Airfix BHC SR.N4 Hovercraft

[Tribesman72]

Not content with just polluting RFI with my madness, I thought I’d try my hand at a build thread as well. I normally take progress pictures anyway, but this time I’ll try and upload them here. It might also help with my build speed, which is sometimes glacial. Anyway, what am I building, why, how, and other such words that usually start questions.
 

Well, I’m attempting to build the mighty Airfix BHC SR.N4, because I think it’s cool, and the how part is still up for debate. I’ve seen this kit get a bit of heat for being a pain, especially the skirt, and for being a slightly odd hybrid of the Mk1 and Mk3 versions. A Mk3 would be very nice indeed, but I’d need at least one more kit, and this one cost me enough on eBay so a Mk1 ish it’ll have to be! I decided it belongs in the aircraft section, because it does fly, just very low! I’m also led to believe that these threads usually start with some standard pictures, so here we go.

 

1. The Box

 

It is indeed a box! It’s cardboard, it’s rectangular, it shows what’s inside, and of course, it displays the scale. This will be my second 144th adventure, after a Revell Concorde in 2020, so I’ll at least have something to compare it to in scale. Lovely art on the front as always for these kits. I don’t get the nostalgia hit like many do, because this kit was boxed before I started school, but I do really like the fronts of the ‘older’ boxes.

 

2. The Sprues

 

Hastily arranged and checked, but as far as I can tell, everything is here, some parts are off their respective sprue, but none are damaged or warped, which is nice!

 

 

And these bits were in a separate bag, which I’ve emptied out here in a mess for ‘artistic’ purposes

 

3. The transfers/decals/things you soak and attach at the end

 

Schemes of both operators here, including the lovely ‘backwards’ double arrow for BR Seaspeed, and the very nice red and white for HoverLloyd. Not decided which scheme I want yet, might be either, depending on the quality of this sheet. I’m also tempted to do the livery BHC launched the N4 in, with a corporate yellow stripe and logo on, but we shall see.

 

4. The Clear Sprues

 

The top panel, complete with ‘sunroof’ side. Unlike the box art, the model is intended to be built with internal detail on the port side, and the exterior to be left clear to see in. Not sure if I want that look, but if I don’t, I’ll have to do something about the lack of ribbing on that half…

 

 

The other clear sprue, with the cars and windows, moulded integrally to the walls for the side intended to be clear, and separately for the other.

 

5. The Instructions

 

 

So this is how we start, with the dreaded skirt, and upside down too!

 

 

 

Right, well I best make a start this weekend, but if anyone has any tips, tricks, things to avoid, or just wants to laugh at my suffering and incompetence, please shout at me through the internet here. I will be paying the Hovercraft Museum a visit in the very near future, to get as many pictures as I can, and because it looks like a fun trip out, but until then, I’ll see what terror awaits in the first couple of steps.

Thank you for popping in, let’s see how this goes…

Edited March 27 by Tribesman72
Added “Hovercraft” To Title

[Ratch]

You might want to replace the B.R. decals as they're the wrong way around 

Mine was a bit of a mare.

 

 

Edited March 22 by Ratch

[Tribesman72]

1 hour ago, Ratch said:

You might want to replace the B.R. decals as they're the wrong way around 

Mine was a bit of a mare.

Oh so they are, I assumed they were like the SeaLink backwards arrows, but they were supposed to be the ‘normal’ way weren’t they.

 

Thanks so much for sharing your build, I think you’ve done a good job there, if I can get the fit half that good then I’ll be okay. How was the skirt for you, and the interior? The number of seats is scaring me already!

[davecov]

I'm looking forward to seeing another SRN4 built.

 

I built one a few years ago. The skirts needed a lot of fettling but I got there in the end. Each of the skirt sections are made up of two halves which were glued together before fixing to the hull. I made sure that the top of the skirts met the hull topside as they would be visible, even though it meant there were gaps between the skirts underneath. They were filled with plastic card:

 

The seats are not a problem but you might like to add figures like I did when I built mine:

 

Dave

[Ratch]

1 hour ago, Tribesman72 said:

How was the skirt for you, and the interior? The number of seats is scaring me already!

I built it back in 2011 - a lot of plastic has passed through my hands, so memory is quite/very faded 

[Ratch]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bartiesworld.co.uk%2Fhovercraft%2Fsrn4.php&psig=AOvVaw3dsslos08KN8R_lg9MzYyF&ust=1711234875408000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCOCixer8iIUDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAb

This one has the usual BR logo

[Ratch]

[amos brierley]

I was drawn in by the title, I have no idea what it meant,  now I know , ………. 😲 ……..👍   Nice.       😉

[AMB]

I built mine in Hoverlloyd colours, but the tail logo decals disintegrated. If you don't do the Hoverlloyd livery, could I have the tail logo decals please?

 

As mentioned above, fitting the skirt needs some pasticard as there are gaps at the back. Also it was difficult fitting the transparent roof.

 

Not enough cars in the kit, so I added some N-Gauge cars by Oxford Diecast.

Edited March 22 by AMB

[stever219]

The model represents an early SR.N4; the vehicle-deck cabins were soon deleted as, with no view of the outside world, anyone susceptible to motion sickness would make it painfully obvious very quickly.  The wing cabins were extended inboard to afford more seating with some sort of view, but the ride could still be “stimulating”.

 

The depressions that Airfix have moulded either side of the pylons are the lift fan intakes and, as such should be open at the bottom but I suppose the extra cost in tooling the fans and their chambers would have pushed the kit beyond the bounds of affordability.  The fans themselves are 11 feet in diameter and around three feet deep; they operate centrifugally and were balanced to within two ounces diametrically.  Each fan and its associate propellor, the latter 19 feet in diameter, was driven by a 4,500 shp (approx,) Bristol Siddeley Marne Proteus gas turbine.  The engines were mounted in pairs either side of the stern doors, of which more anon.

 

Like nearly all of the conventional cross-channel ferries the vehicle deck was drive-through with loading at the stern, using mobile ramps, and offloading down the built-in bow door-cum-ramp.  On one occasion we’d had an arrival from Calvin and the vehicle deck was chock full.  As was normal practice as soon as the bow door was open the deckies would signal drivers to start engines and then marshall them off (the flight deck access ladder being slap on the centre line and quite close to the not over-wide doorway was prone to being clouted in the break-neck rush to clear Customs and Immigration).  Also normal practice was to open the stern doors to help to clear the vehicle deck of exhaust fumes.

Last on at Calais had been a bloke in a Range Rover with a speedboat on a trailer in tow.  He’d seen the doors open, though ‘I’n not waiting for that lot to get off!” and stuck it in reverse.  Without the ramps in there’s about a four-and-a-half foot drop from the vehicle deck to the ground as he discovered in short order.  The trailer went off the edge, the front end, with overhanging boat bow, pivoted upwards and before he hit the brakes got very firmly wedged against the roof and the stern door frame.  To say that the Hoverspeed people weren’t impressed is a big understatement: it was nearly peak season, all flights were fully booked and suddenly they had a ‘craft going nowhere.  It took about two and a half hours, a crane, quite a lot of bad language and a degree of ingenuity to get boat, trailer and Range Rover off (two return flights lost) before the engineers could get in to assess for damage.  I don’t think that that particular customer was ever welcomed back but ‘d love to see the correspondence with his insurers......

[Alex Gordon]

There might be an easy way round the BR logo snag,if the decal is a single colour with no background then placing it face down will do the job.I did that with the 2 in the serial number on my Mustang E2-S build,it started life as a 5.

 

 

Have fun with this one,she'll look very striking when she's done.

[bentwaters81tfw]

For the reversed decals, just apply them the other way up with some Klear.

[marky sparky]

I am from Ramsgate and I watched this baby 'fly' every day when she was in service.

I even had a trip inside the cockpit as a special reward when I was in the Air Cadets at Manston 2433 Sqdn.

 

It was an impressive sight and rather noisy but it was amazing to watch and is sorely missed now.

[Tribesman72]

15 hours ago, davecov said:

The skirts needed a lot of fettling but I got there in the end.

 

The seats are not a problem but you might like to add figures like I did when I built mine:

Thanks for the tip on lining the skirt up with the hull first and filling the gaps, any idea where I could find some figures? Would N gauge railway passengers look too small?

 

14 hours ago, Ratch said:

I built it back in 2011 - a lot of plastic has passed through my hands, so memory is quite/very faded 

Ah I see, and thanks for the reference image on the double arrow, strange that Airfix packaged the backwards version…

 

14 hours ago, amos brierley said:

I was drawn in by the title, I have no idea what it meant,  now I know , ………. 😲 ……..👍   Nice.       😉

Yes sorry! I should have added ‘Hovercraft’ on the end somewhere, rather than a mix of acronyms.

 

13 hours ago, AMB said:

I built mine in Hoverlloyd colours, but the tail logo decals disintegrated. If you don't do the Hoverlloyd livery, could I have the tail logo decals please?

 

As mentioned above, fitting the skirt needs some pasticard as there are gaps at the back. Also it was difficult fitting the transparent roof.

 

Not enough cars in the kit, so I added some N-Gauge cars by Oxford Diecast.

If I do end up doing either scheme in the box, it’ll be the Seaspeed one, so you’re more than welcome to the HL decals. I’ve heard about the roof fit being a nightmare, so many contact points, which look to be reliant on perfect wall placement from looking at the instructions.

 

13 hours ago, stever219 said:

The model represents an early SR.N4; the vehicle-deck cabins were soon deleted as, with no view of the outside world, anyone susceptible to motion sickness would make it painfully obvious very quickly.  The wing cabins were extended inboard to afford more seating with some sort of view, but the ride could still be “stimulating”.

 

The depressions that Airfix have moulded either side of the pylons are the lift fan intakes and, as such should be open at the bottom but I suppose the extra cost in tooling the fans and their chambers would have pushed the kit beyond the bounds of affordability.

 

The trailer went off the edge, the front end, with overhanging boat bow, pivoted upwards and before he hit the brakes got very firmly wedged against the roof and the stern door frame.  To say that the Hoverspeed people weren’t impressed is a big understatement: it was nearly peak season, all flights were fully booked and suddenly they had a ‘craft going nowhere.  It took about two and a half hours, a crane, quite a lot of bad language and a degree of ingenuity to get boat, trailer and Range Rover off (two return flights lost) before the engineers could get in to assess for damage.  I don’t think that that particular customer was ever welcomed back but ‘d love to see the correspondence with his insurers......

I did wonder if the dips in the roof under the prop masts should have been opened up, but as you say that’s a lot of extra moulding/scratch building to do. Thanks for that Range Rover story too, made me laugh. I can imagine the insurers have dealt with boat/hovercraft incidents before, but not one on land, with one inside the other the whole time!

 

2 hours ago, Alex Gordon said:

There might be an easy way round the BR logo snag,if the decal is a single colour with no background then placing it face down will do the job.I did that with the 2 in the serial number on my Mustang E2-S build,it started life as a 5.

 

Have fun with this one,she'll look very striking when she's done.

2 hours ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

For the reversed decals, just apply them the other way up with some Klear.

I’m pretty sure I’ve ended up with some decals on upside down on things before, but doing it deliberately could well work here, thank you both!
 

1 hour ago, marky sparky said:

I am from Ramsgate and I watched this baby 'fly' every day when she was in service.

I even had a trip inside the cockpit as a special reward when I was in the Air Cadets at Manston 2433 Sqdn.

 

It was an impressive sight and rather noisy but it was amazing to watch and is sorely missed now.

Yeah I’d love to have seen/heard one powered up, I’ll get some of the seeing part done when I make it down to Lee-on-Solent, but not the noise of it. 
 

Right, where are we then, did some dry fitting for step one. Still on the carpet because I haven’t cleared the workbench yet…

 

 

A few little gaps here than there, but I’m going to blame some of that on the carpet and lack of holding the sweeping parts in place at the front..

Getting ahead of myself a little with step two, looks like a choice between door up and door down already. Regardless of the decision I make with the sunroof, I’m pretty sure I want to front door open, so the little cut out piece it’ll be.

 

 

Time to go and clear the cutting mat up and try not to get it wrong immediately at least…

[davecov]

2 hours ago, Tribesman72 said:

Thanks for the tip on lining the skirt up with the hull first and filling the gaps, any idea where I could find some figures? Would N gauge railway passengers look too small?

I used N gauge figures and the difference between that and 1/144 is hardly noticeable.  No, I didn't paint them, they came ready painted:

 

BTW, you might want to add some support between the Car Deck and the lower hull as the plastic flexes a lot and can affect the fitting of bulkheads later on.

 

Dave

[stever219]

22 hours ago, Tribesman72 said:

 

Yeah I’d love to have seen/heard one powered up, I’ll get some of the seeing part done when I make it down to Lee-on-Solent, but not the noise of it. 

There is some video footage on t'internet of ops at Dover showing arrivals and departures.  I'll never forget the sounds of the engines running down at the end of a flight: most of the noise was due to the air from the cushion escaping under and between the fingers at the bottom.

 

Engine starts could be interesting.  One afternoon the final, final, final!! callfor Flight 559 to Calais had been made.  The Departure Lounge hostesses had taken the foot passengers out to the craft and had come back in for a final tally of boarding cards.  As they were doing this an American tourist came charging down the lounge, heaved both of the very heavy double-glazed doors open and legged it out onto the apron.  By now the bow door had been closed and the steps had been pulled away from the sides.  He went all the way down and turned right to try to get on via the stern door: as he did so the second pilot started number 2 engine, the starboard inner which produced a large sheet of oily orange flame and smoke just above head height and about eight feet in front of him.  I have never seen anyone stop dead and turn white as rapidly as he did, before or since.  By now the hostesses had legged it after him (short, close fitting skirts, high heels and summer blouses), they grabbed him and frogmarched him back into the lounge, heaving the doors shut very firmly.  "Boarding card, NOW" demanded the senior hostesses.  His hand was visibly shaking as he pulled it from his jacket pocket.  The two hostesses looked at the card, looked at the man and informed him "This is for the next flight!"  The look in his face was even more priceless as the hostesses strode off with their fisttfulls of boarding cards and I sloped off back to my office trying not to laugh too obviously.

Edited March 24 by stever219
@£@@#××@&&*££ auro-8ncorrect!!

[Troy Smith]

On 22/03/2024 at 19:53, Tribesman72 said:

but if anyone has any tips, tricks, things to avoid,

@Adrian Hills did one in 2021

 

A tip, the site search is not very good,  but try adding Britmodeller into a google search term,  and now you have another build to check. 

 

As you can see it's very do-able with some forethought and a few tweaks and tricks.

HTH

 

[Tribesman72]

On 23/03/2024 at 16:03, davecov said:

BTW, you might want to add some support between the Car Deck and the lower hull as the plastic flexes a lot and can affect the fitting of bulkheads later on.

 

Dave

I hadn’t noticed too much flexing on mine, but I’m not going to pass up good advice from prior experience, I’ll find some suitably thick plastic to wedge in there.

 

18 hours ago, stever219 said:

I sloped off back to my office trying not to laugh too obviously.

Not sure I could’ve stopped myself laughing, even if I end up with the worst model in the world, I’ll be happy with just hearing these great stories from operating these things.

 

16 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

@Adrian Hills did one in 2021

 

A tip, the site search is not very good,  but try adding Britmodeller into a google search term,  and now you have another build to check. 

 

As you can see it's very do-able with some forethought and a few tweaks and tricks.

HTH

 

Yeah I noticed the site search has some blind spots, thanks for the tip. That build came together very nicely indeed, and puts the blame for the skirts reputation squarely on the back end. I’ll have to deploy some of that forethought you mentioned, but I have a tendency to go all 8 year old and just try to finish things as fast as I can, got to get over that first!

[TheyJammedKenny!]

Very intriguing project, and the first time I've seen it done.  Such a rare kit.  Does anyone have a Hungarian-English phrasebook handy?  Something about hovercraft and eels...

[Tribesman72]

I spent the weekend changing my mind. I think the double arrow decals for Seaspeed have started to crack a little, so I’ve come down on the side of doing the corporate livery that BHC launched the N4 in. Some footage can be found in this glorious Pathé video: https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/88629/. I will be including the skirt though, as can be seen in this more colourful, but less wonderfully narrated video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vzxm12fU33E. I really wish we still had newsreels like the Pathé one, they just made everything sound impressive. The YouTube video has what I think looks like a Widgeon helicopter at around the 10:30 mark too which is cool, but I’m happy to be corrected (or have that confirmed) by those with higher quality eyeballs than me.

 

So what have I been up to in the real world? Basically, step one is all glued and needs some finishing off, but I’m only really familiar with starting aircraft at the cockpit, so it feels strange to have a shape that looks like the basic ‘airframe’ so early in the build.

 

 

 

On the advice of Dave above, I wedged some supporting material between the lower hull and the inner car deck, with the help of a kitchen knife because I’d already stuck the sides on and needed something thin to poke it into position. The whole thing feels much stronger now, which hopefully will serve me well when I come to fitting the inner walls.
 

The other decision I’d previously made was to have the door open, but thinking about it, the skirt is modelled as in flight rather than parked up, and I’m not even sure the door would reach the ground anyway. So I’ve decided to have the door closed, which has the added advantage of being able to add the BHC logo on the front too. Just to stop myself from changing my mind again, I’ve attached the correct front skirt pieces together, and offered them up for dry fitting.

 

 

And then just to see how proud of the surface it’ll sit, I flipped the whole thing back over again and let it look into the skies

 

 

It’ll need a little fettling, but should be okay, we will see how the other sections line up!

 

On 25/03/2024 at 12:36, TheyJammedKenny! said:

Does anyone have a Hungarian-English phrasebook handy?

Any ideas on making some convincing 144th scale eels? Will need to fill the starboard side with something, after all…

 

[Bigdave22014]

The "arrows of indecision" were only reversed on one side. Something to do with the Royal College Of Arms I recall. 

[Tribesman72]

15 hours ago, Bigdave22014 said:

The "arrows of indecision" were only reversed on one side. Something to do with the Royal College Of Arms I recall. 

They definitely were on the SeaLink ships, making an ‘S’ shape from the arrows. I think you’re right about it being an older rule on flags and coats of arms, in the same way as the US flag on the space shuttle was ‘backwards’ on the starboard side.

 

The weirdness here is twofold in that the Hovercraft don’t appear to have the reversed arrows in service anywhere, but the kit has all the arrows reversed on the decal sheet. Very strange.

Anyway, I’ll need to make some custom decals for the testing livery, so that’ll be a new experience for me. The other advantage I’ve realised with the testing one is that I can mostly just spray it white all over!