Westland Wasp HAS 1: 1/24th Scale.

[TheBaron]

Hello all.

Having been pointed to this forum by @Anthony in NZ, I thought I might share the development of a current project I've been working on for several months now, in the shape of a Westland Wasp at 1/24th scale.

 

Up until recently I've not done anything siginificant modelling-wise above 1/72nd scale, so astonished at the quality of work in larger scales which you're all creating on this forum, and which I hope to catch up with in due course.

 

As you'll see from the images below I'm using CAD to create the initial designs from a combination of maintenance manuals and photography, with the bulk of the helicopter being 3D printed. No one medium is entirely capable of reproducing everything however, so glazing will be produced from vacforms and smaller/thinner elements (where strength is at a premium) will be from brass PE and tubing.

 

These have proven the most useful items of historical, operational  and technical documentatioto rely upon for background information on the subject:

 

AP-101C-0601-3A Wasp HAS 1 Illustrated parts manual

 

T. L. Ciastula: The Development of the P.531, The Aeronautical Journal / Volume 68 / Issue 642 / June 1964

 

D. B. Bathurst: Maritime VSTOL — The Development of Small Ship Helicopter Operations in the Royal Navy,

SAE Transactions Vol. 83, Section 3: 740525–740863 (1974)

 

L. B. Bryson, F. E. Heenan, C. A. Johnson: Helicopters in the Royal Navy, The Aeronautical Journal / Volume 76 / Issue 740 / August 1972

 

J. H. Stevens: Scout and Wasp - Westland's All-British Helicopters,  Flight International June 1964

 

Adrian Balch: Westland Scout & Wasp, Warpaint Series No.110, Guideline Publications. 2017

 

Larry Jeram-Croft, Terry Martin: The Royal Navy Wasp: An Operational & Retirement History, Pen & Sword Aviation 2018.

 

I'm currently at the point of having just produced the first batch of test prints which have - inevitably - sent me back into the software to make design revisions to problem areas.

 

For now I'll just put up a representative selection of images showing progress up to the present, and will update with significant developments in due course.

 

Designs to date:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Test prints/fits:

 

 

 

 

So far the fit of parts has been pretty pleasing, although with items like working tail and main rotor folds I'm (unsurprisingly) having to navigate that difficult overlap between visual accuracy and structural strength.

 

Thanks for reading this and I look forwards to talking with you all over the coming weeks!

Kind regards,

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by TheBaron

[LSP_Kevin]

Welcome aboard, Tony!

 

 

That's some marvellous Wasp work there, and a sure sign of the future for scale modelling.

 

Kev

[Landrotten Highlander]

Welcome, and keep up this wonderful work.

[GMK]

Nice work, Tony. Good to have another scratchprinter on the forum. 

[Stevepd]

What a shame, I've just retired from Middle Wallop where there was a wasp and scout at the other end of the hangar. Could have photographed and measured everything.

[KiwiZac]

Oh my Tony, what an intro! Welcome aboard and I'm very, very excited to see your next update!

[Jaro]

Welcome to the forum! Waiting anxiously for the next update.

[brahman104]

Epic start!!! Do you have one in your shed for reference? 

 

Craig

[TheBaron]

On 2/8/2023 at 11:10 AM, LSP_Kevin said:

Welcome aboard, Tony!

Many thanks Kevin! 

On 2/8/2023 at 2:24 PM, Landrotten Highlander said:

Welcome, and keep up this wonderful work.

Will do LH!

On 2/8/2023 at 7:19 PM, GMK said:

Nice work, Tony. Good to have another scratchprinter on the forum. 

Thanks, my friend. I hope to get a good look round and learn from yours and other people's stuff in due course. Working at such a large scale is a new and daunting proposition for me!

I've just been admiring your work on designing tracks and mightily impressed. Apologies for not adding a 'like' there but I don't seem to have that function yet until out of probation I guess... :

On 2/8/2023 at 8:18 PM, Stevepd said:

What a shame, I've just retired from Middle Wallop where there was a wasp and scout at the other end of the hangar. Could have photographed and measured everything.

Very decent of you Steve: I've been blessed however that another forum member here was able to measure a Wasp in NZ for me in some critical regions to act as a baseline. Sounds like you had a great workplace btw! 

On 2/8/2023 at 8:23 PM, KiwiZac said:

Oh my Tony, what an intro! Welcome aboard and I'm very, very excited to see your next update!

Thanks Zac. I seem to recognize that face from somwhere.... :

On 2/9/2023 at 7:58 AM, Jaro said:

Welcome to the forum! Waiting anxiously for the next update.

Many thanks Jaro. 

The design work is currently on hold whilst I'm building a furnace and learning to cast aluminium: there's a couple of features in the rotor hub assembly (blade forks and pitch change arm) which are simnply too delicate to reproduce from resin prints so I'm having to go the metallic route. Will update this thread with first results of the process in due course.

On 2/9/2023 at 8:09 AM, brahman104 said:

Epic start!!! Do you have one in your shed for reference? 

If only Craig! 

Aside from maintenance manuals on a build I generally rely upon a neat little program called Pureref which allows you to organize thematic mosaics of images:

It's not quite the same as a walkaround of the real thing of course but does let you zoom in and out from different viewing angles as required.

 

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by TheBaron

[Iain]

Cracking subject!

 

Iain

[KiwiZac]

4 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Thanks Zac. I seem to recognize that face from somwhere.... :

Slowly but surely I'm learning to see that as a good thing rather than a cause for alarm

[Anthony in NZ]

Heeeey buddy!

Great to see you here (sorry I am late to the party) and welcome to the forums!

Great bunch of guys here and an enormous pool of knowledge.  Your work is sensational and will be very much appreciated by the guys here....I am so glad you joined up!

 

Also great to see a helicopter (we just dont see enough of them) being built.   I know @shark64 Oliver will be pleased to see you here too.

 

Looking forward to your next update my friend

 

Cheers Anthony

[TheBaron]

On 2/10/2023 at 8:57 PM, KiwiZac said:

Slowly but surely I'm learning to see that as a good thing rather than a cause for alarm

21 hours ago, Anthony in NZ said:

Heeeey buddy!

Great to see you here (sorry I am late to the party) and welcome to the forums!

Great bunch of guys here and an enormous pool of knowledge.  Your work is sensational and will be very much appreciated by the guys here....I am so glad you joined up!

 

Also great to see a helicopter (we just dont see enough of them) being built.   I know @shark64 Oliver will be pleased to see you here too.

 

Looking forward to your next update my friend

 

Cheers Anthony

Thanks Anthony! 

First impressions here are that I've a staggering amount to learn about building at larger scales but that I appear to have fallen amongst friends. 

Have been in touch with Oliver already!

 

Guessing I can't start adding 'likes' to people's posts until out of probation...?

Edited February 12, 2023 by TheBaron

[branchline]

Hi there and welcome aboard LSP,

 

Another Kiwi here also based in Christchurch and an ex-Waspie to boot (HMNZS Canterbury early 80s).

 

Great little helo, many memories maintaining them in all sorts of different parts of the world and extreme differences in temperatures and with very few problems keeping them flying. I won't say they were always a joy to work on but they were a pretty simple machine at the end of the day. 

 

Looking forward to watching your progress on this and wondering if you are you intending to produce the floatation "gear" always installed used on RNZN ships when at sea?

 

As a side note, it's been a wee while since I've visited LSP, however the combination of three young granddaughters (who we regularly get to look after), still trying to settle into some sort of a retirement routine, the impact of that blessed C thing, some minor health challenges and the discontinuation of the LSP thread emails as a prompt to take a peek at what's going on here, modelling has slipped off the radar a little, not sure how ended up getting to this thread but I've been thinking about taking a peak here for the last couple of weeks, what better way to get back on board that a thread with a personal connection...   

 

And for Anthony, must be time for that coffee...

 

BRgds Brent 

[TheBaron]

On 2/12/2023 at 9:40 PM, branchline said:

Looking forward to watching your progress on this and wondering if you are you intending to produce the floatation "gear" always installed used on RNZN ships when at sea?

Hi Brett!

Yes - I'm building this as XT778 from HMS Ambuscade, of which there are some great shots of their Wasp here showing it with the floation gear in place:

http://www.ambuscade.org.uk/Images/Slideshows/David Marchant/album/index.html

 

For a long time I wasn't sure which actual Wasp subject  I wanted to build - I liked the 'classic' torpedo loadout yet have a bit of a fetish about building that APX/BEZU sight used for the AS.12 loadout; however I always assumed that combination was mutually exclusive until seeing this photo of XT778 with both torpedo AND sight. Now I can combine both it seems without appearring inauthentic...

On 2/12/2023 at 9:40 PM, branchline said:

what better way to get back on board that a thread with a personal connection...   

Indeed - it's great to meet someone like yourself with first hand experience, so please don't hesitate to call out my mistakes! 

 

A quick update to explain why progress will be a little slow on this phase of the build.

 

It's largely down to this:

Yep. The blade-fold.

 

At this larger scale I have the luxury/hubris of trying things I couldn't at smaller sizes, so here I want the blade fold to be a working mechanism, along with the tail-fold. In actual fact this doesn't add much in the way of additional complexity to the build as even in static form I would be having to solve identical problems of part strength. The key vulnerable area turns out to be the fork into which the main rotor blades fit:

You can see above the basics of the folding mechanism, whereby a locking pin is removed to enable the blades to pivot back in the fork toward the support cradle, whilst at the same time 'pip-pins' on the spider of the pitch change arms are removed to allow two of the blades to be tilted down in pitch as well to fit into the cradle like so:

Even though UV resin can be much stronger than it appears, it's nowhere near strong enough for the 'fingers' of said fork to support the weight of the blades without making them grossly oversize or filling in areas which should be clear, so I'm going to experiment with casting the forks from aluminium for strength.

 

Never tried this before, hence the slow pace, but at least the furnace is now built, from an old gas cylinder:

 

 

In additon to work on this, I've been making further adjustments to the CAD designs, based upon results of the initial test prints:

As with the blade forks, the hinges of the tail-fold also turned out to be too frail in resin alone so you can see in the above shot that I removed the lower part from both top and bottom hinges and cut slots instead for 0.4mm thick brass PE to be provide a much stronger solution:

With the same process now used as well on the complementary hinge on the tailcone side of the fold:

Once fitted together that combination should provide the required level of strength without disturbing visual authenticity:

These unsightly bars across the centre:

 - will be hidden on the finished thing behind the bulkhead on each half of the tail-fold:

Thanks for looking in and more as it develops.

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2023 by TheBaron