Westland Wasp HAS 1: 'Ambuscade Flight: XT778'

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Not that we needed it, but these designs offer us daily evidence that they were designed by men with Ninja-level expertise with the pencil, slide-rule and architects’ curve.  None of your “done one ELRC; I’ll just cut and paste for the other one” nonsense for these chaps.  No sir.

[giemme]

Shaping up really nicely, Tony - masterful use of the technology in designing this!  

 

Ciao 

[hendie]

10 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Not that we needed it, but these designs offer us daily evidence that they were designed by men with Ninja-level expertise with the pencil, slide-rule and architects’ curve.  None of your “done one ELRC; I’ll just cut and paste for the other one” nonsense for these chaps.  No sir.

And then there's the skills and craftsmanship of those who took those 2 dimensional drawings and manufactured all the necessary jigs and fixtures to actually build the aircraft

 

 

[mark.au]

There are eighteen images of art in that last post; Marcel Duchamp definition.

[TheBaron]

A bit more progress tonight but the vellum parchments first....

On 25/09/2022 at 11:21, perdu said:

 

I am actually learning quite a bit on the coat-tails of you experten, praise be

We're both learning Bill - the Wasp teaching me what it needs..... 😁

On 25/09/2022 at 12:17, Pete in Lincs said:

Epic Sunday update,

W-ell...it fills that dead time before Songs of Praise comes on Pete. Either that or the Show Jumping on BBC2. (Christ but Sunday TV used to be dire as a teenager 😆).

On 25/09/2022 at 13:33, Brandy said:

I was wondering why the stiffeners flared out, then you answered my question with the next sentence

There's much about this helicopter that has me wondering Ian - several features I've not seen described anywhere!

On 25/09/2022 at 13:38, hendie said:

I'm not sure I've ever had the need to try and tell the sex of a hinge. This can be a funny old forum and sometimes you learn things you never even knew could/should be learned.

😁 

Sex Hinge sounds like it could have been one of those bands you only ever saw once on The Tube on C4 of a Friday night back in the 80s and never heard of again...

 

On 25/09/2022 at 13:38, hendie said:

In that scale I hope you can tell your Avdels from your Choberts

Let me see if I've got this right Alan: you take Advels for indegestion whereas Choberts is Newcastle slang for piles?

On 25/09/2022 at 14:46, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Not that we needed it, but these designs offer us daily evidence that they were designed by men with Ninja-level expertise with the pencil, slide-rule and architects’ curve.  None of your “done one ELRC; I’ll just cut and paste for the other one” nonsense for these chaps.  No sir.

 To this I would simply add 'imagination' Crisp: you can understand all the physics and engineering constraints in the world but to be able to actually visualize the solution to the problems they pose is a profound and powerful gift.

 

I think I've mentioned Sennett's book on the forum somewhere previously but it opened my eyes to lots of places which I hadn't paid attention to the role of creativity in:

Actually all of his books are revelations in one form or another...

On 25/09/2022 at 14:48, giemme said:

Shaping up really nicely, Tony - masterful use of the technology in designing this!

As @Ex-FAAWAFU's already mentioned G, I'm essentially a copyist of the original artwork! 😄

 

On 25/09/2022 at 14:58, hendie said:

And then there's the skills and craftsmanship of those who took those 2 dimensional drawings and manufactured all the necessary jigs and fixtures to actually build the aircraft

And the women who cooked for them and did their washing and history ignores....

On 25/09/2022 at 22:47, mark.au said:

There are eighteen images of art in that last post; Marcel Duchamp definition.

 

'Give a man a fish and he'll eat for the day attach it to the underside of a helicopter'

Although still not settled upon the exact helicopter/ship combination I'm going to build, a decision has been taken that the Wasp here will be presented in its 'classic' MATCH configuration, i.e.' loaded out with torpedoes. Whilst the AS12/APX-BEZU combination was an alluring one, given the length of time the Vixen took I simply don't want to spend a load of extra time building two versions of the same aircraft again. There's too many other subjects I want to try after this one, plus I kind of prefer torpedoes to missiles - which is why I was originally asked to leave the Vegan Society.

 

That said, on to show some of the progress in this direction.

 

I added the fairings ('flarings') to the rear half of the tail fold junction, along with their respective ELRC runs:

Followed by a modified version of the original gearbox/tailplane mount:

One of the big differences I have to keep reminding myself is that with all the extra detail afforded/required by working at this scale, assemblies that you would ahve printed as a single unit at 1/72 actually require you to split them up at 1/24 in order to avoid minimize having printing supports all over the place - not infrequently at impossible angles!

 

The tail rotor gearbox/transmission is prime example of these differing requirements/opportunities - due to its height above ground, none of my references fully encompassed the true horror of its shape until serendipitously somebody put one up for sale on Ebay quite recently - the close-up nature of which quite nicely filled in the blanks.

 

Still retaining some nasty 1/72 habits I originally tried doing the whole thing as a single set of drawings - which that set of asymmetric compound surfaces soon gave the lie to and forced me to build the thing in parts pretty much as the real gearbox is constructed. Interesting learning exercise in that building large scale lets you mimic the individuality of  parts on the actual aircraft more closely than you can at smaller scale. But then those of you who routinely build at the bigger scale already know this whilst I'm just learning! 🤪

 

The result of this rapid education was that I started with gearbox itself, ina ll it's irregularity and protruberances:

Bolted onto the port side of that is the mouting for the rotor drive shaft:

Whilst to stbd is the cover of the chain-drive for the tail rotor pitch control:

Photographs with that cover off show the chain-drive itself  looking remarkably like the chain and sprocket of a bicycle so sometimes basic mechanics are the most reliable I guess!

 

If I turn the transparency down on the tail-cone you can see why I added a residual 'stump' for the driveshaft inside of there - seen from an acute angle from above you might just see down inside to note its absence:

Sticking out underneath  is also the navigation light (lens to be added later from transparency):

 Further down the stbd side the access and reinforcing panels for the chain-drive were also added in:

As were the panels lower down near the 'elbow' where the tail kicks upwards from the boom:

I've since learned that this 'elbow' is in fact called a kink-frame and very much like that term.

 

Underneath those hinge fairings the securing plates and bolts were added, along with the lower ELRC:

Bolts and plates added as well to the top hinges; those two spigot-like bits sticking out of the top fairing just forward of the kink frame are something to do with the tail rotor angle gear box inside of there - lubricant access perhaps?

Also in the above shot - I don't know if you can see that part of the port side curvature of the fold junction between upper and lower hinges has been trimmed in a little to shave some of the diameter off the airframe off at that point. It's a subtle feature I'm presuming to allow it to clear the hinge fixtures on that side when being swung round to lock into place. I thought I was seeing things when I first noticed that in a photo but several different angles confirm the presence of this detail.

 

Also trimmed out is part of the top fairing, for identical reasons:

The ensemble so far (still needing to add the dog-leg and tail light tight at the end of the gearbox assembly):

As there's a few design decisions specific to this scale (in terms of printability) built into those structures, I think I'll risk  a print at the weekend to test their definition.

 

Other than that I've been worshipping the clouds as gods of late:

Bless you all,

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[heloman1]

Exquisite work on the tail pylon...

 

Colin

[giemme]

I can clearly see the danger of 1/24 scale, Tony..... Infinite detailing   

 

9 hours ago, TheBaron said:

I think I'll risk  a print at the weekend to test their definition.

Very much looking forward to that

 

Ciao

[Brandy]

One of the reasons I have had Airfix's 1:24 Stuka in a box since 1978 - I couldn't find enough detail references!

Lovely work as usual!

 

Ian

[Pete in Lincs]

Loads of tech and detail. Fab stuff. Meat and gravy to ex Techies. 

21 hours ago, TheBaron said:

tail rotor angle gear box inside of there

Intermediate gearbox was the term we used. But that'll do instead. BTW, who on earth just happens to have a tail rotor gearbox in the shed?

As for Sunday TV, There was usually some B & W film in the afternoon and errr, that's about it really. There was always radio Luxembourg though. FAB 208!

Oh yes, Avdels helped to reduce earwax.

21 hours ago, TheBaron said:

lubricant access perhaps?

There should be some markings painted on the skin to make it clear. OX-27 or something like that.

[TheBaron]

I was this days old before finding out that there is such a thing as a Westland Wisp and why weren't UNIT ever given access to it?

Surely that's Sgt. Benton on the left?

 

On 30/09/2022 at 07:17, heloman1 said:

Exquisite work on the tail pylon...

My thanks Colin: some physical evidence for you below! 😁

On 30/09/2022 at 07:40, giemme said:

I can clearly see the danger of 1/24 scale, Tony..... Infinite detailing

You're not wrong Giorgio! 😄 

 

I think the tipping point will be working out exactly how much information a single individual can juggle in their head and still retain sight of the overall project. I've mentally broken the aircraft down into a series of discrete regions - partly due to my own visual memory capacity, and partly due to the amount of RAM on my system.

 

On 30/09/2022 at 08:11, Brandy said:

One of the reasons I have had Airfix's 1:24 Stuka in a box since 1978 - I couldn't find enough detail references!

You're just waiting for me to finish my 1/24 Ventnor radar station so that you can pounce aren't you Ian!

 

BTW, don't know if you've seen the cockpit refs here:

http://www.muzeumlotnictwa.pl/index.php/digitalizacja/katalog/2283

and engine refs here:

http://www.muzeumlotnictwa.pl/index.php/digitalizacja/katalog/867

On 30/09/2022 at 19:27, Pete in Lincs said:

Intermediate gearbox was the term we used. But that'll do instead.

I'm only going by authoritative sources like Eagle comic called it Pete!

Actually Flight magazine called it that as well so did the terminology evolve over time?

On 30/09/2022 at 19:27, Pete in Lincs said:

BTW, who on earth just happens to have a tail rotor gearbox in the shed?

Judging by the wood stuck on one end of it, it appears they had it stuffed and mounted liked the proverbial...

On 30/09/2022 at 19:27, Pete in Lincs said:

There should be some markings painted on the skin to make it clear. OX-27 or something like that.

Would you believe the only shot I have showing markings around that feature are so badly weathered! I though for a  moment the graphic in this thread was showing the lettering but just says 'oil/symbol', so I'll have to clarify that further as the ref I have seems 2-3 lines long:

Actually, that's very useful for naming features so I've just saved it for future referral to pretend that I know what I'm banging on about....

 

This test went into the resin then overnight on Saturday - about 4.5 hrs print time in total:

And this was waiting in the morning:

These have all just been whipped off the printing supports and photographed without any tidying up.

Gearbox:

& chain drive:

I detest the way that in its raw state, resin photographs like butter - the translucency taking all the sharpness off of things. Oblique lighting can help reclaim it a little in absence of paint, so a few shots of the assembly tacked together for a portrait session:

This was all only printed at a 50 μm layer height for speed so I'm pretty pleased at how the panels have retained their  sublte 'lift' from the main surface:

The holes in those hinges are 0.4mm ⌀ for reference:

The smallest feature I had on here to see how well it would print at 50 μm is that girdle of bolts around the underside of the gearbox:

Recently realized my new phone has a quite decent macro function so here's an unforgiving close-up of bolt definition. Those bolts are 0.2mm ⌀:

Stbd view:

That was a good exercise in building confidence in your designs - it lets me know that a 50 μm will do nicely for large fuselage areas in terms of minimizing print times whilst retaining the subtleties of surface features. Likewise I now know I can pull off a lot more detail off for smaller areas like gearbox &etc. by printing separately at 30 μm or lower.

 

Anotehr factor that was useful here was in actually focussing my attention on how to break things down not just in terms of different layer heights, but additionally to think about mitigating the need to have printing supports in awkward places, or which interfere with detailing. With all that's going on around the tail end of wingfold junction:

(Thanks Graham)

 - I want to support the tail from the junction end for printing purposes by don't want lots of supports wrecking the details of that inner face. The obvious solution was to split the tailcine at the kink frame so that the forward part of it can be supported from the rear, leaving the recessed front free for detailing purposes:

With relevant cutouts added for later assembly, I can then slip the internal detail features in from their respective ends:

This rear face doesn't of course exist on the actual aircraft but is needed here to have something to have the drive shaft mounted on:

I didn't bother with any shots of detailing the rear side of the tail fold  (not do I know what some of those bits in the centre do/are for), but here you go:

Printed separately, that plate can be fitted into the front of the tail cone like so:

Just realized the driveshaft still has to be added to that. Next job. 😁

 

Ooops. nearly forgot - that tail light went on:

Some more deceptively simply shapes on that dogleg it sits on!

 

Thanks for looking in and wishing you all a good week.

Tony

 

Ps. Thorp Modelmaking Archive - addictive! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Brandy]

Those prints have come out beautifully. Everyone else seems to be moaning about the striations that are left from 3d printing, but those don't appear to have any. Is that just down to thin layer height and getting the anti-aliasing correct?

 

Ian

[Terry1954]

As Ian suggests, those printed parts look superb.

 

Terry

[TheBaron]

49 minutes ago, Brandy said:

Those prints have come out beautifully. Everyone else seems to be moaning about the striations that are left from 3d printing, but those don't appear to have any. Is that just down to thin layer height and getting the anti-aliasing correct?

Ian: now that I've spent more time playing around with the differences between Lychee and Chitubox, aside from orientation/layer height/exposure times, I'm finding more quality can be pulled out from even quite large layer heights by altering anti-aliasing settings in response to the kind of shape being printed.

 

Curving/cylindrical forms respond quite differently to anti-aliasing than geometric/angular for example, and within each of these categories you have to ask curved how much?/angular how much? (Or indeed just flat/regular)

 

For reference, the prints here were at .05mm layer heights, so don't represent anything like the smallest intervals possible. Layer height is clearly important but gets overly fetishised in my book, in itself it doesn't necessarily lead to better prints, being only one of several overlapping factors that contribute to a good reproduction.

 

That's possibly the most long-winded way of saying that I've no magic numbers to pass on - it's just down to experimenting with resin printing as a 'process' in the truest sense of the word.  Each kind of shape tilts this blend of factors  in a particular direction.

[giemme]

Amazing test prints, Tony!    

 

Ciao

[Pete in Lincs]

As above, great looking test prints. Impressive stuff, I love those tiny boltheads. And, who am I to argue with the Eagle. Font of all knowledge. Cutaway central.

Ah, The old wall mounted gearbox. The ultimate manshed bit of kit. Unless you count the 20mm Mauser I have swivel mounted above the garage.

 

7 hours ago, TheBaron said:

(not do I know what some of those bits in the centre do/are for)

Best guess. On the left, the tail cone. In the middle of that 'sandwich', the cylindrical bit looks like a shock mount. A sprung unit to isolate electrical items from vibration.

Above that are terminals for wiring. The two bolts look to be adjustable and obviously contact the two items in the other sandwich when the tail is closed up.

So, do the two bolts lead to microswitches to turn off a warning light in the cockpit so that the Jockey knows the tail is locked up.

I'm fairly sure there was a similar system on the Wessex. Why two microswitches? Maybe a failsafe? You NEED to be sure over the Oggin.

Carry on printing and damn the bolthead counters.

EDIT I was wrong! See below

[bigbadbadge]

Oh boy what a catch up Tony, spectacular CAD drawings and some exquisite test prints too.  Wonderful stuff .  So looking forward to seeing this build up.

Great work as ever Tony.

Chris

[Anthony in NZ]

Oh my word, that’s ridiculously beautiful!  Mad and clever all at the same time!!

 

I’m genuinely lost for words…which is very unlike me. I was that kid in high school that after day 1 was made to sit up the front of the class for being quickly identified as disruptive, lol I thought I was just funny!!

 

Anyway, thanks for such a brilliant update sir

 

cheers Anthony 

[perdu]

On the two round sections the central bar features are the control system.

 

Each double bar arrangement is a bell crank which operates the chain drive after the fold by transferring the movement of the yaw pedals.

 

Probably.

 

The pads on each end buffering the movement.

 

Probably.

 

[perdu]

Lovely first prints Tony

[Pete in Lincs]

How wrong can you be? Doh! Naughty step tonight then. I just found out that they are the tail rotor control links (Tappets and Buffers apparently).

Perdu got it right.

I found this cutaway on line and enlarged it.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QbbI518hiqg/VQejr4FDxOI/AAAAAAABgo4/8D2PNBq9Jcg/s1600/B9GXs6aCUAAgmlv.jpg

 

 

[perdu]

If you only knew how deeply I had to go into it when I made a folded up Wopse for my little Beermat item Pete.

 

 

A course mine ain't as nice as Tony's is going to be.

[Pete in Lincs]

I'd forgotten about that build. I can't be right all the time 😆 Ah well, a night on the naughty step wasn't so bad. Except for CC's snoring,

[perdu]

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Ah well, a night on the naughty step wasn't so bad. Except for CC's snoring,

A night?

 

So you didn't get the points deduction and loss of championship status as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Er

 

 

Was it really awful?

[TheBaron]

18 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

As Ian suggests, those printed parts look superb.

Thank you for liking my parts Terry. 😁

17 hours ago, giemme said:

Amazing test prints, Tony!

Thanks G - it's good to do a test before you go to far down the line with further designs, just to check that the things you hope will reproduce actually do as you expect!

14 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

As above, great looking test prints. Impressive stuff, I love those tiny boltheads.

Thanks Pete: our chat about that gearbox made me go back for a look through the PNs for the Wasp and sure enough it mentions that those two bolt like things sticking out the sides of the top fairing at that position are the oil filler and drain channels respectively. The lubricant table at the rear of the Notes also mentions OX-38 - does that sound familiar to you?

14 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

So looking forward to seeing this build up.

It's certainly going a bit quicker than the Vixen Chris. 😁 Doubtless we'll slow down enormously once it gets to the Nimbus!

13 hours ago, Anthony in NZ said:

Anyway, thanks for such a brilliant update sir

Always welcome Anthony.

12 hours ago, perdu said:

On the two round sections the central bar features are the control system.

 

Each double bar arrangement is a bell crank which operates the chain drive after the fold by transferring the movement of the yaw pedals.

 

12 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I just found out that they are the tail rotor control links (Tappets and Buffers apparently).

Perdu got it right.

I found this cutaway on line and enlarged it.

Hanging around with you guys I'm always going to be learning something new. Thanks Bill & Pete both for putting me right!

It'll also teach me to pay more attention to the labelled cutaway from the Flight article where those functions are indicated. Also went back through the 'Controls' section of the maintenance manual to find a lovely schematic of the control run from pedal to tail which confirms this function unequivocally.

12 hours ago, perdu said:

If you only knew how deeply I had to go into it when I made a folded up Wopse for my little Beermat item

Having held that jewel in my hand so some of its magic must have transferred here to inspire matters Bill. 🪄

2 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

 a night on the

You can put this on in the cab whilst out delivering Pete. 😁

 

[heloman1]

Wow Tony, a great result with the tail pylon print. My gast is well and truly flabbered!

 

Colin