Westland Wessex. Bits, Various, for the use of. Transmission Deck & Cockpit set now added for 2024

[coneheadff]

Fantastic, Alan! Absolutely fantastic!!

[hendie]

Greetings all, and a Happy New Year to you all.  Lets hope this new one is better than the last one - it decided to sucker punch me in December and I'm still reeling from the effects. However I did manage to make some advances in the 3D world regarding the Wessex transmission area. 

 

Following the previous test prints, a number of tweaks and minor changes were made and the parts are now finished.   Apologies in advance for the distinctly poor quality photos.  I even gave these a quick shot of primer to try and help the camera, but to no avail. It seems the camera just doesn't like that blue background.

However, we now have a complete set of transmission housing parts in 1:48 scale.

 

WSX48 Set C Transmission Area

From the left we have

• Reservoir (stbd)
• Main rotor head
• Main rotor gearbox
• Oil filter (stbd)
• MRGB torque link
• Winch hatch stop
• Reservoir (fwd bulkhead)
• Cooling fan
• Cooling fan pulley
• U Frame
• Rotor brake, and at front of the photo we have the
• Crossbeam 

 

 

I decided to model the swash plate as part of the main rotor head. This allowed me to add the pitch change rods, which means the end user doesn't need to mess around trying to cut and glue tiny lengths of rod to impossibly small gluing surfaces.

It also means the entire head rotates as one.  All the user has to add is a 1.5mm diameter rod to join the parts, and it also means the head can easily be disassembled should anyone want to transport the model anytime.

 

 

The kit rotor blades need to be trimmed (easy job) and drilled, then a 1mm diameter brass rod or similar can be used to assemble the kit blades to the rotor head.

 

Here's a better overall shot with the blue background removed. Add a fan belt and some plumbing in there and it should look extremely busy.  The end user will also need to add the two support stays that extend from the rear of the gearbox, back past the cooling fan. Two pieces of 1.5mm rod should suffice for that job.  (brass rod can be seen just poking out the bottom of the gearbox in this pic - a little plug or a blanking card will prevent that)

 

 

The position of the inverted U Frame is a bit of a wildcard. Something wacky is going on with the Italeri transmission area, and I think they have the region immediately behind the mesh and forward of the beetleback too short. I've shown the frame here slightly behind the front face of the fan. In reality the frame should be further forward - around that pencil mark on the floor, but when I do that, the arrangement doesn't match up with photos of the 1:1.

 

Tests have also been made with a 1:72 scale rotor head to see how it handles the rotor blades and so far, it appears there are no issues.  I'm not sure there would be much demand for a 1:72 Set C as Italeri do not include a transmission deck floor, but I have had several enquiries regarding supplying just the rotor head and MRGB for 1:72 so that may be an option. All feedback on this and any other matter gratefully received.

 

 

I want to do a quick double check before saying these are fit for public consumption, but all things going well, the 1:48 Set C should be ready to order by the end of the week.

 

 

[hendie]

Someone, somewhere, sometime, mentioned seats. I can't remember who it was (sorry) but the comment was around the utterly horrible rendition of the seats supplied by italeri.

Well, you know what happened next don't you?  Yup, I looked at them again.

That made me do this...

 

 

For this design, I've eliminated the horrible kit pi s used to locate the seats, and gone for a center pin instead. This means the user will have to drill a new 1.5mm hole on the centerline between the two existing holes in the bulkhead. Simple job.

 

It's still not great is it?  The problem is that there is limited room for improvement over the kit offering due to the overall cockpit design.  Italeri have made the center console too wide - and that reduces the width available for the seats.

 

 

If the seats could be even a millimeter wider they would look a whole lot better, however, that means I would need to design  new center console for the rear bulkhead, and since that mate's up to the one on the floor, we'd need a new console there too. Those in themselves aren't difficult, but the end user would need to remove all the existing detail and try to not damage the "quilting" on the bulkhead.  No! I'm not going to design a new bulkhead with quilting .  That's a bridge or rather, bulkhead too far.

 

Any thoughts from the hive on that? As designed, these are a drop in replacement for the kit parts. I can easily widen them, but that means a lot more fitting for anyone trying to fit them

 

 

 

[perdu]

Blimey Alan, after making mind boggling transdeck stuff now we have seats that look as if a tiny bloke could use them.

Wonderful.

 

Quite understand why you are not dashing ahead with transdecks, cockpit floors and thinner centre consoles, the 1/48 and 1/72 Wessex seems to be entirely out of favour from Italeri.

 

Boo

[Bozothenutter]

On 1/2/2024 at 8:38 PM, hendie said:

Someone, somewhere, sometime, mentioned seats. I can't remember who it was (sorry) but the comment was around the utterly horrible rendition of the seats supplied by italeri.

Well, you know what happened next don't you?  Yup, I looked at them again.

That made me do this...

 

 

For this design, I've eliminated the horrible kit pi s used to locate the seats, and gone for a center pin instead. This means the user will have to drill a new 1.5mm hole on the centerline between the two existing holes in the bulkhead. Simple job.

 

It's still not great is it?  The problem is that there is limited room for improvement over the kit offering due to the overall cockpit design.  Italeri have made the center console too wide - and that reduces the width available for the seats.

 

 

If the seats could be even a millimeter wider they would look a whole lot better, however, that means I would need to design  new center console for the rear bulkhead, and since that mate's up to the one on the floor, we'd need a new console there too. Those in themselves aren't difficult, but the end user would need to remove all the existing detail and try to not damage the "quilting" on the bulkhead.  No! I'm not going to design a new bulkhead with quilting .  That's a bridge or rather, bulkhead too far.

 

Any thoughts from the hive on that? As designed, these are a drop in replacement for the kit parts. I can easily widen them, but that means a lot more fitting for anyone trying to fit them

 

 

 

Just get cracking mate!

People are waiting for this stuff don't you know!?!

Did you mention vacform windows? 😈

[CJP]

Now that I'm holding your sets A & B in my hands I think these seats would be great as drop in replacements - did you get enough feedback to go ahead?

Chris

[hendie]

I did Chris. The 1/72 sets turned out fine for that kit but the 1/48 are a tight fit in the bigger version. I'll try and post some shots later.  I might need to print some more 1/48 as I think I've discarded the test prints now

I'm not sure the kit collective lever will fit with the 1/48 seats as is, but if I make them any narrower, they look far too skinny. 

[CJP]

21 hours ago, hendie said:

I did Chris. The 1/72 sets turned out fine for that kit but the 1/48 are a tight fit in the bigger version. I'll try and post some shots later.  I might need to print some more 1/48 as I think I've discarded the test prints now

I'm not sure the kit collective lever will fit with the 1/48 seats as is, but if I make them any narrower, they look far too skinny. 

Ok thanks Alan I'll wait for your update.

Chris

 

[HartDeco]

Hi all.

 

I finally did a bit more work on the 1/48 Wessesx with Hendie's detail sets 1 and 2. 

The nose was, so far, done and glue onto the fuselage. Inside is the new bulckhead but that;s a bit difficult to see.

Not many resin parts added now, just the undercarriage strengthening plates and beetleback. More parts to follow.

 

René

 

[hendie]

On 2/14/2024 at 1:38 PM, HartDeco said:

More parts to follow.

 

That engine bay looks great René, even without the gnomes sticking out. I'm sure you'll do a fantastic job with the rest.

 

 

On 2/14/2024 at 5:07 AM, CJP said:

Ok thanks Alan I'll wait for your update.

 

I thought I would update here rather than junk up your main thread Chris. 

A new bunch of seats have been printed and I'll post photos later. That's the good news.

The bad news, and there's no easy way to say this, but I don't think the postage rates will change. I think taping the seats between two sheets of cardboard would protect them in a bubble mailer, but I was checking the USPS website this morning and it appears that a padded envelope is still considered a "package", therefore subject to the same rates as a box.  

I can try uploading the model to Shapeways to see if they can print it (though I think they will reject at least one feature), but their minimum pricing has been escalating at a horrendous rate recently. I'll report back on that once I try it.

 

 

 

 

[hendie]

It's a no-go with Shapeways I'm afraid.

I just uploaded the model, selected their finest detail material and got the following results:  They're informing me that the areas shown in red will not print successfully due to not meeting their minimum wall thickness requirements.

 

 

Which we all know is absolute tripe, but when dealing with the dunderheids at Shapeways you are really fighting a losing battle.

I could beef those sections up for the Shapeways model, but then it's going to look as much a caricature of the real seat as the Italeri part does, thereby defeating the purpose of this model.

 

[bootneck]

Personally, I would prefer staying with you for the parts; even though postage is high.  I just have to save up a bit longer.

Mike

[coneheadff]

I agree with Mike. I would prefer staying with you.

 

Alex

[hendie]

That's extremely heartening to hear guys. Thank you.   I still feel bad about the high cost of the postage but there's not a lot I can do about it... nor the postmasters.  The last time I went to the post office I had two packages to send.  By the time I got to the head of the queue there was another 8 people behind me. I was asked to stand aside while they dealt with everyone else and they finally got to me when they closed the post office at 1pm.  I was in there for over an hour and a half.

 

In other matters, resin arose from the goo and we got a result.

Italeri and Hendiebits side by side. See if you can guess who made which one.

 

 

Another side by side showing detail in a better light.  The lightening holes in the frame are partially obscured due to the print orientation and the fact that resin lies in the bottom of the holes and gets cured but a dark wash should hide that.  I did try drilling out those holes but cracked two seats, so decided to leave well alone.

 

 

I went ahead and (roughly) painted one up to get an idea of what the finished article would look like.  I've seen seat backs in blue vinyl,  a tan colored cloth, and also in a dark green cloth.  I've gone for the green here.

 

 

I mentioned earlier about the seat width and how making it any narrower would make it look silly.  Here is a hendiebits seat in place along with the collective lever fitted.

Note:  The hendiebits seat is located by a single peg on the rear, so a new hole requires to be drilled in the bulkhead - or you can just cut the peg off and glue it using the standoffs.  In this shot I also redrilled the locating hole for the collective lever as Italeri have it too high (and lowering it gives more room for the seat).  It's undoubtedly a tight fit, but it can be done.

 

 

Thinning out the fuselage sidewalls a tad would go a long way to getting it all to play nicely together, but it does fit.

 

 

But it bugged me.  It kept bugging me.   I checked numerous photos and as far as I can ascertain, the seat is in the right position relative to the window and everything else, but it still doesn't look quite right.  I checked how much of the seat frame is visible from outside the aircraft, and the relation of the top of the window to the top of the seat etc.  It's an easy cop out to say something appears to be out with the italeri cockpit dimensions, but that's what I'm going to have to go with here.   I think the center console and the bulkhead panel are just a fraction too wide.

 

So I went back to the drawing board. 

The seat you see in the photos above is the larger one shown here below.  I reworked the seat making it 0.4mm narrower, and 0.8mm shorter, and placed them side by side for your viewing pleasure. 

Looking at these screenshots, the width to height ratio looks all wrong compared to the 1:1,  but I can't deviate much from this or it's going to look even worse when fitted to the kit.

I'll try printing off this version later this weekend if I get a chance, and then we'll see how it looks.

 

 

 

 

More experimentation to come.

 

 

 

[bootneck]

11 minutes ago, hendie said:

...........I still feel bad about the high cost of the postage but there's not a lot I can do about it...

You should arrange for a UK agent to act on your behalf (not me).  You could email the files to them and they print them for you and send them out.

 

Mike

[hendie]

A nice idea in principle, Mike, but much harder to execute.

The amount of time spent not just in setting up and printing, but in 3 washes, curing, and trimming... followed by packaging etc.  It's not as quick and easy as it first seems - as I learned.  I spent almost every evening and weekends over many weeks in order to fulfill the orders I received.  By the time you add the costs of packaging etc into the mix, there's really not a whole lot of profit in this endeavor.   

Then there would be a profit split - obviously the someone has to get paid, and I honestly doubt anyone would sign up for the amount of effort required. 

[CJP]

On 2/18/2024 at 5:59 AM, hendie said:

That's extremely heartening to hear guys. Thank you.   I still feel bad about the high cost of the postage but there's not a lot I can do about it... nor the postmasters.  The last time I went to the post office I had two packages to send.  By the time I got to the head of the queue there was another 8 people behind me. I was asked to stand aside while they dealt with everyone else and they finally got to me when they closed the post office at 1pm.  I was in there for over an hour and a half.

 

In other matters, resin arose from the goo and we got a result.

Italeri and Hendiebits side by side. See if you can guess who made which one.

 

 

Another side by side showing detail in a better light.  The lightening holes in the frame are partially obscured due to the print orientation and the fact that resin lies in the bottom of the holes and gets cured but a dark wash should hide that.  I did try drilling out those holes but cracked two seats, so decided to leave well alone.

 

 

I went ahead and (roughly) painted one up to get an idea of what the finished article would look like.  I've seen seat backs in blue vinyl,  a tan colored cloth, and also in a dark green cloth.  I've gone for the green here.

 

 

I mentioned earlier about the seat width and how making it any narrower would make it look silly.  Here is a hendiebits seat in place along with the collective lever fitted.

Note:  The hendiebits seat is located by a single peg on the rear, so a new hole requires to be drilled in the bulkhead - or you can just cut the peg off and glue it using the standoffs.  In this shot I also redrilled the locating hole for the collective lever as Italeri have it too high (and lowering it gives more room for the seat).  It's undoubtedly a tight fit, but it can be done.

 

 

Thinning out the fuselage sidewalls a tad would go a long way to getting it all to play nicely together, but it does fit.

 

 

But it bugged me.  It kept bugging me.   I checked numerous photos and as far as I can ascertain, the seat is in the right position relative to the window and everything else, but it still doesn't look quite right.  I checked how much of the seat frame is visible from outside the aircraft, and the relation of the top of the window to the top of the seat etc.  It's an easy cop out to say something appears to be out with the italeri cockpit dimensions, but that's what I'm going to have to go with here.   I think the center console and the bulkhead panel are just a fraction too wide.

 

So I went back to the drawing board. 

The seat you see in the photos above is the larger one shown here below.  I reworked the seat making it 0.4mm narrower, and 0.8mm shorter, and placed them side by side for your viewing pleasure. 

Looking at these screenshots, the width to height ratio looks all wrong compared to the 1:1,  but I can't deviate much from this or it's going to look even worse when fitted to the kit.

I'll try printing off this version later this weekend if I get a chance, and then we'll see how it looks.

 

 

 

 

More experimentation to come.

 

 

 

Hi Alan - just caught up with this update, we are away visiting one of our daughters so no work on my Wessex for a week or two - I'm quite happy to go along with your judgement & compromise to get the best look on the seats. The photo of the seat with cyclic next to it looks pretty good to me but I must admit I haven't had a good study of the cabin area & seats on the real thing yet. I recently got hold of the Haynes Wessex workshop manual to supplement my 4plus book.

I was quite happy with the postage on the sets I recently got from you.

HartDeco's Wessex is looking great.

Chris

 

Edited February 20 by CJP
text

[HartDeco]

Hi all.

 

A bit more parts added and all is painted now.

The engine bay, exhaust, hoist and fuel filler caps are all from Alan's sets.

The upgrade to this kit is quite obvious.

 

René.

 

 

[hendie]

Wow. That is looking rather special.  I love it.

 

@HartDeco, René, I hope you don't mind... there's one last thing I would add to this.  Outboard of the two gnomes, there are two struts (painted green in lower left corner of this picture). Those would be an easy add-on, and would help complete the picture.  There's also a steel pipe running from the floor up to the outlet at the top of the oil cooler, but this is a more difficult piece to add.

 

 

On the other hand - you've done such a fantastic job there, I may be tempted to leave as is, so there's no chance of damaging the work already done.

 

Alan

 

[HartDeco]

3 hours ago, hendie said:

Wow. That is looking rather special.  I love it.

 

@HartDeco, René, I hope you don't mind... there's one last thing I would add to this.  Outboard of the two gnomes, there are two struts (painted green in lower left corner of this picture). Those would be an easy add-on, and would help complete the picture.  There's also a steel pipe running from the floor up to the outlet at the top of the oil cooler, but this is a more difficult piece to add.

 

 

On the other hand - you've done such a fantastic job there, I may be tempted to leave as is, so there's no chance of damaging the work already done.

 

Alan

 

Thanks Alan.

 

It was always the plan to add those struts. The engines and hatches aren't glued yet, so no risk of any damage. 

 

René

[HartDeco]

Hi all.

 

A bit more done on the Wessex build. The struts in the engine bay are done too.

The kit rotor head is a bit crude but with its folded blades, it won't be too obvious. I hope.

It''s now a matter of adding several small bits and pieces.

 

René

[hendie]

It's looking better with every update.  I'm still taken aback by how impressive that engine bay looks

[Daedalus72]

Wow!!!, I can’t believe how good that Wessex looks. It is absolutely magnificent.

 

[CJP]

Hi -this is my MRGB from @hendies Transmission Bay set that I am installing in my RAN Wessex HAS31B - added what looks like a filter on the port side & hoses/pipes from lead wire.

 

Chris

Edited March 1 by CJP
photo

[hendie]

it's great seeing you guys use these things in anger and getting such fantastic results.