The RNLI Air Wing

[Caveman]

But a Sea Knight won't fit aboard an RNLI lifeboat.................

Im not sure how someone missed the opportunity to say:

"You're going to need a bigger boat"

[Glenn Gilbertson]

Inspired by joncarrfarrelly in 2013
https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=37910.0

The SARO P.108 Glider Lifeboat could be towed by the Gannet

SARO P.108 by Glenn Gilbertson, on Flickr

Not sure I'm up to turning it into a model!

[PR19_Kit]

I've started building the ULH, and it's a bit on the small side................

Here's the obligatory box shot.




And here's the box shot of its 'carrier'. 



The build of the 'carrier' will be buried inside this thread, but I won't cover it in as much detail, apart from the addition of the flight deck..............


There's a small styrene sprue,  and even smaller PE etch, a small resin engine, clear sprue for the cockpit glazing (which forms the majority of the airframe!) a vinyl mask for the glazing and the tiny decal sheet.




Building the basic 'fuselage backbone' was the matter of moments, there being only six TINY parts, and until my etch bending jig arrives, that's as far as I can go at the moment.



As you can see it's VERY small! 

[Old Wombat]

"Minute" is the appropriate term here, I think.

[PR19_Kit]

"Minute" is the appropriate term here, I think.

Absolutely!

It'll be my smallest ever aircraft model build, apart from the 1/380 th scale P-38 Lightning that I made from a cornflake box 'kit' many years ago.

[Gondor]

That's a Fairey small helicopter 

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

Coat? Hat? 

[Nick]

How will you do the RNLI markings on the helo?

[Gondor]

Coat? Hat? 

Well someone HAD to say it



Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

How will you do the RNLI markings on the helo?

Carefully and VERY small! 

[Rheged]

That's a Fairey small helicopter 

Gondor

There's a joke circling here waiting to land..........something to do with it being flown by ultra-light fairies............  but I won't take it any further as Chris will put me down in THE BOOK again.

[PR19_Kit]

A substantial part of the FULH kit consists of a lot of PE parts that have to be folded and glued together, with super glue presumably. I've had very little experience with PE parts I must admit, and find them more than a little disturbing as they're always SO small.

On the strength of this, and for an even LARGER proportion of PE in another build I'm planning (Not for this GB....) I bought myself a pukka PE folding tool. I was AMAZED how much they cost, but what the hell, I'll probably only ever get this one. I've sort of figured out how it works, but I've yet to explore all its capabilities.




Here's the first part I built using it and numerous sets of tweezers and my magnifying head set, without which the assembly would have been impossible.



This is the mounting bracket for one of crew seats for the FULH, and there's four parts in this assembly! Note the Swann Morton scalpel as a size reference.

(The Scale Reference Cat took no notice of the PE part, presumably it doesn't smell as interesting as styrene or resin...)


After my eye-ache had subsided I went onto something larger, the FULH's 'carrier', the Airfix Severn Class Lifeboat. This was a lot easier to work with, and despite its relative age, being designed well before the current ultra-hi-tech Airfix era, it fits together quite nicely.



It's a hefty piece of plastic, being about 10" long and 3.5 " tall from the waterline. The kit's designed to be built as a full hull or a waterline model, but for some reason you're meant to cut off a tapered section of the main hull for the waterline version. It actually sits quite well with the bottom section missing and without cutting the wedge part off, albeit maybe a little stern high compared to the real thing. I left mine as it was and sawed the missing section of the transom off from the lower hull to fill the gap left on the upper half.

The model comes with a complete interior, seats, bulkheads, internal equipment etc. and the superstructure can be assembled in one piece and to be removable too, which is how I built it.




I'm not at all sure if I'll build the interior, after all the build is MEANT to be about the FULH, small though it is, but I'll give the interior idea some thought.

[Old Wombat]

Well, Kit, if you're building the landing platform on the bow, that would explain the high stern.

[PR19_Kit]

I haven't actually decided on the bow or stern yet, I'll need to assemble some of the deck stuff first and see where the FULH fits best.

[PR19_Kit]

Some forward progress on the FULH and some backward........

The port side seat and its support framework are now glued onto the main airframe, and I've added the tailplane and fins as well. All of this assembly was done using superglue as the fins just did NOT want to stay glued onto the boom or the tailplane. The gluing area is so small that there's nothing for it to grab, but superglue managed it.



I should have used superglue for the next step too, as that's turned into a disaster. 

The rotor shaft goes vertically upward from just behind the seat in the above pic, and the assembly is in FIVE parts.  The shaft itself, only 3 mm wide at its widest, is moulded in two halves, and the glue faces are less than 1 mm thick, so just holding it to glue together is difficult enough, but adding the upper cap, and the support brace is even more fiddly. But I got it all together and left it overnight to dry off and stiffen up.

WRONG! 

When I checked it this morning the minute amount of cement I'd used had proved too much for it all, and the whole assembly was a misshaped lump of molten styrene. Absolutely none of it was salvageable, so I'll have to scratchbuild a replacement somehow.

Luckily it's all inside the canopy so it won't be all that visible, but it'll delay things somewhat.