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Old 10-24-19, 04:06 PM   #1
Fidd
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Default Modelling the Vickers Wellington

This is a slightly disingenuous post on my part, as it's not about the ingame Wellington bomber, but rather an RC one I'm working on. I've just about completed the two FN5 gun-turrets, the research, CAD drawings and building of which has taken nearly 4 years. The eventual intention is to fly the turrets in a model Wellington, taking films from the gunner's perspectives.

The turrets feature:

Fully working collimating gunsight reticules
Fully working pneumatic rams to raise and lower the guns
servo traverse
...and as much detail as I could cram in at 1:4.5 scale.

The turrets consist of over 600 parts each, plus nuts, washers and machine-screws, taking the parts to over 1000 per turret. They involve virtually no glue, so that I could back out of assembly if I hit a show-stopper without damaging the model.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQs...2zKgQW4ASDuh6Q

Just in case anyone's interested.

Tim
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Old 10-24-19, 04:40 PM   #2
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Thank you so much Tim for sharing with the Subsim Community Sir Barnes Neville Wallis will have a rye smile on his face upstairs for sure.
Top Effort indeed
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Old 10-24-19, 06:57 PM   #3
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And Rex Keen! (Barnes Wallace designed the means of contruction, the actual airframe was a tandem effort between Wallace and Keen.)

Cheers, I'll post a few stills if you like in the coming weeks. Of the many films on the channel, the most worthwhile is really the "moving rams", "working gunsight" and the "last look around" ones.
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Old 01-26-20, 12:43 PM   #4
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Since I wrote this I had a very interesting day at Brooklands museum here in the UK. The museum houses the only surviving Wellington which saw active-service, and the same aircraft participated in and returned from, the "Battle of the Heligoland Bight" on Dec 18th 1939. This was a formation "armed reconnaissance" of the Frisian Islands/Wilhelmshaven area by 24 Wellingtons in daylight - a test of the then very high-tech hydraulic FN5 gun-turrets v Luftwaffe fighters.

During the engagement, the Luftwaffe soon realised that the Wellington's defense was very weak to the beam, and 12 of the 24 failed to return or crashed in the UK trying to land damaged aircraft. This pretty much put the tin lid on Bomber Command daylight operations, coming as it did on the heels of massacre of Fairey Battles during the Battle of France 7 months earlier.

The museum at Brooklands, who have kindly answered dozens of enquiries from me on the Wellington and FN5 turrets, asked me to bring my still incomplete model turrets to be part of a commemoration event on the 80th anniversary of the raid. Present were relatives of the aircrew involved, on both sides, with a service at Runnymede (Memorial to missing airmen) before returning to the exhibition at Brooklands. It was a real privilege to meet relatives of gunners and to be able to explain and demonstrate how the turrets operated.

To my complete surprise, - which accounts for my rather poor coherence - I got interviewed by the in-house journalist, which was a little nerve-wracking. Not being what you'd describe as a "striking beauty" I normally efface myself from youtube videos, but had little choice here!



At the moment I'm learning how to use silicone for moulding. I have a ABS 3dprinted plastic pattern arriving shortly, which will be submerged in silicone, and then the void filled with resin and sintered alloy to produce a very hard and heat-tolerant replica of the ABS pattern. This can then have hot acrylic sheet vacuum-formed over the shape which describes the shape within the plexiglass of the turret, at scale. The resultant complex-curved acrylic can then be cut up and bolted to the cupola structure.
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Old 05-17-20, 04:48 PM   #5
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Seeming that this place seems a little moribund, I thought I'd bring people up to speed with my model Frazer Nash FN5 turrets for the future MK 1C "Wellington".

For the last few months I've been completing the silicone plaster-backed mould, and learned to cast using metallised resin. The cast was fine, but I had to do a little filling here and there with car-body filler, and then some weeks sanding it all back with wet-and-dry, finishing it with 2000 grit.

The mould was taken to a local firm who do vac-forming - and then CV19 hit - and not only could I not get there, but they were put onto vac-forming PPE for the local hospitals, so It was nearly 3 months before I could collect the pulled parts. Which is fine - PPE is more important!

The "pulls" of the Perspex - all complex curvatures - arrived a few days ago, as well as some flat sheet for the simple-curved window panels, and I've been cutting up the pulls, and trimming the window panels for the front turret cupola. Each cupola is around a week's effort, as I can't work too long for medical reasons, and each cupola has some 60 bolts, nuts, and clips, to attach the window panels. Very fiddly

There's films of most of the above at my youtube site:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQs...2zKgQW4ASDuh6Q

Attached are the pictures of the glazed front portion, since completely glazed. Note these pictures do not have the brass-straps which are external to the Perspex yet. Nor is the Perspex polished. But it gives an idea.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg ftq1.jpg (91.9 KB, 7 views)
File Type: jpg ftq2.jpg (94.0 KB, 2 views)
File Type: jpg ftq3.jpg (93.0 KB, 3 views)
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Old 05-25-20, 12:25 PM   #6
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Rather than attaching every image, I've started a Flickr account, with 270 pictures documenting the turret builds. The last page has the most up to date pictures. I've not had time to annotate the pictures.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/188620249@N06/page3 (last page)

And I attach a single picture of a completed turret.
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File Type: jpg r.jpg (88.8 KB, 5 views)
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Old 07-02-20, 01:08 AM   #7
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A couple of new films, since the turrets were completed, They've now been salted away prior to efforts commencing to build some prototype shapes in geodetics. To that end, the jig has been extended by 300mm to reflect the scale change from the original 1:4.5 to new 1:3.7 scale. This scale change arose due to concerns as to clearance between the outside diameter of the planned engines and the cowls. The change in scale may also assist in getting rivetting tools into gaps in the alloy channel.



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