**** DONE: GB-37 1/72 Westand Sea King - Helicopters / Military a/c of BoB 1940

[Crimea_River]

Good luck!

In my experience, the tendency when scratch building stuff like this is to make things too large for the scale and this will be magnified when working in 1/72. If you concentrate on modeling the main elements and SOME of the smaller things, then a decent reproduction can be achieved. If you try to model everything, it increases the frustration level and the result could very well be that not everything will fit properly.

 

[Wurger]

All is in our mind...

 

[Crimea_River]

Where did you get that huge match Wojtek?

 

[Wurger]

I've carved that myself and painted the head with the Vallejo RLM74.

 

[parsifal]

A little bit of progress with the scratch building but I don't have enough yet to warrant too many photos. Have scratch built my crew positions (seats) a radar and control panel, some of the pipe work on the port side wall that will be visible. have fabricated the AEW array that is visible behind the main hatch. Cut off the huge bag thingy that sticks out of the hatch and replaced that with a deflateable canvass looking thing to make it more authentic looking

The dais thing behind the hatch is not yet complete. I have to install some of the plumbing and also some of the visible lumps and bumps in the front of this array. Possibly I'm 30% through the fabrication process. So far I'm happy with what Ive built.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Sounds like some good progress going on.

 

[Donivanp]

Great looking work there! I was wondering what happened to Paul Bunyan's matches!

 

[parsifal]

nearly finished the scratch building process for the interior, should post photos tonite or tomorrow I think .

 

[parsifal]

the well I have the bits for the crew stations more or less done. As always the close ups are a killer, especially at this scale, and even moreso because ive built the parts myself

So this is the AEW pedestal that will be visible from the main hatch. ive fabricated the base part out of a neoprene control arm for an RC micro copter. It has to be strong because the AEW bag assembly will be anchored to it via that big hole on the left.

These are my crew seat as seen from behind, which is the part of these seats that will be seen from the open hatch. A lot of fiddling around to make these.

This is my radar HUD. Ive badly misaligned the upper part, but I'm not too worried as the right side wont be visible. Ive made the backing case from a spare piece of a P-38 wreck which had a nice well into which I placed a painted leftover PE part from my huey build. The dial decals were just some spares that I had lying around. I filled the circular indentation with PVA glue. I was hoping it would dry fully clear which it more or less did, but then I painted the base into which that glue had been poured white . It does work, but the white has an unfortunate side effect of making the glue look milky. I probably should have used a slightly different colour to simulate the PPI screen.

Not sure I like this. Ive added some framing, not a complete job, and some wall mounted cabling and gizmo boxes. Didn't realize how awful my painting is until I posted this image....

.

 

[fubar57]

Looking very nice Michael, especially in that scale

 

[Crimea_River]

Agreed. If you spray a flat clear in the cabin it will even out the paint a bit.

 

[Airframes]

Good work Michael, it looks very convincing.
That PVA probably will clear eventually.
For future reference, screens such as radar, 'Gee' etc, were originally like the old cathode-ray TV screens when switched off - a greyish green, or more correctly, grey with a hint of green. As they very often had an anti-glare diffuser over the top, they would look matt.
More modern screens tend to have an orange / brown tone, although a mid-green can also be seen.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

Good stuff Michael

 

[Donivanp]

Very impressive, nerves of steel and hawk eyes.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Coming along nicely Michael.

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[parsifal]

made a small amount of progress over the weekend. ive essentially been putting the two fuelage halves under some constant pressure to try and overcome some warping issues. Still not great, but dry fitting is suggesting I can put them together now.

In preparation I completed the internal fitout by gluing into place the various scratch built bits, as well as the clear parts. The clear parts are more like clear rocks really. Ive glued them in but like all hard plastic parts of this era, it is virtually impossible to see anything through them.

Will try and post some photos tonite.

 

[parsifal]

so here are some long awaited photos. After spending some days trying to straighten the two fuselage halves after detecting severe warping issues, Ive fairly quickly affixed the the fuselage halves, sealed along the seams and glued into position the scratch built items.

Ive had to use a truckload of filler in the nose . Even after apply sustained stress to the two halves to try and iron out the warping issue, I was still faced with about a 2mm gap in the nose join. and also on the underside seam at the rear. the two halves are shaped like a couple of bananas really.and I was afraid if I apply any more stress to the plastic I would end up breaking something. Ive yet to remove the masking from around the filled area

I concentrated on trying to get the dorsal seam together as neatly as I could.

This was the equipment fit before joining the two halves.

Stbd side before I joined the two halves

 

[parsifal]

Masking is now off, and generally okay. ive started the sanding process, but the the next challenge is getting the nose, the canopy and the tubine inlets fitting properly. none of these elements fit all that well at the moment, so it will be challenging to try and get the seams as invisible as possible.

This is proving to be a slow build because of fit issues. I'm not really a fan of this kit I'm afraid.