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Mojo restart, with added Clogs: 1/350 Hr. Ms. Bloys van Treslong, Naval Models


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It’s been a while since I made a seascape & I’ve decided to try a new (to me) method - so this might just be a trial run, depending on how it goes.

 

1. Take an A3 piece of insulation styrofoam and a hard, rounded tool (e.g. teaspoon in this instance):

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2. Use the spoon to make random dents all over the foam (which is hard enough to retain them):

51947176427_cc14532c36_b.jpg

 

3. Mark the position of your frigate:

51947176457_59461778ce_b.jpg

 

4. Excavate a hole:

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5. Soak some textured watercolour paper in water and then glue it (Gator thick) onto the foam:

51947176492_240de71c2a_b.jpg

 

Leave everything to dry thoroughly.

 

Happy so far; it’s a lot less messy than my old oat bran and superglue method.

 

More soon

 

Crisp

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Once dried, yesterday’s base coat (Vallejo Model Air 71.005 Intermediate Blue applied with a large flat brush) is fine as far as it goes:

51953272220_9db14d8962_b.jpg

 

But in real life not much of the sea is actually the stereotypical “blue” of everyone’s imagination - not outside the Tropics & possibly Med, anyway.

 

So today I misted on several random coats of Vallejo Model Air 71.053 Dark Sea Green 50:50 with 71.054 Dark Blue Grey by airbrush (I still find Vallejo hideous to airbrush), giving what to my eyes looks much more like the sullen slate colour of most of the North Atlantic.  This is now the real base colour, so the fun can start:

51952981144_f41ebc81de_b.jpg

 

More later in the week

 

Crisp

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On 21/03/2022 at 18:42, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

giving what to my eyes looks much more like the sullen slate colour of most of the North Atlantic.  

Playing with fire there a bit Crisp. 

 

Given the vitriol that discussion of the spectral composition of EDSG can lead to online, you bravely invite a flame war over oceanic hues... 😁

 

'I'm telling you it's Fitzroy, but with a hint of Rockall...'

 

 

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Not much time at the bench this weekend (real life stuff), but continue to work on my seascape technique / paint mule.  This won’t be the one BvT eventually sits in, but I’m trying a new (to me) system and learning lots:

51965317190_867c54457d_b.jpg

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Having put down the base colours like that (& I think there’s more that can be done at this early stage, with more colour variations to give the illusion of turbulence just below the surface), you then move on to acrylic gloss gel to add body:

 

a) first goes; Vallejo Water Effects gel, with tiny pieces of torn tissue paper to simulate wave crests etc.

51982902942_24ef0336b4_b.jpg

 

b) further goes; Winsor & Newton Galleria Gloss Acrylic Gel and pieces of ripped cotton wool 

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For my first effort, I am happy with where this is heading and the possibilities being thrown up.  
 

Better get back to the ship!

 

More soon

 

Crisp

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39 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

being thrown up

 

You know a sea state looks authentic, when that phrase pops up! Great looking sea scape so far.

 

Terry

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Short run decals / transfers / stickers… oh em gee!  First efforts curled up into tiny ball the instant I touched them to move onto the model…

 

But luckily I had a spare B from Callenburgh (CB) & a spare T from Kortenaer (KT), so I was able to hold my breath, concentrate very hard and try again:

51989470185_1b3f87b99c_b.jpg

 

Lynx deck harpoon grid is a Hawk Graphics job, bedding down under copious applications of Sol.

 

White circles once all is dry tomorrow 

 

C

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With a request for a bit of aiming off - this feels a very unforgiving macro photo (e.g. 2 bubble holes in the resin front starboard side of flight deck, entirely missed to this point… so now you can guess where the FDO will be standing…), here’s the state of play with BvT’s blunt end after a weekend of desultory decal work:

51994501207_56076c6e3b_b.jpg


The random white marks are fluff / dust.  Note also the white trench for’d on the 01  life raft deck; that’s deffo not fluff - filler after repairing when I dropped.  Once cured, ready for paint again.

 

One thing that definitely pleases me (especially bearing in mind that this is roughly 2 x life size even on an iPad screen) is the join of the rear edge of the flight deck with the transom.  This is a tricky area of the kit, with several parts involved, and I suspect I over-sanded slightly when detaching from pouring stubs.  Either way, I ended up with a quite chunky trench to fill on a tricky angle.  So multiple salaams to @The Baron, whose resin and UV light filler / glue idea I shamelessly nicked, and which worked like a charm.

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14 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

With a request for a bit of aiming off

Absolutely no need for that, at least from where I'm sitting: it looks like a very neat job! :clap: :clap: 

 

Ciao

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Looking very nice indeed. I've always had a soft spot for a nice neat flight deck on the back of a Warship!

 

The centre spot appears a slightly different shade of grey. Is that the centre net device for "trapping" the helicopter? I'm sure I once read that idea was used by some ships, I might be completely wrong!

 

Terry

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18 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

The centre spot appears a slightly different shade of grey. Is that the centre net device for "trapping" the helicopter?

Yes it is, they called it the 'bear trap'. Essentially it is a strong steel hexagonal grid. On the underside of the Lynx there was a device called the 'harpoon', in fact an automatically operated steel claw, that grapped into the beartrap grid, and so securing the heli to the deck. As the claw could swivel around the vertical axis, the Lynx could still turn around on its wheels, as to position it for hauling into the hangar or into wind for another takeoff.

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Not quite, Maarten.  Bear Trap was (is?) a Canadian system, officially called “HHRSD” (helicopter hauldown & rapid securing device), which as far as I know kind of does what it says - the aircraft hovers over the deck in rough weather and lowers a wire with a hook in the end, which is attached to the Bear Trap cable.  The pilot then pulls power against the cable to tauten it, and then gradually reduces power while the system hauls the aircraft towards and eventually onto the deck.  At least, I think that’s how it works: personally, the thought of attaching my airborne self to a ship via a damn great piece of string gives me the absolute heebie-jeebies… but the RCN has used it for 50-odd years, so it must be safer than it sounds.

 

The Lynx has a slightly different system, which is (as you say) rather confusingly called Harpoon (the RN bought the American Harpoon missile system some years after the Lynx entered service).  It is specific to the Lynx (& I assume the Wildcat) because to work it depends on the semi-rigid rotor head.  The Lynx main rotor head is machined out of a single lump of titanium; where most helicopters have 3 hinges per rotor blade (flapping [up & down], drag [back & forward] and feathering [twisty-turny]), the Lynx only has a feathering hinge - the flapping and lead/drag forces are taken up by the titanium head.  This makes it remarkably agile, and is why Lynx blades don’t discernibly droop when stationary on the ground - it’s also what allows the Lynx to fly inverted (though only under VERY strictly controlled 1G conditions, since the gearbox oil is fed by gravity…).  
 

You can clearly see how simple the rotor head is here:

48051319382_a1e60fa979_z.jpg

 

For these purposes, however, the agility makes it a stunningly good deck landing aircraft on a small ship, which is exactly what it was designed for; the undercarriage is stressed to high G - provided you have no drift, it is almost impossible to land a Lynx too hard - AND once you are on deck you can put the aircraft into so-called “negative pitch”; the rotors actually push the aircraft downwards and compress the oleos.  You push down hard on the collective; the first time you do it, it’s the weirdest feeling!
 

Unlike Bear Trap, the pilot controls the whole thing in the Lynx.  You land in the normal manner, which in rough weather means picking your moment and then landing “positively; like you really mean it” (as Nick Clarke, who taught me on my Lynx conversion, would put it).  The grey area picked out by Terry is (as Maarten says) actually a bare metal grid; lots of holes about 6-8cm across, counter-sunk so there is very little flat area between the holes.  Underneath the belly of the aircraft is a bloomin’ great hydraulic arm with a hook on the end of it, controlled using a switch that sits under your index finger on the collective (not automatic).

 

You can clearly see the grid in this phot of my Flight doing a MRGB change alongside in Gibraltar in 1990.

48195081962_1ff402b088_b.jpg

 

So you land, push through into negative pitch to hold the aircraft down, and engage the deck harpoon.  You can stay there quite happily even in very rough weather, until the ship turns and/or there’s a quieter period and it’s safe for the deck crew to get out there and lash you down.  

 

In this shot (of Gib Flight Lynx, which was seconded to Broadsword Flight for a couple of months in 1990, making us a two-aircraft flight) you can see the harpoon “ram” under 321’s belly, holding them onto the grid:

48195014622_502efb284d_b.jpg


For take-off (which is what’s happening here) the lashings can be removed while the ship is on a relatively benign course, and the aircraft held on deck with the harpoon and negative pitch. 321 is not in negative pitch here (the oleos are not fully compressed) because it’s not very rough - but all that’s holding her on deck is the harpoon.  
 

The final part of optimising the Lynx for deck operations is the wheels.  The main wheels have no brakes; just wheel locks, that are either on or off, and cannot be controlled from inside the cockpit.  As you can see above, for embarked ops they are always “toed-out”, at roughly 45 degrees.  The nosewheel (fore & aft in this photo) can be castered through 90 degrees by the pilot; this allows the aircraft to be turned on deck using the tail rotor, while still held down by the harpoon (& if necessary negative pitch).  
 

It’s all about flexibility and safety; the aircraft can safely operate in conditions that would be out of limits for most small ship helicopters and the ship doesn’t necessarily have to turn to launch (because the aircraft can turn itself into the relative wind), which is a big deal if, for instance, there are submarines about.

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Facinating explanation Crisp, thank you! I assume the Harpoon has some sort of "grab" device, which can "un Grab" cleanly without fouling the grating on deck?

 

Terry

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Yes; the index finger button on the lever (collective) closes the “grab”, and there’s another button under your middle finger that opens it.  If you forget, and try to take off without disengaging the harpoon, there’s a waisted bolt that holds it in place, so eventually it would fail… leaving the grab bit attached to the deck and the pilot owing the maintainers a LOT of beer…

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That explanation and video were fantastic. Thanks to both for those.

The facility I work at is run by Abu Dhabi Aviation Training Company which is a helo training and operating company but I still think these guys are nuts!

 

Ian

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I have just heard from Crisp that he has to be unavoidably unavailable for a couple of weeks.

 

He, like Zorro, will return, refreshed.

 

Now please excuse me, I have to go back a couple of pages to play catch up on Lynx operations.

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