the unmentionables as payback for every schoolchild that has had to suffer his plays. Having had to study the plays in Martian, English and Vogon at school, I would have done far worse to him but then you can't have it all.

 

Slightly off topic, this is coming along beautifully Hendie. Fortunately it is way too hot here to be venturing into the loft to dig out my kit and the spare vacform transparencies it still have for it so I am sort of keeping out of trouble: for now.

 

Martian 👽

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thanks guys. you're all very generous with your comments.

 

As last weeks episode drew to an end I said something along the lines of

 

On 7/17/2021 at 5:31 PM, hendie said:

I think I have a plan and feel quietly confident that it's going to work. Or not.  We'll see.

 

I think I have also stated that I was going to try good old fashioned scratch building and avoid 3D printing.  I may have to revise my statement around that.  I know now for certain that I shall have to print the wheels as the kit offerings are not in any way, shape or form, even remotely wheel shaped. Then I found another perfectly valid reason to use the printer - the window surrounds.

I've been mulling this over for a few weeks and going through all the possible options, which, it has to be said were pretty limited: Hand painting, decals, and perhaps thread of some sort.  Hand painting was definitely out.  I really couldn't see thread working at all, and decals, well, it was a possibility but at some point I'd have decal sheet over the window as I could never trim decals that accurately and it did raise another few problems.

The biggest issue facing me at the moment is accurately masking the windows so I can prime the beast.

What if I designed a window rubber like this?

 

2.png

 

and what if I did it for all the windows - with plenty spares just in case.

 

1.png

 

But instead of printing them on supports as I normally would, I just printed them directly onto the build plate, thus ensuring the back face of each support was perfectly flat and wouldn't require any sanding or trimming.

What would happen if I did that then?

 

P7170001.jpg

 

Perhaps I would get a useable window rubber that I would serve several purposes

 

P7170002.jpg

 

It would probably work as the window rubber itself

 

P7170003.jpg

 

and I could probably use the parts as templates to cut out the masking for the windows.  All I would need to do was make sure I cut the masking tape so that it covered the inside edge of the window rubber, and didn't extend past the outer edge of the window rubber.  I wouldn't even have to worry about making nice round corners.

 

P7170004.jpg

 

Oh I dunno.  Do you think it's worth a try?  What are the chances of it working?    :hmmm:

 

I think it needs a little bit of tweaking but I think it's going to work.  Never having printed directly on the build plate before I probably had the exposure times wrong and got some light bleed which resulted in losing some of the detail, but other than that I was fairly pleased with the outcome.  The surrounds were designed at 0.7mm wide but came out closer to 0.9mm wide which was due I think to the exposure times being so long

I'll make the tweaks and also add the 4 small windows up top (which I had forgotten about this time around) and redo the print.   

The plan is also to print some forming bucks for the sliding windows as I already cut up the kit parts for use elsewhere cos they certainly weren't any good as the sliding windows.

 

Anyways, now that I had a method for cutting the window masks, all I had to do was line up some guide strips to ensure I had things aligned properly and I could stick the masks in place

 

P7180007.jpg

 

and guide strips removed. Looks like the plan may actually work

 

P7180008.jpg

 

Progressively progressing along with this build is a good feeling.  There are times when I seem to spend a lot of effort and time for very little gain, at least visually.  It's time to change that and make a massive leap forward.

As I was working on these windows it occurred to me that there is also a window on the cabin door.  If you remember back, the kit door was molded as part of the fuselage and I had removed that to get access to the cabin area.  Now I had to make a door.

I started with the usual sheet styrene, measured carefully, cut it to shape and then wondered how I was going to cut the window aperture into the door accurately. Then how would I cut the window accurately?  Then how would I affix the window in the door making sure it was flush and so on and so on until... :rage:

Yes, my brain finally woke up and started working - why didn't I just make the entire door from clear stuff and then all I would have to do is mask the window, then peel off the masking after the painting was done and I'd have a perfectly flush window.

 

P7170005.jpg

 

I did check that this stuff works with TET before I put too much effort into it.  There was no point in making a door I couldn't attach to the airframe now was there?

I used BMF to represent some paneling and stop it looking too uniformly flat. Handles were added from brass rod, and a small block of styrene to act as the bulgey sticky outy thing

 

P7180006.jpg

 

By now I was starting to get all excited thinking that I may actually get this thing closed up and primed before the Xmas hols.

Then I tried the cockpit window.  I wasn't so excited anymore.

 

P7180009.jpg

 

It's a bit difficult to tell from this photo, but the windscreen is sitting flush with the port side.  With the starboard side, not so much.  The windscreen is too narrow and there's quite a step there - way too much to get taken care of by filling and sanding alone.

 

P7180010.jpg

 

But if I cut it down the middle then surely the port sid ewill match up with the port side and the starboard side will match up with the starboard side?

Or am I missing something?

 

P7180011.jpg

 

A big strip down the middle apparently :D

Easily taken care of though

 

P7180012.jpg

 

So while that glue was curing - this needs to work and be string so no TET here, that was good old fashioned styrene cement that was - I made a bunch of grab handles and stuck them in some holes drilled all over the fuselage.

 

P7180013.jpg

 

Will all these crazy ideas work? Who knows?  At this point I'm grasping at straws and making things up as I go along.  Plans are for wimps.  The kit windscreen is a bit thick and less than optically perfect, but as I keep reminding myself, this is a fun build and I don't want to tie myself in knots trying to make a 60+ year old kit look like a state of the art masterpiece.  I'm just trying to give it a new lease of life, and fill a hole in the 28 Sqn shelf lineup.

If the windscreen doesn't pass muster once I've glued in a fill strip it doesn't really matter - I would still have had to go through these steps in order to make a master that I can vacuform over (or so I've told myself).

PETG sheets are on the way for the sliding windows, and I may have a bash at the windscreen as well.  I'm completely undecided at the moment.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode folks.

 

 

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, hendie said:

If the windscreen doesn't pass muster once I've glued in a fill strip it doesn't really matter - I would still have had to go through these steps in order to make a master that I can vacuform over (or so I've told myself).

Unfair of me to comment based on a single photo I know Alan but given the quality you've put in to the surrounding areas I think that kit windshield risks visually contradicting the quality of your work and that vacforming would help maintain your (high) standards.

 

8 hours ago, hendie said:

The surrounds were designed at 0.7mm wide but came out closer to 0.9mm wide which was due I think to the exposure times being so long

Sounds right. Over-exposure and over-anti-aliasing can both have similar effects on a print,  albeit for different reasons. Those window rubbers look very nice indeed as a solution.

 

Smashing update.

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8 hours ago, hendie said:

If the windscreen doesn't pass muster once I've glued in a fill strip it doesn't really matter - I would still have had to go through these steps in order to make a master that I can vacuform over (or so I've told myself).

And so are we, telling you that you would still have had to go through these steps in order to make a master that you can vacuform from is entirely right.

 

Personally I would just do it, I did on my little Airfix one.

 

I love your elegant Elegoo adaptation of my "print the surrounds" suggestion, brilliant.

 

There's me only going to print with paper. Pshaw!

 

 

Nice door by the way.

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Excellent work with the window surrounds Alan. Looking at the windscreen, I didn't have any problems that I can remember with by build last year. I'll check one of my other kits and maybe vac-form new ones!

 

The wheels really are shocking!!!

 

Colin

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Alan, when this is all done, you could offer upgrade sets for the windows and such like. A nice little cellar cottage industry.

 

I must admit, you are alerting me to the pitfalls ahead for my three.

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9 hours ago, hendie said:

Plans are for wimps. 

All together now:

"Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low,

Through the streets in ma kilt I'll go,

All the lassies shout

"Hello, Donald where's yer troosers?"

 

She really is looking the part now Alan. When I saw the pic of the canopy I thought "cut in half, sand off the frame, polish, add new frame"

Then I scrolled down...... let's hope it works!

 

Ian

 

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Bonus episode this week.

First, the pigeon post

 

22 hours ago, LorenSharp said:

Looking good Hendie! Just remember when it comes to crazy ideas... Invention is a mother.... when it's a necessity. Keep up the good work.:goodjob:

 

Thanks LS, she's a mother all right

 

15 hours ago, Hamden said:

More great innovative solutions and micro engineering a really stunning build!

   Stay safe           Roger

 

Stunning as I can say that I'm a bit dazed by it all?

 

15 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Unfair of me to comment based on a single photo I know Alan but given the quality you've put in to the surrounding areas I think that kit windshield risks visually contradicting the quality of your work and that vacforming would help maintain your (high) standards.

 

Sounds right. Over-exposure and over-anti-aliasing can both have similar effects on a print,  albeit for different reasons. Those window rubbers look very nice indeed as a solution.

 

Smashing update.

 

Oh I just knew you were going to stick your oar in and come up with that suggestion Tony :D.  It has been seriously contemplated by the inner workings of the Hendacranium and I have made headway on producing a former for the buck.  To be honest, the reason I didn't just go right there in the first place is that I have never had any luck producing a clear vac-form.  Any other vac-form and it's Zap, Suck, and Bob's yer uncle. Clear? Never works for me, but I'll give it a go just so you lot can have a laugh

 

15 hours ago, perdu said:

And so are we, telling you that you would still have had to go through these steps in order to make a master that you can vacuform from is entirely right.

 

Personally I would just do it, I did on my little Airfix one.

 

I love your elegant Elegoo adaptation of my "print the surrounds" suggestion, brilliant.

 

There's me only going to print with paper. Pshaw!

 

 

Nice door by the way.

 

Bill - you are the MASTER of producing clear canopies from a rabbits bum.  I can't even end up with a clear canopy when I start off with a clear canopy

 

15 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Excellent work with the window surrounds Alan. Looking at the windscreen, I didn't have any problems that I can remember with by build last year. I'll check one of my other kits and maybe vac-form new ones!

 

The wheels really are shocking!!!

 

Colin

 

The canopy issues could well be of my own making Colin.  I seem to remember that I did some test fits early on before I started hacking about things.  I don't remember anything untoward at that time.  I could well have forced the fuselage a little wider jamming all that interior in there though it seemed to fit without any issues, and I didn't have any problems closing it up.

More on those wheels later in this episode

 

14 hours ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

Alan, when this is all done, you could offer upgrade sets for the windows and such like. A nice little cellar cottage industry.

I must admit, you are alerting me to the pitfalls ahead for my three.

 

Pitfalls?   Nah.  The occasional mineshaft and some abrupt sink holes to be sure.

 

14 hours ago, Brandy said:

All together now:

"Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low,

Through the streets in ma kilt I'll go,

All the lassies shout

"Hello, Donald where's yer troosers?"

 

She really is looking the part now Alan. When I saw the pic of the canopy I thought "cut in half, sand off the frame, polish, add new frame"

Then I scrolled down...... let's hope it works!

 

Ian

 

 

Thanks Ian. Aren't you supposed to blether something about great minds thinking alike?

 

13 hours ago, SafetyDad said:

Great stuff - inventive as ever.

Really enjoying this thread.

That door is going to look the business!

 

SD

 

Thanks SD.  More desperate than inventive but we keep ploughing on

 

Thanks to Ian's telepathic suggestion, the front windows got a spar of donor plastic down the middle to widen the overall frame.   Now both the port and the starboard side line up.

 

P7190001.jpg

 

But we have a little bit of a step here at the front.  Where did that come from?  Doesn't really matter does it cos it looks like it's here to stay now

 

P7190002.jpg

 

Prior to the oh why don't you just vacuform a new one chorus, I added a thin strip of BMF down the center to see if I could get away with using the kit part (in a push of course).  

 

P7200003.jpg

 

I dunno who keeps letting these elephants into the room but there's only me here so I keep having to deal with them, one bite at a time.  That windscreen step isn't going anywhere so it made sense to deal with it before I get too involved in something else. 

Surface prep

 

P7220006.jpg

 

Surface slobber

 

P7220007.jpg

 

The milliput was smoothed down as much as possible and left for an hour or so before I attempted to remove the windscreen. It came away leaving a good seam though there's always going to be some more seaming and sanding when it comes time to fit the chosen option, be it kit part or vacu-form.

 

P7220008.jpg

 

The following day the milliput was sanded back. I tried to keep that window to fuselage transition line as uniform and straight as possible in the hope that when it's painted it looks like a real panel.  I might have some more shaping and sanding to do in that respect.

 

P7220011.jpg

 

Some more metalwork was an indulgence to keep the insanity at bay.  The "bellows" was made up from two small slivers of plastic tube, and I coiled some wire up for the actual bellows part. Once painted up it should be presentable, 'specially as most folk will be staring at the 'orribly formed, clouded, home brewed, vac-formed windscreen in disbelief :D

 

P7200004.jpg

 

While we were dealing with things of an undercarriagey ilk, some more brass rod fell out of the drawer leading me to turn a little damper unit from a larger piece of brass rod.

 

P7200005.jpg

 

which was then duly assembled at the back end.  The bump stop was scratched from a piece of spare runner, and other assorted scraps were repurposed to form a mounting bracket at the fuselage end. 

 

P7220010.jpg

 

In that photo above you can also see the replacement 'panels' made this time from BMF. I'm a lot happier with the effect the BMF presents as opposed to the aluminum tape which was way too thick for this purpose. Oh - and look.  I used a kit part :shocked:  

The horizontal stabilizers from the kit were actually a very good match to the drawings, profile wise they were spot on, albeit a tad too long.  Simple job to cut them down to length and a much more complex job drilling them out to accept a piece of .8mm diameter rod speared through the tail boom.

 

P7220009.jpg

 

The jury is still out on their chance of longevity given the oaf who's in charge of handling this thing

Still under some delusions of being able to close this thing up I remembered that I had still not gotten around to scratching the overhead console.  I could only find one photo of a WW console and most of the knobs n bobs had been removed so I just made one up.  Complete fantasy, but it was fun.

 

P7230012.jpg

 

I even remembered to add the rotor brake and this time I even had it in the rotors locked position.  I did search and in vain it was, for a photo of an actual WW rotor brake but couldn't find anything so I am assuming (yes, dangerous) that the WW actually had the rotor brake fitted overhead, and in the general vicinity of the console.  Photo's of the H19 showed a floor mounted rotor brake that looked like an old handbrake and it was fitted on the port side, but none of the cockpit shots I had of a WW showed any levers similar to that - so overhead it went.

 

P7230013.jpg

 

Paint was spilled, a few wires added, and a blob of PVA on the end of the handle to make a nice round bally thing.

 

P7240018.jpg

 

Take a last look

 

P7240019.jpg

 

... before it disappears in here never to be seen again.  (That brake lever could do with being in a slightly more forward position couldn't it?)

 

P7240020.jpg

 

15 hours ago, heloman1 said:

The wheels really are shocking!!!

 

Shocking isn't the word for it Colin.  Cavemen could have fashioned a better wheel than Revell.  

 

P7240022.jpg

 

To my knowledge there are no aftermarket add-ons. Weird, given that there isn't a kit either - just what do the aftermarket bods get up to these days?

There was obviously no rescuing those vaguely roundish stepped donuts so today was spent on the compooter making round things.

The main wheel was quite straightforward though all I had to go on were my very basic measurements of a pixelated drawing. i.e. Diameter and width.

So it was pretty much guesswork on dimensions and constant reference to photos

 

Screenshot-2021-07-24-160245.png

 

The front wheels proved a bit more challenging particularly when it came to getting that diamond pattern tread on the outer rims.

 

Screenshot-2021-07-24-174231.png

 

My best guess was that the mainwheel is around 12.5mm in diameter with the front wheels being somewhere in the region of 9.25mm in diameter.

Given the pixilation and the line width of the drawings, I could be as much as 0.5mm out but this seemed like a good starting point.

 

Screenshot-2021-07-24-174503.png

 

Yes, I'm going to print them.  So there!

 

:D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Window seals, rotor brake, overhead console. Words fail me ( well nearly ).

OK this is a test shot of a new state of the art Whirlwind innit? You’e just pretending to build the old one, time to own up.

 

John

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Is it too late to change your rotor brake?

DSC-0465-zps92e4217b.jpgcroppy

DSC-0465-zps92e4217bcroppy.png

A vague teardrop shape, it can be 'just made out' in one or two pictures I have in my Whirlystash but boy the photographers kept away from it like it was a plague year.

 

I would carry on as you, brilliantly, are but on the 19th of August the date we should have been heading to Portsmouth for our ferry to Caen my son and I are going to visit Hendon instead.

 

If there are any areas you would like me to photograph on their HAR10 put in a special order on the photo slip at the end of this missive.

 

I will be attempting to release the secrets of the Whirlyrotorbrakedevice, for myself.

And posterity, these things must be told.

 

Other requests are also solicited folks.

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