Hawker-Siddeley HS-681 Aldershot

[Thorvic]

My major project for 2015 is to do another HS-681 to go alongside a TSR2 and 1 P1154 Harrier on the Project Cancelled SIG stand at SMW2015 as its 50 yrs since all three programmes were culled by the Wilson Government. There are also themes for the P1121 to mark the launch of Overscan's book on the Project and British post war MPA's in response to the recent Nimrods Genesis by Chris Gibson, which I am also building models for (so I need to get a shift on !!! ).

Some of you may recall I did build a HS-681 back in 2006 and a an AW-681 a couple of years later, however both of these models now reside in Museum's and are thus not available for use on the SIG display. So as we haven't yet seen a new kit of the type I have no other option than to build a new one.

Firstly I had better describe the differences between the HS-681 and the AW-681, the later was the original design created by Armstrong Withworth to the original requirement for a STOL airlifter with optional VTOL capability with a 40ft long hold 10ft tall and 10ft wide. Following the early 60's aerospace consolidation AW became part of Hawker-Siddeley and the design lead switched to Manchester from Coventry/Gloucester, The RAF also relaxed the requirements dropping the VTOL aspect and the hold size reduced, thus the AW-681 was revised to become the HS-681 with a more streamlined upper fuselage and a triple in-line undercarriage using the RR Medway engines with built in deflected thrust rather than the Bristol Pegasus with Vectored thrust.

My first build was based upon the Airfix boxing of the Italeri Hercules, which had the right sort of size to it but the rear ramp layout and upper fuselage profile all wrong requiring quite a bit of reworking with Plastic Card and Milliput making it really heavy.

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,13022.0/highlight,aldershot.html

The second used the Heller Transall kit which had a more suitable shape to use as a basis, although it was a snap fit kit and light on detail.

This time around I'm using the Revell Transall kit which has great detail so I can model it with the doors open, however the refined detail of the Revell kit also highlights the issue pinched cockpit that narrows to a flatish windscreen, which is not like the 681. To counter this I managed to source a clear resin canopy which has a much more suitable shape although the cockpit has to be widened to accommodate it. The wings for all three builds are taken from the AMT C-135 kits cut down and joined together at a slightly different angle to create the wing.




Parts so far with the wing taped up fuselage, basis of engines and tail fin



Cockpit build up to fit new canopy



Creating the engines



The wing created from the KC-135 wings



Approx location of where wing will eventially go and the back filling required (to be done when fuselage joined



The insides taped together, note the lower cockpit and nose gear bay (the square bits will be trimmed back once fixed in fuselage), note weights on the under side of cargo floor.

[Chris Payne]

Looking good Geoff.

Didn't realize this one would have the full interior.

[Captain Canada]

Love it. This is going to be another beauty !

[Thorvic]

Thought I had better update the build thread as have made progress in the last couple of months, although its slow compared with where I want to be as getting the time, energy and mojo together can be difficult these days  .

Anyway I manage to get the fuselage joined, the nose gear bay trimmed up, the cockpit canopy fitted and blended in to bring the fuselage together. I then started to build up the joins for matching the wing, although this will need some fine tuning before I attach the wing and the engines.

The basics of the tail fin, the fin top fairing and the tail planes has been sorted and nominally pinned to allow a test fit to the fuselage. Gaps with need to be filled before final fitting but that will be after the wing as a spine extended from the rudder to above the wing.

Had to go to another source for the engines as I wasn't happy with the one I tried to build up, it ended up too bulky and the shape didn't feel right. After checking around, I eventually found the the Engines off the Italeri B-66 Destroyer could be a more suitable basis so I tried one of those out and like the results. Now all I needed was another which was eventually sourced on-line and duly purchased. These engines had to be shortened and the intakes reshaped but with a bit of work I got there. Managed to source some pods which I filled with milliput to act as the fairing for the deflected thrust vents on the Medway engine and have fitted a pair to the first engine and mid way through shaping the rest. I used the drawings to draw up a template for the engine pylons and use them to skin the Destroyer Pylons. These will be fitted and detailed as and when the remaining engines are completed, but the first one looks the part and appears to match the wing quite well.

Next up is the rather large and distinctive main undercarriage sponsons, ,the Transall fairing is about the right shape but only about as third as long, so I have used two to create the basis of the part and will merge with a droptank to create the rest but this work is still at an early stage until I complete the engines.

However with the fuselage, wing, engines and tail units all done, once the sponsons are done the basic component are done it can be taped/pinned together to finally see the actual model even if still quite a bit to clean up and details sorted 

[Thorvic]

Some in progress shots:-











Getting there (Finally !!!!!)

[Gondor]

WoW   

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

That's pretty darned enormous Geoff! And VERY impressive too. 

What's that small tri-angular fin doing right at the trailing edge of the tailplane? Didn't it have enough fin area, as the main fin looks HUGE?!

[sandiego89]

looking good     Looks like the C-141 design team must have taken notes...

-Dave

[Captain Canada]

That is looking really good Geoff ! Nice to see it coming together. Love the paint scheme on her now.

[kerick]

Your kitbash-fu is very strong! Excellent work!

[philp]

Looking good.

[The Chaos]

WOW a big Plan. Good Work.

[trickyrich]

WOW that is nice!! There is some lovely mod work you've done there!

[KiwiZac]

Lovely is the word! A darned nice-looking machine and it's shaping up as a great model.

[Thorvic]

One HS-681 Aldershot C1 XT263

(Which if you check is one of the serials assigned to the initial 5 aircraft assigned prior to being cancelled  )
Right i'm calling that as done