Type 14 Frigate

[junglierating]

Hi , 

Making a 1/700 type 14 frigate ....PALISER,KEPPEL,BLACKWOOD etc....and having trouble making the Omni antenna on the foremast.It looks like a diamond shaped frame...tried plastic rod and thin(ish)metal rod all with little success the plastic rod one was ok but overscale.

Any ideas to achieve something approximating said item ?

Edited Thursday at 02:18 PM by junglierating
Spellin"

[Stephen Allen]

If you mean the FH4 HF/DF aerial at the masthead, sometimes called a ‘birdcage’, there is one on the White Ensign Models post-war general RN etched fret in 1/700. If you don’t want to buy, then have you tried the straightened copper wire technique used by a lot of ship miniaturists to create railings/ladders/aerials etc in small scales? Basically you make up a frame over which the wires are stretched, glue the wires at their intersections using a clear varnish, paint, cut the parts off the frame, then do any final assembly. Its fiddly, but it works when you don’t have or don’t want to use photo-etch. I have also done similar using stretched sprue but its harder to keep runs of sprue from bending/warping. There are some further explanations of the technique in John Bowen’s old book on Warship models, and in the Model Shipwright 2011 Annual. There is a very good perspective drawing of the aerial in D K Brown’s Atlantic Escorts. The same aerial style was used from mid ww2 until well into the modern era.
 

FH4 aerials are sent to try us. There is a 45 degree twist in alignment between the frame at the bottom of the aerial and the mid-section frame.

 

cheers and good luck

 

Steve

[junglierating]

Thanks Stephen with a P ....I guess I will have to take my time ...I figure I can "modulise" it by bending copper wire or maybe stainless steel locking wire then sticking it altogether thats the difficult bit.

I will let you know how I get on