Author Topic: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!  (Read 31336 times)

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #50 on: October 05, 2014, 06:29:11 AM »
The red paint is about the right colour for blood smears from a bird strike or three
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Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #51 on: October 05, 2014, 07:23:35 AM »
The red paint is about the right colour for blood smears from a bird strike or three

Yeah, but unfortunately it's exactly the same colour as the rest of the plane, so it'd be hard to "read" it as anything but the paint.

I do have another Skyvan kit, but it's still sealed and it's the later version with three decals options (NASA/Austrian/Olympic Airways) so I don't really want to destroy it's resale value by nicking the glazing from it. I might need that resale value at some point under current circumstances......
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Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #52 on: October 05, 2014, 07:38:49 AM »
Having been there I can say that yes you have plenty of mud in Antartica.  Moreover, the red is very similar in colour to one finds around some penguin colonies (see below).



Maybe you could also delicately touch t up with some white to represent snow.
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Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #53 on: October 05, 2014, 09:38:54 AM »
Hmmm - slight problem getting a birdstrike with penguins, so it'd have to be "BAS Skyvan lands in a penguin colony": funny, but gross. So which wargame figure makers does a bag of 100 splattered penguins then... (you KNOW somebody does.... ;D )
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

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Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #54 on: October 05, 2014, 07:16:42 PM »
Okay, now it's really dead. I used the same masking fluid on the side windows, and it's done the same thing. The side windows are fitted from the inside, so the only way to replace them is to crack the fuselage open.

Game Over.

Moral of this story? Test new products before you use them on stuff you care about..... :(
« Last Edit: October 05, 2014, 07:39:56 PM by Weaver »
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

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Offline Frank3k

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #55 on: October 06, 2014, 12:00:06 AM »
You might still be able to scrape off the paint. I use acrylics exclusively, but there are still times I have to scrape off some paint from canopy frames. I take a piece of Sprue and carve the end into a pointy chisel and use that to scrape off the paint. The Sprue will be the same hardness as the clear plastic (so there's less chance of scratching) but harder than the paint.
Also, when masking ( even with tape) if you spray the underlying color (in this case, clear) it will seal any gaps in the mask.
Another idea for the fuselage windows if you can't scrape the paint off is to pop them off into the fuselage, then use white glue (or Krystal clear) to make new ones - if the holes aren't too big.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2014, 12:02:13 AM by Frank3k »

Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #56 on: October 06, 2014, 02:40:22 AM »
Can you post more pics showing the side windows and the overall current state - we may yet be able to save this baby!
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Offline perttime

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #57 on: October 06, 2014, 02:56:13 AM »
Snow all over the airplane, because it had to stay on the ground during a snowstorm.
Or just a frost all over because a fog froze onto it.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2014, 03:01:08 AM by perttime »

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #58 on: October 06, 2014, 03:14:27 AM »
Harold,

So sorry to hear that your project has hit a snag.  Things were looking darned good until that paint leaching under the masking material got in the way.  Really hope you can some how salvage this as I really like all of the work you have put into this with the modifications to the landing gear to mount the skis and the details in your lashed down cargo in the passenger compartment. 

Maybe a snowed in/under Snow Budgie diorama is the way to go at the moment and then later when the fiasco has passed you can revisit the problem and tackle it with a clear head and better frame of mind.  At least you have not thrown the project against the wall and into the trash bin.  So there is hope yet. 
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #59 on: October 06, 2014, 04:26:12 AM »
You might still be able to scrape off the paint. I use acrylics exclusively, but there are still times I have to scrape off some paint from canopy frames. I take a piece of Sprue and carve the end into a pointy chisel and use that to scrape off the paint. The Sprue will be the same hardness as the clear plastic (so there's less chance of scratching) but harder than the paint.

I've been trying this, but with wooden cocktail sticks, so I gave it a go with sprue as you suggest. No good I'm afraid: it still smears and discolours the plastic. I use enamel paints pretty much exclusively and I think they "bite" to the surface more aggressively than acrylics, particularly when thinned for airbrushing.

Quote
Also, when masking ( even with tape) if you spray the underlying color (in this case, clear) it will seal any gaps in the mask.

Yeah, I've done that in the past. Trouble was that in this case, it never occurred to me that there might be "gaps" in masking fluid. I've been testing the masking fluid on other clear plastic and it worked. I think that perhaps the clear plastic in the windows was greasy from being handled and that caused the masking fluid to fail to adhere to it properly.

Quote
Another idea for the fuselage windows if you can't scrape the paint off is to pop them off into the fuselage, then use white glue (or Krystal clear) to make new ones - if the holes aren't too big.

Doesn't fix the cockpit glazing though, plus with all the stuff inside, I wouldn't care to bet on all of the side windows shaking out of the tail ramp instead of getting stuck.
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

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Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #60 on: October 06, 2014, 04:36:18 AM »
Jeff and Perttime: thanks for the ideas, but I don't want to go down the route of "saving" this one and then doing it better next time, because I only have the one set of BAS decals and I don't want to use them on this model if it's then going to the boneyard as soon as the better one is done.

I think what I might do is put this on the back burner for now and see if I can get another cheap Skyvan (I have a heap of Skyvan projects). Then with enough stock of parts in hand, I'll split the fuselage of this one to recover the interior and use it's painted wings and other bits on a new fuselage to try again.

The sad thing is that the paint was looking really good from a distance. However looking at it in detail, the black's "crackled" in one place, probably due to over-loading (the spray can had a really coarse nozzle). Add that to small paint leaks and even if the window thing hadn't happened, touch-up and re-paints would have taken it past the deadline anyway.
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #61 on: October 06, 2014, 05:12:27 AM »
Can you post more pics showing the side windows and the overall current state - we may yet be able to save this baby!


Here we go:





The paint is much harder to get off the side windows because it has a white undercoat as well.
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #62 on: October 16, 2014, 06:52:34 PM »
Airfix's brilliant spares department may have saved the day for me. They not only had a replacement clear sprue in stock for this model that was last issued in 2002, but they sent it to me yesterday, BEFORE sending me an e-mail asking me for payment, and the part arrived this morning before I had a chance to ring them up and pay them. Total cost? £4 including postage. Way to go Airfix!

It doesn't get the model back into the GB unfortunately, but it does mean there's half a chance of finishing it for Telford. What I think I might do with the side windows is pop them out, then cut the flanges off the new ones and slither them in from the outside. We shall see.............
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
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Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #63 on: October 17, 2014, 04:47:47 AM »
Harold,

Very happy for you that the good folks at AirFix came through for you. 
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

Offline apophenia

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #64 on: October 18, 2014, 09:46:26 AM »
You've got to love stories like that. I've had similar experiences with Airfix in the past. Nice to know that the tradition continues!  :)
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Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan aka The Snow Budgie
« Reply #65 on: November 11, 2014, 01:10:50 AM »
Well it got finished (kinda) and made it onto the What If SiG stand at Telford (SMW 2014).

The replacement transparencies went okay. I masked the cockpit windows with tape this time and cut round them individually, which is something I've never had much luck with in the past, but it seemed to work this time. Don't know if the mould got cleaned up at some point, but the frames seemed better defined on the replacement than the original. For the cabin windows, I clipped/sanded the "top hat" sections from them and then inserted them into the already-painted and assembled fuselage from the outside using PVA, a cocktail stick with a little old blu-tack on the end, and fear. Went surprisingly well actually.

Then I glued the wings and tail on, and, despite the front half of the cargo and both pilots being white metal, watched it rock majestically back on it's wheels. Yes, it was a tail-sitter. Drilled out the round thing behind the nosewheel, with the intention of dropping steel shot into the space under the cockpit floor, only to hit solid plastic. Then I remembered that I'd "cleverly" glued a central keel into that space months before to make it easier to put the shot in from the sides.... ::) So, nothing for it but to drill two damned great holes a little further back, fill it with shot, and then stick a couple of black discs (irises from soft-toy eyes) over them to make "geophysical sensors". ;)

I'm only calling it kinda finished on three counts:

1. I want to see if I can make a better job of the jokey bus number over the cockpit (No.77 is the bus you'd get from Cambridge Airport to Maddingly Road where the BAS HQ is ;D ). I stuck a couple of 7s pillaged from the spares box on last week but didn't have time to get into custom decals.

2. The skis are supposed to have various cables and rods that arn't modelled in the Revellobox donor kit. Again, I didn't want to risk screwing it up that close to a show with no time to fix it, but I'd to try and do something that at least acknowledges that I know they're supposed to be there, even if the result isn't 100%. Various ideas.

3. I'd like to put it on a snow base with figures and a vehicle.

Because of this, I'm not doing a full article and write-up now, and these are just temporary pics:





I know the props don't all have the same stripe pattern: the BAS Twotters are sometimes painted like that. The badge on the nose is International Polar Year 2007-2008 so that sets the timeframe.







The "geophysical sensors" (above) and why they're really there (below). The ski bottoms are unfinished to make it easier to put it on a base. The LORAN "towel rail" aerials are optional on the Skyvan, but I figured they'd want every nav aid you can get. Same argument for the aerials on top of the cockpit.

More victims of the masking fluid were the exhausts. I'd got a lovely Metalcote finish on them, but in this case, the masking fluid bound to it so strongly that I had to scratch the finish getting it off. They were repainted from the outside with normal HU.56 aluminium.




EDIT: forgot to include the finished interior shots!









« Last Edit: November 11, 2014, 02:26:30 AM by Weaver »
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #66 on: November 11, 2014, 02:24:06 AM »
Really nice work Harold! 

Was there no alternative to the LORAN antennas being mounted under the fuselage?  I would have imagined the signal reception would have been better with the antennas mounted on the top of the fuselage.  Plus there is the hazard of having the antennas sheered off during landing on a rough patch of snow/ice. 
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #67 on: November 11, 2014, 02:30:09 AM »
I've just put some more pics on folks.

Really nice work Harold! 

Was there no alternative to the LORAN antennas being mounted under the fuselage?  I would have imagined the signal reception would have been better with the antennas mounted on the top of the fuselage.  Plus there is the hazard of having the antennas sheered off during landing on a rough patch of snow/ice.

Cheers Jeff.

Yeah, maybe: hadn't thought of that. The underbody position is where they're mounted on real Skyvans (they're kit parts) but the civvie and military versions have one or two respectively. The wing "hump" means you can only really put them behind it, and maybe the fins would block it there?
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
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Offline raafif

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #68 on: November 11, 2014, 02:39:10 AM »
if my stuff-ups could come out as good looking as this budgie I'd finish more of them :)

Got the hankering to do a Skyvan myself now.

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #69 on: November 11, 2014, 02:49:30 AM »
Skyvan + Osprey = V-Budgie :)
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Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #70 on: November 11, 2014, 02:54:31 AM »
 :)
All hail the God of Frustration!!!

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Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #71 on: November 11, 2014, 04:21:31 AM »
Skyvan + Osprey = V-Budgie :)

Now there's a thought, but I'll be leaving it for someone else. I've got a nearly-finished-then-dropped (literally) "five ton bumble bee" though: a Skyvan helicopter with Kaman-style eggbeater rotors. I'll get round to finishing it off one day.....
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Weaver

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #72 on: November 11, 2014, 04:26:35 AM »
if my stuff-ups could come out as good looking as this budgie I'd finish more of them :)

Got the hankering to do a Skyvan myself now.

It can make up into a nice model, but be warned, test fit EVERYTHING before you fit it: literally every little thing. Skyvan kits seem to get warped in odd ways and you also get the impression that the mould has either worn or been worked on at soem stage because two kits can be way different.

Your first reaction on seeing the part count is that it's over-engineered, but then, with a body shape like that, it's hard to see how else much of it it could have been done pre-slide moulding. Having said that though, there's not much excuse for the separate rudders and three-peice wing trailing edges....
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Brian da Basher

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #73 on: November 11, 2014, 07:29:38 AM »
What a mighty save, Weaver! That's got to be one of the most eye-catching Shorts Skyvans to ever grace the table at Telford! Glad you made it in under the wire and you're bound to get many compliments!

Brian da Basher

Offline elmayerle

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Re: British Antarctic Survey Skyvan FINISHED (kinda)!
« Reply #74 on: November 11, 2014, 08:16:26 AM »
Just a thought for the next one, go for a more powerful set of TPE331 engines and a four- or five-bladed prop.  I could see them wanting more power in that harsh environment.