Wingnut Wings Handley Page O/100

[seiran01]

Since the company has been closed and these are never getting posted on their website (save for the handful that went online before Christmas showing the interior), I wanted to share with you my HP O/100 build as it stands right now.  Far as I know, only two other people got their hands on a Handley Page before the closure, both of those being O/400s.  

 

I hope you'll enjoy seeing what nearly was and may still be if we get lucky enough that someone picks up the molds and brings the release over the finish line. 

 

Cliff Notes:  I've never seen a kit with so many clever points of engineering. Not just in the physical design of the parts breakdown and the extremely rigid mammoth wings, but things like how a structural bulkhead for the rear fuselage was also designed to be used as a jig for where precisely to drill openings for the internal fuel tanks, the location of a guide inside the unused engine nacelles for bending wire to make the pitot tube present under the nose, and so on. This thing is essentially as large as a Lancaster in all dimensions

 

Wings: Folded or extended, I opted for both wings extended which comes in equal to or a fraction longer in span than the Felixstowe. Once wing halves are glued together, the assemblies are stronger than you'd believe thanks to the internal webbing. 

 

Comparison to the WNW Felixstowe:

 

Fuselage: I have never seen fabric stitching details look so realistic and so nice. Photos don't do justice to how it looks in person. The putty line is filling O/400 stitching details not needed on the O/100. 

 

Cockpit:  Some sink holes to fill, as well as one or two recesses for cutouts the O/400 uses.  Unless building the nose to be removable from the rest of the model, only the three on the sidewalls at the front are visible once everything is assembled. 

 

Wood grain was painted on my preferred method is using Rust Streaks wash for wood grain. Due to the light wood used in the HP cockpit, I mixed Light Dust wash with the Rust Streaks

A darker mix of washes for wood grain in raised areas:

Major components dry-fitted before adding tinted clear coat:

 

Oil streaking after a flat coat (tamiya XF86) was sprayed:

 

And finally, tinted clear coats sprayed over the wooden areas and a wash added:

 

 

 

[Out2gtcha]

Wow, that looks amazing!

Hopefully the company isnt dead, but in the end I guess  all the actual details will be known once they make some kind of formal announcement.   Looking forward to more of this one! 

[Iain]

I really hope these see light of day at some point!

 

Beautiful work...

 

Iain

[seiran01]

Cockpit rigging - the fun begins!  Photos show that the internal bracing wires were painted white; large white EZ line was used to depict these. 

There were multiple sets of throttles and other engine controls in the Handley Page cockpit.  I drilled out holes and glued EZ Line to each individual throttle before gluing the pairs together. Notice there are instruments on the right side wall which are below the pilot's seat (instrument decals not applied at this point). The commander had a few instruments here and in the nose which could be referenced while aiming bombs using the sliding hatch, circular glass sight in the floor, or from the nose. 

 

 

Throttle quadrants all glued in place.  The engine control lines are taped to the plastic card for good reason... 

 

...Because they all go into a part that joins the left and right nose halves just in front of the bomb bay. This was the easiest way I could think of to not get lines tangled and glued in the wrong holes. 

 

At this point the engine control lines were kept taped together while threaded through their rear control rod.  The elevator and rudder cables must first be attached to their pulleys at the back of the right nose wall before the engine control rod can be glued in place.  Aileron cables exit through a hole in the roof and meet the upper wing near the rear cabane strut. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Iain]

You tease! 

 

Iain

[seiran01]

Rear fuselage / gunner's cockpit:

 

This is one example of the clever engineering I mentioned in the original post The part sitting on the top of the fuselage is an internal support bulkhead. It fits snugly onto the top of the fuselage, plugging into a hole where a cabane strut later joins. A hole in the bulkhead serves as a guide to perfectly locate the hole you need to drill for the filler cap of the internal fuel tank. 

 

 

Gunner cockpit has been painted, sealed, wash applied, and rigged (again with heavy white EZ line). At this point the magazine racks have not been attached and the structure is not glued into the fuselage. I managed to destroy half of the mount for the top rear Lewis gun and replaced the missing half of that mount with copper rod. You'll see the rod yet to be cut to length sticking out of the center vertical support.  

 

Elevator and Rudder cables added to the sidewall. These start at a guide molded onto the grey fuel tank A handful of ejector pin marks were left untouched as these are hidden by the bomb rack assembly.

 

 

 

 

Gunner cockpit complete with oil applications on the sidewalls, now onto the bomb rack!

 

The bomb rack was tricky to paint - the fins of each of the 16 bombs are molded together as one part with the bottom of the rack. The top of each row of four bombs is molded as one part, joined to a wooden cross brace and metal vertical supports. This assembly can be seen relatively clearly from the openings for both the ventral and dorsal rear guns, and possibly the crew hatch and rear nose windows as well depending on the lighting. 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, glue time.  To quote a gangster from Futurama... "Give 'em the clamps!"

[Ryan]

Ugh

this really hurts, I was really hoping to add these to my to do pile.

 

fantastic work!

 

Ryan

 

[Fvdm]

WOW!

[seiran01]

Onto painting of some external components.  This beast is being built as the airframe covered in experimental night camouflage. Upper surfaces of the wings, tail and fuselage were painted solid PC10. the rest of the airframe had PC10 hand painted in all sorts of patterns over clear doped Irish linen, and over grey-painted nacelles and struts. 

 

The underside of the upper horizontal tail was masked with vinyl masks and painted. This effect is too jagged and does not look like the green PC10 was painted on. I ended up coming back after this photo was taken and painting around every edge by hand with a fine brush to get the effect I wanted. 

 

Then I thought it'd be a good idea to try a Molotow liquid paint mask pen on the center tail.  I quickly abandoned the masking pen in favor of "painting" on Micro Mask using a toothpick.  

 

Here's the top tailplane again, after being touched up with the paint brush. Shown with the underside of the center top wing and the center tail, both with liquid mask having just been removed. Liquid masks gave a very jagged edge which again did not look at all hand painted and is why every single PC10 area on this plane has been touched up since these photos were taken with a fine paint brush to more closely resemble the tailplane. 

 

Masking the belly; the area with the least amount of liquid masking needed.  Circles were cut to mask off where the roundel decals would later be applied.

 

Some progress!

 

 

Photos from the instruction pdf I was provided were enlarged on my printer and used as a guide to get the major bits masked. Some finer PC10 "stripes" were not masked for and were simply added by hand afterwards. 

 

 

 

 

 

[seiran01]

...Crap.  Translucent fuselage codes.  The D 2 were not originally on the airframe and were later painted on over the existing camouflage.  I've since touched these up by hand painting white oil paint to hide the camo underneath. 

 

 

Size comparison to the AEG:

 

And size comparison to the Junkers D.I

 

Landing gear test fit: The gear assemblies are surprisingly rigid once glued into place. The metal areas (gear struts and bomb doors in this photo) are painted gray and are painted with Tamiya XF-62 representing a PC10-colored paint. This is a different shade from the PC10 dope covering the airframe. Photo taken before paint touchups were made on the gear assembly. 

 

 

 

Propeller blades also painted at this point, hubs still to be painted and a little weathering on the fabric covered areas still to be done. 

 

Tail assembly: This was the only truly hard part of the build. The instructions have you glue all the struts and the upper tailplane in place, and then add the rudders. This is not something that's actually doable once glue is set. Careful alignment and jigging was needed to get everything set in place. The spiderweb of rigging lines present in the tail assembly were glued to the lower surfaces before joining the upper tailplane. 

 

[seiran01]

Tailplane rigging - finishing the only truly difficult part of the build! There are more rigging lines in the tail assembly than most wingnut kits have in their entirety!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starting to add the oil wash and staining on the fuselage:

 

 

 

The starboard nacelle was built with the cowl panels closed. Here she is mounted on the airframe after an oil wash:

 

[seiran01]

Port engine nacelle was built open to show off (part of) the Eagle engine.  The front of the fuel tank inside the nacelle is just visible behind the engine. 

 

 

 

Both nacelles now attached, they were rigged up with fine EZ Line. I've started adding rigging between the wings, fuselage and nacelles now, which is heavy EZ Line.

 

 

 

Just for fun, I've fitted the outer wings, without the interplane struts. I've not seen any evidence at all of drooping at the joins or along the length of the wings. She's a BIG beast!

 

So that's the current progress, I hope you like her so far! I've been doing a speed build on a P-47 to reset my brain and will be returning to the Handley Page build project in the next few days. Stay tuned for more updates

[Madbox]

Mike, its a fantastic build, a shame it will not see the light of day as a kit for a while, keep up the great work,

be interested to see where its going to live once its done (its bl***y enormous)... LOL

 

Dave

[Rick K]

1 hour ago, seiran01 said:

Cockpit rigging - the fun begins! 

Great work on that rigging!  Cross eyed for sure.  Very well executed.

[rhwinter]

Oh, my, Mike: What a pity it is that this kit was not produced/released! Thank you so much for posting this build-log, here. (Beautifully built, by the way!)