Westland Wasp HAS 1: 1/24th Scale.

[Anthony in NZ]

Very few people could actually do this I am sure!  I dont think you're human.....c'mon, admit it!

[TheBaron]

Good morning all.

Another in the series 'A little bit of progress on...'

 

On 6/17/2024 at 12:29 AM, Anthony in NZ said:

Very few people could actually do this I am sure!  I dont think you're human.....c'mon, admit it!

 

01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101101 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 01101110 01110100 01101000 01101111 01101110 01111001 !!!!

 

With the seating on the Wasp completed focus has switched onto the control systems clustered in various locations around the pilot. There's plenty of scope for error here in ensuring that the cyclic or tail rotor pedals look almost-but-not-quite-correct-enough to stand out like a sore thumb in the completed context if wrong.

 

Having spoken before about the unreliability of wide angle lenses in enclosed spaces I needed a procedure to ensure that these features all agree with the real thing in terms of size, angle and location: not for the first time in life a book from the past came to the rescue. Over twenty years ago I picked up an Italian book entitled 'Modulo Sperimetale Libero' in a secondhand bookshop near Richmond station in London. The Pio Manzu Research Centre produced it in 1970 to document a visual research project for FIAT about the volumes occupied by the human body in various positions inside a range of vehicles. Drawings such as this in the book immediately sprang to mind when I was pondering what to do about creating an accurate arrangement for the various controls inside the Wasp:

 - and so I simply copied this methodology of using the human body as a base reference by incorporating a reference mannequin downloaded off the web:

This then enabled me to place those various controls shown here in red in their correct relationship to the pilot. Seen from above, you can see why this step was so vital in such a confined area:

In the narrow channel to the left of the pilot are both the rotor brake and collective arm, along with the wheel brake to the right - vitally important to get correct not just in themselves but because I couldn't finalize a mounting process for the seats in the completed kit until being sure that the surrounding dispositions of equipment were accurate. With that done, these designs are now completed so that during assembly, the seat part can be easily slid down into corresponding registration recesses in the cabin floor:

As it is helpful in defining a visual reference for the size and position of the various control fittings on the cockpit floor forward of the pilot, I added the nice shiny red fire extinguisher:

This in turn then let me correctly position the base of the protective 'boot' of the cyclic between it and a placeholder for the tail rotor pedal box beneath the IP:

That pedal box then morphed into something more elaborate with some attention to detail:

The pedals themselves sit inside each of those channels and are connected to a crank/control rod mechanism through the cabin floor. As none of that structure will actually be visible I terminated the pedals in a simple mounting block inside each channel to make for easy and accurate part assembly:

On the real thing there's a long thin brush on either side of each channel which I assume is there to prevent dirt and debris entering the control runs below. Such a feature will be better rendered by cannibalizing a cheap flat-head paint brush when building this part of the kit. The upper loops of the pedals will be PE for strength:

That pole in front of the pedals is the upright of the IP support framework:

Although a bit premature at this stage from a detailing point of view, you can see that I've blocked-in the dials for the main IP instruments. This was a vital to do as surface details of that kind serve to establish if the panel is of the right shape and size. From the additional drawing work to the right hand side you can see I hadn't go things quite right. Necessary changes were made to the profile on that end before adding in the rest of the support framework behind (or is that 'in front of'?) the IP:

The angled brace of that structure mounts directly into the coaming below the pilot's windscreen, for which a locating recess has been added here:

When you look at the IP from the pilot's point of view it doesn't actually appear as if you need worry about showing very much of that detail due to the wraparound cover on the top and side of the IP. Cees Hendriks' excellent image of a RNN Wasp quite clearly undermines this notion in displaying just how much of the IP's reverse is actually visible from the front:

Just discernible through the windscreen reflections in that image is the mounting bracket for the flare gun. More accurately this is designated a 'No.4 Mk.1' signal pistol, clip-mounted to the right of the IP on the pilot's side:

For unfathomable reasons I've been dying to build that part ever since I first saw it illustrated in the Wasp's parts manual nearly two years ago! The actual flare cartridges for the pistol are stored in the rear of the central console, which confusingly comes in two variants that I'll describe when I get onto that feature in due course.

 

An additional benfit of getting the locations of the various controls finalized was correcting that 'scalloped' recess in the rear cabin floor so that - as you can see - it now correctly accomodates the base of the rotor brake handle off the centreline of the cabin where I initially had it:

Still detailing to produce for the cyclic, collective, and both brake handles but attention at present is going to remain up front on the pilot's IP:

Specifically: generating the pilot-facing instrument dials along with their corresponding projections forward toward windscreen:

That'll come next time so I'll leave you for the present with renders of recent additions:

 

 

 

As always, the very best of luck in your own projects and see you for the next chapter of:

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2024 by TheBaron

[Anthony in NZ]

14 hours ago, TheBaron said:

01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101101 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 01101110 01110100 01101000 01101111 01101110 01111001 !!!!

 

Knew it!

Not much gets by me I tell ya....

Another masterful update indeed Mr 01111001

[Archimedes]

Tony

 

In addition to your incredible CAD skills I do wonder just how much computer horsepower you are deploying for the master assembly of this bird! 

 

This is look absolutely top notch. I know how much time CAD can absorb so well done on the progress!

 

Kind regards,

Paul

 

 

[TheBaron]

It's the weekend so no excuse for not updating the Wasp.

 

On 7/1/2024 at 1:28 AM, Anthony in NZ said:

Knew it!

Not much gets by me I tell ya....

You're a better man than me then Anthony. A lot gets by me these days! 

On 7/1/2024 at 2:59 AM, Archimedes said:

In addition to your incredible CAD skills I do wonder just how much computer horsepower you are deploying for the master assembly of this bird! 

Thanks for your kind comments Paul and apologies for not replying to you sooner.

 

It's not top of the range stuff I use by any chalk:

The core of the system is that Dell XPS 13 notebook on the stand. I picked that up renewed (brand new the price was too eye-watering) off Amazon a couple of years back. A lot of people are surprised you can use something this small for large CAD projects but this one is plugged into an EGP (black box to the right of it) via Thunderbolt, which contains a (quite old now) Nvidia RTX2080 gfx card. That provides extra grunt in the processing dept. as well as spreading the workload over the two larger monitors. Even so, Fusion360 is slowed by the sheer size of the Wasp designs now.

 

This sort of combination gives you the best of both worlds: processing power at the desk with the flexibility of a notebook you can carry around.

 

The most important studio item though is a Gaggia Classic coffee machine, without which nothing would happen...

 

As the time had arrived to begin filling in the blank slate of the IP, it's no surprise that the reference mosaic for it has grown considerably:

Photos of the Wasp taken from the front clearly show that a lot of the casings for the instruments on the IP are visible through the front windows, so the job was divided into instrument dials first, so that the corresponding protrusions of said features would be in the right locations.

 

Believing it always best to start with the biggest and most complicated item first, the G4F compass opened procedings:

Oblique close-ups of the IP showed considerable variations in surface relief which needed to be accounted for in the design for this, similarly with the dial for the the STR40 radio altimeter:

The twin bulb features right below the altimeter are auto/manual magnetic indicators for the flotation gear - readily seen on the real thing due to their prominent striped markings.

 

With that visual baseline sorted, the other dials soon began to spread across the surface:

From a distance these dials look broadly similar but closer-in you notice a lot of variation in bezel profile and raised/recessed elements. The process of repeating these variations was rather numbing after a while so I didn't bother documenting progress until all the dials were on:

This appearance matched the illustrations in PNs but as you all know full well, it's not uncommon in the modelling game for such satisfactions to be swiftly eroded is it? In my case it was that I simply couldn't reconcile reference photography with the labelled PN diagrams of the IP!

 

More specifically, photos of various aircraft showed several items like the collective pitch indication and toquemeter in different locations. In others, some items were missing and even a blanking plate cropping up from time to time. To make things even murkier there was one dial in the PNs that wasn't even labelled, whilst boxes would come and go from the top of the dashboard with considerable frequency.

 

I knew of course that aircraft can receive Mods over their lifetime and that over time preserved airframes might end up missing parts or not having them put back in the right order. Accurately reproducing XT778 though (which I'm building here) required me to be as certain as possible that things matched the period 1976-1980 during which she served as the flight Wasp on HMS Ambuscade.

 

From past experience I knew that deeper research was the only route so I basically read the PN's through from cover to cover. Sure enough answers began to emerge. The key lay in cross-referencing the Mod index at the front of the PNs with relevant descriptions of instruments and equipment scattered throughout the text (more specifically, Chapter 5, 7 & 8). The text of the PNs is actually at odds with the IP illustrations or, put a better way perhaps, the illustrations should only be treated as the initial production layout for these features. Care should be taken in altering this layout to reflect those individual features which were subject to later modification via the Mods described in the written notes.

 

The corrected* IP layout incorporating these Mods should look like this (minus the rhomboid at the top which orignally housed the collective pitch indicator):

-and the labelled version:

The G4F compass is mislabelled as Mk.4F above (apologies) whilst the dial I mentioned as not being labelled in the diagrams at all was identified in the text as a Mk.6J standby artificial horizon unit over at the right hand side.

 

When you spend a long while looking at instruments on the Wasp you notice a certain moral tone to affairs:

Anyhow, instruments in place in convincing order, I began adding their forwards-protruding casings, commencing with the aforementioned standby AHU bottom right corner:

The eventual result of these labours:

Holes have been left as you can see for the wiring to be added later during assembly, as well as those openings in the console pillar into which many of those wires feed. I didn't feel that the tubular support framework for the IP would in itself be strong enough to support it in scale form so used a little sleight of hand in extending a couple of the instrument casings further forwards to turn them into mounting 'pins':

Those will be invisible in the completed kit so only you know they're there...

 

In place of the old location of the collective pitch dial at centre-top of the IP now goes the PTR 466 IFF unit:

On a shelf directly to the left of this unit is the fuzing control unit for the torpedoes:

More formally known as the AUW presetter, this unit allows for things like setting initial search and floor depths, as well as torpedo selection and confirmation of commands.

 

Both photos and PNs show that care needs to be taken in this instance as there are two different versions of this unit. The Mk.1/2 could only handle the Mk.44 torpedo whilst the newer Mk.46 torpedo was controlled by a Mk.3 unit which could handle both variants. Lacking photographic evidence as to which  AUW unit XT778 carried, I went with the Mk.3 on the basis that this photo taken of her on Ambuscade in the period 1976-78* clearly shows her lugging a Mk.46 around:

^{Image credit: David Marchant}

Next were the side panel and protective shroud for the IP to take care of:

That unholy conjunction of compound curves and angled surfaces rendered this a nightmare to gproduce in CAD form but after several false starts it was eventually subdued and incorporated into the support frame so that the whole ensemble can be printed as a single unit to help with accurate assembly later:

On top of that shroud directly in front of the pilot he has a bug-eyed and very alarmed face shouting at him:

This is in fact PHI (pilot's heading indicator) which originally had been located on the left side of the IP but which post Mod 5171 was relocated to where you see it now on top of the shroud. Written descriptions in the PNs outline the manner in which this instrument allows the pilot to keep the heading of the helicopter aligned with the direction in which the missile aimer has the APX missile sight pointed. 

 

Due to the thinness of the parts concerned I built a little concealed shelf below the shroud on the front side of the IP allowing this PHI to be more securely mounted during construction:

The shelf itself should be invisible on the completed model:

The finished IP amongst its neighbours:

A bit closer in and you can see why the curvatures of that shroud took so long to get right in three dimensions:

After a break to get over all of that, things will move next to the left side of the cabin where I'll start adding in all the control boxed for the missile system prior to beginning work on the APX/BEZU sight in the roof. This is a picture of said region my youngest Raph took back in 2012 when he was about 8 and got to sit in a Wasp at Yeovilton:

That's me arms folded in the background doing what parents always do when they're dying for a coffee and their offspring show no signs of moving ...

 

A summary of progress-to-date in rendered form:

 

 

 

All the very best until next time.

Tony

 

*Mark Piacenti has this excellent period view of her on Ambuscade in 1979 carrying AS.12s as well:

 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2024 by TheBaron

[Archimedes]

Hi Tony

 

Superlatives feel a little inadequate at this point! Fabulous progress! Even your posts on this subject must take quite some time. Getting everything right on the IP alone is a mammoth task in itself as you have demonstrated. Your fidelity to the subject is phenomenal. I wonder which compromises the print process will force when it comes to the model itself. I can see however that this is going to be phenomenal at 1/24 and 1/32.

 

Thank you for outlining your computer set up - yes the graphics card definitely helps. A prediction: if Fusion is slowing now with the assembly as it is, will you need additional or a replacement graphics card? 

 

Thanks for coming back to me Tony - this whole project is absolutely fascinating!

 

Kind regards,

Paul

[Derek B]

Utterly amazing and mind blowing work Tony - your CAD work alone is a valuable tome in its own right for any serious modeller of the Wasp helicopter.

 

Derek

[TheBaron]

On 7/13/2024 at 4:13 PM, Archimedes said:

I wonder which compromises the print process will force when it comes to the model itself. I can see however that this is going to be phenomenal at 1/24 and 1/32.

A valid question and one of the first questions I face on each project Paul.

 

3D printing is certainly more flexible than plastic-injection in terms of the kinds of parts which it can produce - either in isolation or combined into units. Beyond this, my primary design principle is that no part should look visually-exagerrated (areas like cockpits or undercarriages are classic examples I see on kits with parts made too chunky on grounds of strength or unnaturally constrained due to limitations of the moulding process). 

 

No single material is capable of performing all that is required for a subject in my experience (as the prevalence of PE aftermarket for plastic injection kits indicates) so where the required levels of strength aren't provided by resin on say a thin part, I'll use brass.

 

One area on the Wasp here on which I didn't use brass and (which resin was insufficient for) are the blade forks. For those I learned how to cast aluminium (which delayed the project for a few months):

As a result, both the 1/24 & 1/32 versions of the kit will come with aluminium as well as PE parts:

On 7/13/2024 at 4:13 PM, Archimedes said:

A prediction: if Fusion is slowing now with the assembly as it is, will you need additional or a replacement graphics card? 

The man's a mind-reader! 

Am just working out how to run a more modern gfx card by herself under 'household expenditure' as we're currently getting a new shower unit fitted....

On 7/13/2024 at 4:13 PM, Archimedes said:

Thanks for coming back to me Tony - this whole project is absolutely fascinating!

No problem Paul - it's always a pleasure sharing ideas with like minds.

On 7/14/2024 at 10:04 AM, Derek B said:

Utterly amazing and mind blowing work Tony - your CAD work alone is a valuable tome in its own right for any serious modeller of the Wasp helicopter.

Most kind of you Derek: I've been fortunate to not only receive technical information from RN personnel who worked on these helicopters, but also other modellers going and taking photos of different parts of the Wasp for me, so it's a debt of honor to share that knowledge on with the modelling community.

Edited July 15, 2024 by TheBaron

[Archimedes]

Egads! You have had to learn aluminium casting! I hope you are using all of that lovely free aluminium contained in soft drink and beer cans? 

 

More seriously: I get why you had to learn this. I fully agree on the multimedia necessity of really accurate miniatures.  

 

Good luck on getting the budget for a new graphics card, the household CFO is always a tough nut to crack when there are ‘infrastructure’ projects needing spend!

 

Kind regards,

Paul

[TheBaron]

25 minutes ago, Archimedes said:

I hope you are using all of that lovely free aluminium contained in soft drink and beer cans?

I thought the very same at first Paul but soon learned from frustrating experiences that you need aluminium of a much higher level of purity in order to avoid poor quality castings. Old engine parts are one of the best sources of 'free' aluminium in this regard. Luckily I've a son who's a mechanic....

Edited July 15, 2024 by TheBaron

[Archimedes]

11 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

I thought the very same at first Paul but soon learned from frustrating experiences that you need aluminium of a much higher level of purity in order to avoid poor quality castings. Old engine parts are one of the best sources of 'free' aluminium in this regard. Luckily I've a son who's a mechanic....

I wasn’t being entirely serious Tony. Soft drink cans are actually good shim stock but not for much else. Glad to hear you are getting high quality stock from your son!

 

Kind regards,
Paul

[murtoscope]

Hello there 

I have been waiting for someone to come out with a large scale model of this wonderful visually quirky gem of a helicopter 

What an amazing job you are doing- it is so cool to see the process and the progress 

I have to ask and I might have missed this question/ answer in one of the earlier posts 

Will you be selling copies of the model ? If so please put me on the list !!!

carry on the great voyage 

 

[TheBaron]

Mail first and then onto the main course of this Sunday's lunch:

On 7/15/2024 at 3:54 PM, Archimedes said:

I wasn’t being entirely serious Tony. Soft drink cans are actually good shim stock but not for much else. Glad to hear you are getting high quality stock from your son!

 The same son drinks gallons of Monster whilst he's working on his car in the drive Paul so I have copious supplies of both!

On 7/20/2024 at 11:52 AM, murtoscope said:

I have been waiting for someone to come out with a large scale model of this wonderful visually quirky gem of a helicopter 

It is a crime against modelling that there's never been an acceptable large scale kit of this, as you rightly say Simon, gem of an aerial contraption. PM sent with dimensions of the completed kit for display cabinet purposes. 

 

It's a little known fact of television history that Rod Serling's inspiration for The Twilight Zone series was in fact the inside of the nose on a Wasp as - much like the South Pole-Aitken basin on the moon - it is a region in permanent shadow. This makes it enormously challenging to produce a credible representation of its contents for two overlapping reasons:

1. The maintenance manuals give only *very* limited visual/textual description of the equipment inside of there.
2. Photography gives only very limited viewing angles in through the cheek windows and up under the IP.

Did I mention shadows too? I probably did...

 

I've only a single image actually showing the airframe with the nose access door open to display equipment which, typically for the modelling game, is too low-res to be of use in the accurately depicting various items of equipment.

 

My rule of thumb is to only represent details which are clearly verifiable from photography and maintenance manual drawings. One thing I absolutely refuse to do in my work is to include inaccurate/imaginary items for 'illustrative' purposes; it's better in my view that the representation remain incomplete than to be fictionalized to whatever degree.

 

Before plunging in to the nose there was some unfinished business to deal with on the left side of the instrument console, starting with this small panel sticking out from the right side of the IP:

It looks like the choke handle on an old car and again, none of the photos I have are detailed enough for me to be able to read the labels to describe to you what it's for. I guess every build should have at least one mystery knob...

 

Directly to the right of this is the missile switching box:

This has a small number of controls for jettisoning one - or both - of the AS.12 missiles comlete with their launchers in an emergency. On the left side of the unit that big switch is for cutting the missile control wires when required. Sitting above all this is the rather bulkier box of the missile amplifier:

With four large cables snaking out of the back of a casing covered with heat sink fins my best guess in absence of any PN descriptions is that it may amplify control impulses input by the missileer out along the missile's control wires to the approx 7-8km of the its range. An untutored guess this however. As you can see below in the completed array, the lower box sits at a more acute angle to the crew than the rest of the IP, as reflected in the brackets attaching it to the support frame:

To enable accurate mounting of those two items I devised a 'fore and aft' set of  cutouts which wouldn't weaken said framework unduly in any one place:

Happy enough with progress on the main instrumentation, it was time to move into the shadowlands behind them: 

In Wasps as in life, the simplest policy was to start building from the ground up and straight away, previously unnoticed features over on the port side of the nose became apparent:

A cliche perhaps but how often do we as modellers examine photos and never notice a particular detail until the moment we come to build things around it? This feature (which appears to be runners for removal/installation of the battery) was no exception:

For printing purposes this had to be a separate part. You quickly start to see how asymmetric the front part of the cabin floor is:

From the highly limited descriptions in the manuals nearly all the gear inside the nose seems to be rlectrical in function. I've been told by an ex-helo mechanic that the rubber rings on those four big mounting pillars in the floor are there for anti-vibration purposes. With the battery installed you can now see the function of the aforementioned runners:

The battery itself is a large alkaline affair provided on the real thing in two versions: a larger capacity unit for offensive operational flying and lower capacity one for ferry duties. An equipment shelf runs directly above it:

On the real thing this attaches to two longitudinal ribs on either side of the nose however that's not feasible as an assembly strategy in kit form: I added a locating tab to fix itfirmly into place on the front side of the central instrument console during construction.

In absence of visual data in the maintenance manual, additional items like this large box with a single terminal on the end of it have been reconstructed from photos without me being able to describe their function to you:

On the girder directly below this unit nestles another mystery electrical fitting:

Of equal obscurity is another black box which sits directly above it on the equipment shelf:

Items such as this are necessarily present because you can see a small part of them in photos which reveal details under the IP, otherwise they remain necessarily incomplete on those sides hidden by the nose or in shadow. The mounting slot in the other end of the shelf is for adding this convoluted box of electrical components that would do H.G.Wells proud:

Design that part required correlating the very basic drawing in maintenance manual with glimspes of it visible in photos from under the IP on the port side. The only item which you can clearly see in photos looking up under the IP on the pilot's side are these two prominent resistors with perforated casings:

They're easy to see in photos and clearly labelled in the manual as Teleflex/Teledyne units; hopefuly those perforations on them will reproduce in 1/24, though perhaps not at 1/32.

 

The effort required to correspond a sparse number of visual references with limited data in the maintenance manuals made this a very slow section of the project to develop. Thankfully though these proved sufficient to ensure that any of those bits which peek out into view in photos of the real thing will also be present in kit form.

 

The obligatory beauty pageant of rendered views to finish in summary:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do hope your summers are going ok in both the modelling and non-modelling aspects of life and thanks - as always - for looking in.

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 28, 2024 by TheBaron

[TheBaron]

Almost a month gone by and probably more time than is helathy spent squinting into the shadowed corners of a helicopter in search of elusive details.

 

Before ploughing on with recent developments, a brief sidebar in that experience with different resin formulations over the course of the last year or so has  - along with the additional confidence that VDT has brought to the table with more sophisticated printing-support processes - allowed me revisit some earlier design decisions. More specifically I've been able to combine what were previously multiple PE and resin components into more unified assemblies, as in the case of the hydraulic unit on the port side of the engine deck:

Same for the HT unit atop the Nimbus engine:

I'd already tried this previously on smaller sections of the engine and was impressed enough with the results to repeat the process here in order that the subsequent building process for the kit not be discouraging fiddly at the sub-millimetric scale.

 

Back to the present and one especially ambiguous set of structures were these set in semi-shadow (in most photos that even show them!)behind the leg of the support frame:

Although undocumented in the maintenance manual, looking like a domestic cine camera was helpful in reading through the PNs to discover this was an HWR 2 unit:

It's a Hand-Held Passive Warning Receiver: essentially one removes this item from its cradle and waves it in azimuth fashion around the horizon. Detected radar signals are then translated into a varying audio tone over the intercom to indicate direction and strength of signal to within about 10° of accuracy. 

 

Directly in front of it another enigmatic unit is also mounted onto the cockpit floor:

It's a T10K3 Controller for the missile system. I've no idea which control is which to be frank though suspect the smaller switch in front of the large circular feature to be the 6-position rotary one for energising the missiles, igniting boosters & tracer flares, and so forth. I'm not sure which function I have it switched to in the design - hopefully nothing catastrophic....

This unit works in conjunction with the missile guidance arm mounted on the inboard side of the lefthand seat, this latter something which I'll include in due course when dealing with the APX/BEZU sight.

 

Accurately locating such items inside the cabin I provide for using a 0.2mm recess for in the floor in order to act as a guide during the assembly of parts.

 

Prior to commencing work upon the various instrument clusters of the central console, the larger surfaces features were added along each side as these provide useful datum points for the ensuing arrays of smaller features:

You can see the initial drawing process beginning here:

Picking the simplest end and working up the level of complexity in stages, the various lights, switches, knobs were added using a grid structure to triangulate and align them all with one another:

Any open sockets you see left in surfaces like this are so that the individual switches can be added from brass of plastic rod later. Any raised features below 0.4mm in diamater are too fragile to print as part of the overall piece - not because they won't print happily - but because lots would inevitably break off during cleaning, handling etc. That first section shown in the image above contains various switches and indicators for the bomb load. 

 

Next along from it is the Autopilot control panel:

Then we get to the two larger sections which took much longer to get everything accurately aligned due to the sheer number of elements involved. The first of  these two panels have (on the pilot's side) various items such as flare firing, stbd stores selection/fuzing and transponder controls. The opposite side duplicates prt stores selection/fuzing/heating controls along with other items like de-icing/de-misting, telebriefing, and the UHF control panel:

The front-most cluster of controls directly beneath the IP consists of assorted circuit breakers and SWS (warning) lights, nav/anti-collision light switches and so forth:

On the real thing there's a very thin metal plate angling back over the front few items on this instrument cluster. I think this is a glare shield for the SWS and indicator lights directly below it. Being too simple to require designing as PE I'll simply add it in during construction from folded brass sheet.

 

A week's worth of headaches and eye-strain and I'm confident now that every single switch, button and light is accounted for on the console design:

Last of all there was a small rear section to attend to::

This was initially produced separately due to there abeing two different variants of this feature and consequently I didn't want to finalize it as part of the console until exactly sure which of the two should in fact be present.The one fitted on the initial production version of the Wasp was a much deeper unit, housing a bulky hand-held signal lam, along with stowage for six flare gun cartridges. By 1964 however (the date of the PNs I have), Mod 5113 is shown replacing this with the unit shown above. The signal lamp is omitted from the aircraft so that the revised extension now combines two sets of LSBC (bomb carrier) switches with stowage for four flare cartridges instead:

The size of my flare stowage rack openings match the scale bore of the signal pistol - I checked! 

 

The two small brackets directly in front of it are I believe for the crew intercom jacks to be placed in when not plugged into helmets.

 

Up front on the pilot's side of the console sits a handle for the HP fuel cock:

The angular box (with that small circular feature on it) closest to us in the image above is 'stowage for pip-pin collective stop spring box'. These pip-pins are removed from the rotor blade spider arms during the process of folding the blades back along the boom when the Wasp is being prepared to go back in the hangar aboard ship. Attached to the side of this stowage box on the real thing (but too fragile to add as a resin feature here) is a T-shaped handle:

This handle enables the pilot to adjust the yaw pedals to a comfortable distance. Shots of Wasps with dual control fitted yclearly show how this handle along with the associated yaw pedal box is duplicated on the left hand side of the cabin. Also over on the left side of the console sits the inevitable map stowage box:

I have a ton of imagery showing at least three different versions (and counting...) of this feature on various airframes. I picked what seems to be one of the later variants for use here, as it also appears most frequently in combination with that small bracket/switch affair directly in front of it for changing between UHF/VHF functions.

 

On grounds of fragility the map stowage will be a PE component:

A completed console rendered in siolation:

 

 - and with associated fixtures & fittings:

 

You can see what an ergonomic jumble it is inside of there compared to the rationalized spaces of today:

There are to still the fishtails and associated ducting for the demisting system (which sit up against the front windows on either side) and the windscreen wipers to add up front. I'll do them  during final fit-out the inside of the front cabin framework as there's some extra compasses and cabin lighting still to add so it makes sense to combine such related tasks.

 

Next up though it are the collective and cyclic handles, along with those for the rotor and wheel brakes....

 

Until the next one!

Tony

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2024 by TheBaron

[geedubelyer]

Crumbs! 

 

I have no vocabulary to convey my admiration over what you are creating Tony. 

 

My thesaurus is as inadequate as you are talented. 

 

 

Truly astounding.