updated air wing ATLANTIC CONVEYOR 1/700 Falklands

[sandiego89]

Kit, 1/700 Airwing comes from several sources:

Wessex- Fujimi/Seaway Royal naval plane (clear, seafire, gannet. s-58, seafury) Fujimi 45102.  Also Skywave/Pitroad did one I believe.  I modified the S-58 with chin intake and turbine exhaust stack.  Rotors are from a SH-60F from trumper item 03434.  The original main rotors are way too wide in chord.   

Sea Harrier.  Can't find the box, but I believe it was a SkyWave/Pitroad (perhaps Aoshima?) set with sea kings and sea harriers. Did a quick internet search and could not find it.  Each sprue had 8 sea harriers, and two sea king.  The two seat AEW.1 required lengthening so two sea harriers had to be sacrificed to make one, with a splice at the intakes. Spure for a tail stinger.  Radome is a F-18 main fuel tank Trumpeter. 

KGR3 and GR3.  as above. canopy shaved a little to get rid of the raised sea harrier canopy.     

Chinook- from scratch. 

[royabulgaf]

This gives me an intriguing idea: 

With the problem of pirates at various chokepoints, how would a first gen Harrier or AH-1Z in Lloyd's of London markings look?
This would probably be right up Bladerunner's alley.

[PR19_Kit]

Hehe, nice one. 

But do Lloyds HAVE markings as such? Perhaps something based on the Lutine bell perhaps?

[sandiego89]

Kit, would love to see any in progress pictures of the air wing.  A 1/144 version would be great to see.  As for the bagged aircraft, some shrink wrap film heated up by a high heat gun (Mrs. PR19's hair dryer might not get hot enough) might do it.  As a kid I worked in a small retail store and we had to re-shrink wrap items that had been opened or damaged. We had a small machine that you would put the item in and then press a lever down to make an airtight bag- like a ziplock back for a sandwich.  Then you would take the heat gun and it would shrink it up around the item.   I usually did it in clear, but think it would take spray paint.  The nice thing about it is with practice you can keep it a little loose.

Dave "sandiego89" 

[PR19_Kit]

Dave,

The real tarpaulins weren't really all that tight, so shrink wrapping would not produce the right effect I'm afraid. That was especially the case with the two ill-fated Chinooks just forward of the superstructure, they almost look as if they were inflated by air blowers (see attached piccie)

Someone has already suggested lead foil, but I have no idea where to get that stuff, but at Telford I bought some of the heat-formable plastic sheet by MS, and that looks quite a possibility. I'll see if I can do some piccies, when I can fight mu way into the model room anyway......

[Mossie]

Maybe use wine bottle foil?  It's thicker than standard aluminium foil (if not as much as lead foil) & holds it's shape better.  At least you can have fun collecting it!

[PR19_Kit]

I didn't know that Mossie, thanks for the tip. As I don't drink I'll need to find someone else to empty the bottles.......

[sandiego89]

Kit, my FRS.1 came from the Tsukuda Hobby 1/700 scale World Weapons Series sp-3 "Royal Navy aircraft". Came with 16 FRS.1 and 4 Mk1 Sea King.  Very nice set, but looks long out of production and rare.  Much better than the flattened subjects of their USSR and USAF series.  Suggest White Ensign for Sea Harriers, will also need their undercarriage set.  The Sea Harriers in the dragon invicible class set are good, but only 4 per kit.  May want to cast some. 

Good luck with your build. 1/700 can be quite challenging if you have never done it.  My advice, don't go overboard with your first 1/700- leave off the stuff like photo etched ladders, railings etc. as they will drive you crazy and in my view can make it overdone.     

[PR19_Kit]

Dave,

Thanks for the tips, I don't think I've even built an Airfix 1/600 ship so far, let alone 1/700 anything!

Needless to say I have already ordered the PE stuff from Hannants  but it can go into store I'm sure. I've got a 1/720 AV-8N from a Revell Iwo Jima kit that I'll use as a master to make some SHAR's and G3s, but just as will my big version, most of them will be under cover, thank goodness.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Norbert Thiel uploaded some images to modellversium.de of the resin 1/700th scale NNT Atlantic Conveyor.

[sandiego89]

thanks for the link Jeffry- that resin job is very impressive!

[Weaver]

I didn't know that Mossie, thanks for the tip. As I don't drink I'll need to find someone else to empty the bottles.......

Coffee-tin foil is similar.

[Captain Canada]

Sorry I missed the boat ! That is very impressive, especially for 700 scale ! Love the little SHARs. Makes me want to go out and build one !

[PR19_Kit]

My attempt at a 1/700 scale 'Atlantic Conveyor' has had a radical shift, as I found that trying to cut down the 'Colombo Express' hull was a waste of time. It's SO much larger, like twice as much, that shrinking the curved bow would be impossible, so I've searched Hannants site in conjunction with Wiki and found a USN Control Ship that's about the right size and one's on order now.

I have lots of itty bitty Harrier GR9s which I'm trying to 'convert' to SHARS, but one stroke of a file in 1/700 removes about 10 ft of airframe, so I have to be VERY careful! The 'Colombo Express' has enough containers, albeit in large blocks, to build about 300 'Atlantic Conveyors' though. 

[Black Knight]

did you ever cast the harriers kit?