At present I am building a few Vac kits for someone, these take time and with a lot of extra detail and mind games needed.  Sometimes I like to do a OOB kit to make me sane again, hence the following kit.  I also suffer from health problems, after breaking my back in '96 in 5 places, I now suffer from Arthritis, and cold damp weather makes it worse, so along with this and the amount of meds I take means its not as often as I like to make kits.

I got 6 of these from the US, along with some extra bits, resin cockpit, cargo area, and a great Airwaves etch and metal set, but I wanted to do my first OOB, so without any books for help, and only finding scarce poor images to guide me, off I went.     First of all is the cockpit, the dials look more like a aircraft, and totally incorrect for the mass of dials found on Helos, at this time I had no images to compare, so I made it more cluttered, but such a small scale and lack of final view wouldn't worry me.

 Fit  went well, actually fitting the seats isn't easy, there not stuck to the floor but 2 locating pins straight back into the wall behind the seats, quite fiddly.  The sticks look fine in this scale and all was needed was some paint on the seats, which at this time I followed to the letter, well numbers from the instructions.

I'm clumsy when it comes to fitting the clear window parts before the fuselage is glued. I prefer to add them last, so I didn't add these then, I gave them a couple of coats of Johnsons KLEAR and would insert the parts almost at the end.  I left out the 'fold up' seats out, as I was doing a SAR, I hadn't any images, so I just painted the interior as stated, its dark and nothing can be seen through the windows anyway.

Next came the gluing of the fuselage halves, this went well, better than I had expected.  The only filler needed was around the front where the nose section halves are joined, nothing the average modeller can't deal with.....I did!

Now at this time, I  didn't have any books, so I followed the kit instructions and added the steps that the pilots use to climb up and get to the cockpit, but this is where a major cockup arrives.  The kits' drawings show to place the steps INFRONT of the foot holes, which is wrong, so slight error will play into a much larger problem when it comes to painting.

The other problem is the placing of parts 68B and 69B on the tail rotor part, the drawings seem to show they fit higher than they actually are on the real thing, again good images show the correct placing.

I asked on Rec.Models.Scale newsgroup if the SAR version had a folding tail arm, I thought maybe as it wouldn't be needed for less space (such as on a ship) it maybe fixed for strength and safety.  I never got a reply from anyone, however sods law once completed, I found a pic in a magazine I had.

Now at this time, I knew I had a book on the way from the US, so I thought I would paint it.

PAINTING

After priming I use a coat of HUMBROL 69 Bright Yellow from their range of spray cans.  Having used their cans before, I knew it's not the thinnest of coats, but this was BAD.  It went on thicker that the class idiot, after it dried and settled it wasn't as bad, but no contest winner.  After it had dried I added a coat of Halfords car Gloss, bad move!  The 2 differant types of spray reacted bad and the paintwork went soft.  I should have used the Humbrol Gloss, so it was my own fault. 

Now this project had taken a few days and I had really enjoyed it.  I usually hate Helos, my last 3 got binned half way through, but I thought I would start again, so out came kit #2 of 6.  Now I am back to where I was on the first kit, cockpit done, fuselage glued and inside painted, foot steps and again fitting parts 68B and 69B too high. Now for some good news, a book arrived, 4+ publications Westland Wessex, having already got some of their Russian aircraft books I knew what to expect.  Infact it was better, the images are clear and varied, and there's drawings too, as I was looking at the pics, I came across the error of the foot step placement.

 Instead of being forward of the foot holes, the parts should be placed directly ABOVE (directly above the foot holes, not above above, if that makes sense!), now......by now doing this, another problem arose. 

On some, not all (although every yellow RAF SAR it seems) around the steps the area is painted black, why I don't know, but it is.  Even if I asked nicely and this Helo was in service still I don't think they would over paint it back to the yellow like the rest of the body.  Anyway, the dilemma was that if I painted the surrounding area black as on the real Helo, it would look worse due to the fact that the steps being forward of the holes increases the area as the black was just about each side of the steps as it should be.  In the end I thought I would leave it without the black.  This shows not to trust kit instructions. On SOME Yellow SAR's, the main legs are painted black, some not.

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Now was the time to add the ariel masts that run along the fuselage, winch, legs and other bits.

Again didn't follow the instructions for the masts, every one seems to be shown in the wrong place.   I fitted the foot bar that aids climbing into the Helo, but its seems SAR's didn't have this fitted, adding the winch was ok, although due to the placing of the strip that fits directly below the opening window means it doesn't fit flat.  There's also some shaped parts, one should fit below the rear wing, but I used the 2 parts for grab handles for the pilots.  Under the Helo you have a choice, there are various lifting parts on the real thing so I added what looked right.  The part hanging down that looks like a exhaust is actually the fuel dump, badly shaped on the kit part, but I left it. I not 100% sure I got the masts exact, but next time I will have the book from the start.

I decided to do this Helo at rest, and using the book it seems a plastic sheet FOD guard was covered over the front intake, not a thick hard plastic piece.  So I thought if I added 2 or 3 thick coats of red this would do, take away the sharp detail, but leave enough not to make it totally smooth as a moulded plastic covering piece would.  So I did that and added a rim of Tamiya tape just to raise the surround.

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To fit the legs can be a problem, well it was for me, it seems 2 of the holes are already there, but you need to add some from the inside.  On both kits I made a error, again due to poor instructions, so it was fiddly to get them aligned and straight, got there in the end. 

With the pipe work at the exterior pieces added, including the small protrusion on the tail top I primed the kit, but the tail top part fell off.

Now as I stated earlier I used Humbrol on the first attempt, this time I wanted a much thinner paint, so off I trotted to Halfords, a rather large poor Car accessories shop.  Us in the UK often use their primers and paints....anyway...I took the can of Humbrol and came across a FIAT Golden Yellow, both caps looked quite close, albeit not as bright of a golden yellow, but it was the closest I could get.

I added a couple of thin coats, went on great, nice and thin. Once it had totally dried I could see a difference, between both kits and pics in the book, "sod it" I thought, the images I found on the web showing the SAR at night looked a great match, the 'golden' seemed to be enhanced in daylight.

The decals in the kit don't include a SAR, just 3 camo options in 2 different schemes.  So I went to my big stash of Modeldecal decals and came across sheet 95, which is crammed packed with Wessex schemes, some SAR and some not.  It seems each SAR had slight variations of markings placement, and the book backed this up too.  So I decided to follow the decal sheet and book as close as I could. The words spelt out on the tail and doors were different on each Helo in size, as well as location, so I did what I saw.  I used Micro Sol and Set, and the decals went on like a treat, no problems what so ever, I had to use a couple of kit decals, these too had no adverse reaction.  The only problem I found with the MD decal sheet was (and with the photos on the sheet its a good job I had the book) that around the exhausts are round decals, the MD sheet has red and black, BUT the decal sheet said use the black, circles, where as the book clearly shows there red, apart from that the MD sheet was great.  On SOME SAR's the large wheel hubs are fitted.  I added them, but needed some spare triangles that I had lying around, you don't see the hub detail around the tyre, but if you build a version without the protruding hubs, don't worry as they're good in detail.

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I am not one for clean aircraft, and looking at the book you could quite easy see dirt build  up.  After I glossed over the decals to seat them in, I used black enamel very thin, the final result looks very dirty, but hey, that's how I like them.

Now as I always try to add the windows last, esp on fuselage sides due to being not too good at masking or pushing them through by accident. I came up with an idea, its not  rocket science, so I guess others may do it this way.  I get a long thin strip of masking tape, place in on the window then at a angle feed it through the window hole.  While on its way back, I add Humbrol canopy glue to around the edges, then pull the window onto the inside where it should sit.  I practice a couple of times before I add the glue, but its simple.

 When I came to add the glass canopy which is one piece, abiet the side windows i found i needed a little super glue as filler under one side, you are supposed to add the side windows from the inside first, but the book shows the side windows open and the frame looks ok.

I used some Airwaves RBF tags as shown in the book, 2 for the Exhaust FOD's and one for the front FOD.

The clear parts are ok, seen better, but also seen very much worse.  I used Maskol for the main canopy as the 'frame' around the windows is much higher, I must admit this is the area I fail on and need more practice.

The only visible errors or omissions I can see are the 2 small bumps on the front under the cockpit, where you can see 2 ariels on the real thing.  Plus the small antenna on the top above the large roundel is not quite the right shape compared to images.

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I am extremely happy with the result, it looks right to me and people who have seen it say it's good.  They're not modellers. but know of the Wessex.  Due to ill health, sometimes it can be a while before I can work on a kit, so it's on and off, but as with all of us, we learn and get better.

Note;  The black paint area around the steps is a hard wearing paint which I found out a few days after I wrote the above article.

Jules