John Woodfield PSS Hawker Sea Hawk

[Phil Cooke]

some complex shapes there Phil!  Great building!

[Saint 1]

19 hours ago, Phil Cooke said:

some complex shapes there Phil!  Great building!

Thanks Phil, I only hope those complex shapes don't prove too much of a challenge for me at the glassing stage 😄

[Phil Cooke]

No dont worry about that, you'll find the glass and resin will take all the compound curves just fine, its sharp 90deg corners it doesnt like, you have to use panels and patches then. 

[Saint 1]

The end is in sight (of the build stage at least!)

 

The nose.

After some further advice from Harry Twist I opted to laminate the nose with balsa sheets clocking their grain direction by 90 degrees each layer. Before gluing the laminates together I drilled three dowel holes through the first layer and into the fuselage former so that I could easily align and then remove the nose during the shaping process.

 

 

 

I cut cardboard templates for the vertical and horizontal axes, sanding these first before rounding off the remainder of the profile. I applied masking tape to protect the fuz whilst sanding, only then removing it for the final blending of the nose and fuz.

 

 

 

 

Using a combination of drill and Dremel I cut a suitably sized recess into the rear of the nose to accommodate some wheel weights for later balancing.

 

 

 

Some further drill and Dremel work was required to create the intake? on the tip of the nose.

In both cases I found the laminate layers made it easy to cut the recesses to a consistent depth.

 

 

Wing attachment.

Whilst I had previously devised a method of securing the inboard end of my carbon wing joiners I had yet to secure them into the wings themselves. The easy option would have been to simply glue them in but Captain Paranoia kept asking me what would I do if the tube was ever to get damaged and require replacement? So I decided to pin them in place with masonry nails cut flush with the balsa wing skins. The idea is that being made of steel I will be able to locate them again in the future using a magnet, carefully grind through the upper and lower glass skins to expose the ends and then tap them out, thus releasing the tubes. Chances are if the carbon tube is that badly damaged then I guess the wing might well be scrap too but hey ho!

 

 

 

Cut off nail visible in the starboard wing in the foreground with the port wing one located with a magnet in the background.

 

 

The canopy and cockpit

When I looked at the mould lines on the canopy it soon became apparent that the fuselage cut-out was going to be too deep along each side. Part of this issue may be as a result of my choice to plank the fuselage in 3mm balsa rather than 1.5mm.

 

 

So I decided to build it back up again with balsa and then sanded back to match the canopy mould lines more closely.

 

 

 

I made a frame for the canopy using 3mm ply

 

 

To make the canopy a little more realistic I decided to cut the rear of it away and then added a balsa fairing piece onto the fuselage in its place. In hindsight the fairing would have been more scale if it were a little smaller but at the time I sized it to suit the canopy mould lines.

 

 

 

I’m thinking I will probably secure the canopy in place using a locating dowel at the front and magnets to the rear.

Andy Meade provided me with one of his superbly produced pilot figures, the level of detail is amazing. I’m hoping he may be able to provide me with an ejector seat at some point too 

 

 

I've had to dress two of the fuselage formers away a little to give him a chance of fitting without losing an arm but he may well have to leave his boots at home, I'll be needing that space for the battery 

 

 

Rx battery

I found that a 6V 5 cell AA NiMH battery pack would fit nicely against the front bulkhead and made a Velcro strap to secure it. I’m hoping to be able to make the pilot and seat removable to allow access to both the battery and the receiver which will be further back behind the pilot.

 

 

Not quite sure where to position the switch just yet, on my Correx builds I would simply install it in the fuselage side but I may opt to install it inside the fuz on this occasion.

 

Arrester hook

After some rummaging in the scrap bins I was able to fashion something resembling an arrester hook, using some 4mm carbon rod, balsa, a few magnets and a piece of brass tubing flattened to form the hook itself.

 

 

 

I cut the fuselage away to suit, then added a 0.8mm ply skin and inserted the corresponding magnets.

 

 

 

 

The weigh-in.

I made up the servo linkages and with the radio gear and pretty much everything else installed thought I would get an approximation of how much nose ballast was going to be required.

 

 

 

The CG point shown on the plan seems a bit conservative so I used the rcplanes.online cg calculator and determined a more rearward position based on 10% static margin. Achieving this in the planes current state of build requires 240g of nose weight. With the nose being glued on prior to glassing any potential additional weight will then need to be placed within the cockpit. AUW as it stands is now circa 2.4kg (5lb 4oz). Now I don’t know whether or not this is normal but over the course of this build I seem to have virtually emptied a 500g bottle of aliphatic resin so that will account for some of the AUW I guess 

 

 

Nearly ready for glass!

There’s still a bit more work to do within the cockpit and one or two more detail features to be added in due course but I am now getting pretty close to the glassing stage so there’ll be much for me to learn on that front.

I also need to decide on the finished colour scheme, one that will be easy to orientate the plane when in the sky would be a bonus. If anyone has any suggestions then please post up some pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2023 by Saint 1

[Mike Chantler]

Looks fantastic 🤩

[MikeQ]

Looking good.  You sure you’ve  never bashed balsa before ? 😀

Edited August 5, 2023 by MikeQ

[Saint 1]

Thank you both.

I've dabbled with balsa on and off over the years, built up one or two ribbed wings and made a fair few balsa noses for my Correx jets but never anything on this scale. This is the first time I've ever planked a fuselage and will be the first time I'll glass one too.

I've placed my order for the glass and resin from Fighteraces so it won't be too long now before the fun begins 🙂

[Mike Chantler]

16 hours ago, Saint 1 said:

will be the first time I'll glass one too.

I've placed my order for the glass and resin from Fighteraces so it won't be too long now before the fun begins 🙂

 

The first time I glassed a fuselage I made a complete mess of it, it kind of bubbled up all over the place, had several goes and it just got worse, turned out that I was using too much epoxy, wasn't until second build that I realised what i had been doing wrong(!) Very frustrating as I had spent quite a bit of time shaping and sanding (not as good as yours mind you).

[Saint 1]

On 08/08/2023 at 13:09, Mike Chantler said:

 

The first time I glassed a fuselage I made a complete mess of it, it kind of bubbled up all over the place, had several goes and it just got worse, turned out that I was using too much epoxy, wasn't until second build that I realised what i had been doing wrong(!) Very frustrating as I had spent quite a bit of time shaping and sanding (not as good as yours mind you).

A certain Mr. Cooke is going to give me a demo on how he does it so I'm hoping not to make too much of a mess of mine.

[Saint 1]

This week has been mostly a week of gathering information, materials and a little more knowledge so there's not too much to show for my efforts.

 

I decided to get in touch with Callie at Callie-graphics.com to see whether she might have any graphics available for a Sea Hawk since I couldn't see anything listed on her website. By good fortune she did have 1 file available of the Sea Hawk that until very recently had been at Cornwall Aviation Heritage Centre - WV798. I placed an order for a set of 1/8 scale graphics and so that has decided for me which version of the Sea Hawk I was going to try to emulate. Apparently, delivery time can be anything from 3 to 7 weeks currently, a fair old wait but still in time for our mid-October Orme meeting which is a nominal target date I have set myself for this build.

 

I installed 240g of weight into the nose and have now glued it in place, more weight will undoubtedly be required in order to achieve the plan's CG point, the remainder will have to be placed inside the cockpit opening up against the front bulkhead (in front of the rx battery).

 

 

A fair bit of filling was required, primarily to smooth out the blend areas between the wings, wing fairings and fuselage. I used Upol Dolphin glaze for this, something I have used previously on many of my Correx builds, it sands easily and leaves a nice smooth finish:-

 

 

 

 

 

This week I had the very good fortune to pay a visit to Phil Cooke's 'hangar' for a demo on glassing which I found immensely informative - Thanks Phil, I owe you. 👍 You are so much more organised than I will ever be!

I already have the glass and resin but have since placed orders for various other useful tools too so once they have all arrived I will be able to make a start on the glassing myself.

 

Unfortunately there doesn't currently appear to be a suitable 3D print file available for an early ejector seat - (I was needing a MK1 or Mk2) so whilst waiting for things to arrive I've had a go at making one. Every photo I found on the net seemed to vary so what I've created is a somewhat simplified amalgam of all of them but predominantly something like these:-

 

 

 

I sketched round my pilot figure and then drew a seat profile to match and started blocking it out with balsa.

 

 

I added some sides using some 0.9mm ply.

 

 

Then after some sanding and using various bits like biro tubes, electrical wire and flat carbon strip ended up with this:-

 

 

It's missing a fair bit of detail but I'll probably just add some harness straps between the pilot's shoulders and seat now and leave it at that. I made the two pull handles from brown electrical wire with some 2mm wide Tamiya masking tape wrapped around.

 

 

 

Fitting the pilot's arms is going to need a little thought as he's a bit of a tight fit and I want to make him and the seat easily removable for access to the receiver and battery. Once I've figured that out I'll then need to make a little joystick for him too.

 

The next little job after that will be to make an instrument binnacle... 

 

[Saint 1]

I’ve made some good progress over the past week or two so thought it was time for another update...

 

I made a joystick from some random pieces I found; a rubber bung, some tubing and electrical wire and then fashioned the grip from a blob of car body filler.

 

 

I decided to attach the canopy frame using a dowel at the front and two magnets at the rear which seems to work quite well. I also intend letting the canopy overhang the fuselage rear fairing by a few mm to aid location too.

 

 

In the absence of any nice 3d printed item I’m going to use a photo for the instruments as I have done many times previously on my Correx builds. I couldn’t find a suitable image of the instruments for my specific Sea Hawk but found one similar. I printed off an interim paper copy at a suitable scale and then used it as a guide for making the instrument binnacle.

 

 

As well as making the binnacle I added some extra strips of balsa along each side to provide more surface area for gluing the canopy...

 

 

And then made something resembling the unit that sits on top of the binnacle, I’m not sure exactly what it is other than some form of head up display and it may even be unique to the aircraft from where the cockpit photo has come because every aircraft I look at seems to be slightly different 

 

 

 

After doing those little bits I finally had everything I needed to make a start on the glassing.

Initially I tried using the kitchen scales to weigh out the resin and hardener but soon realised they weren’t up to it, only measuring to 1 gram. So I bought a better set that measures down to the nearest 1/10 of a gram.

 

 

I made a tentative start on the control surfaces, starting with the ailerons, underside first followed by the upper sides the following day.

 

 

Thanks to Phil Cooke’s earlier tutorial the rest of the bits and pieces all came along in no time. I found I was having to mix 2.5 times the weight of resin/hardener combined to that of the cloth which is more than Phil had been doing but it seemed to work for me.

 

 

I then moved on to the tailplane, fin and canopy fairing.

 

 

 

 

After blending the various cloth overlaps I was in a position to make a start on priming the wings and control surfaces. I used a high build primer to better fill the weave of the cloth.

 

 

I found I needed four coats with much sanding in between before I had something like a reasonable finish.

 

 

I couldn’t put it off any longer, I had finally reached the point where I needed to glass the fuselage itself! Phil thought I should be able to cover it in just two pieces; one lower and one upper piece. That sounded like being quite a challenge but Phil was indeed correct. I was more than amazed at how readily the cloth would form around the various curves and recesses and especially so going right into the intake on the tip of the nose.

 

 

 

 

After that I was up for anything so then also applied a single piece right around that little tailfin blob too!

Spraying the wings and control surfaces had been easy enough but I could see that spraying the fuselage was going to be something more of a challenge due to its shear size so knocked up a support frame using any wood I could find and a couple of steel rods (Rover 'k' series head bolts in actual fact ).

 

 

This worked well and I was soon able to get the first coat sprayed. It's starting to look like a plane now.

 

 

I’m now up to the third coat and once again it’s looking like four coats will be the order of the day.

 

 

In between I’ve also managed to prime and get a base coat of black sprayed on to the cockpit parts so things are moving on nicely on that front too.

 

 

In other news my paint order from airbrushes.com arrived this week and amazingly, after barely a week my graphics have also arrived from Callie Graphics, way out in New Mexico, so there should be no stopping me now! There are still one or two more detail items I’d like to add first but other than those it shouldn’t be too long now before I can start spraying the finish colours. 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2023 by Saint 1

[Saint 1]

I made a few more detail items and once again old biros have proved to be a most useful source for such things 

I made the small air scoop on the right hand side over the wing from an old pen top, a little bit of filler and a piece of thin ply and then the wing tip pitot probe from a biro inner, which still had some red ink in so that might prove messy should I ever damage it! 

 

 

 

I also made the two little aerials on top of the fuselage using pieces of snake inners which I made a push fit into some soft close cupboard door buffer pads so like the pitot probe I’ll be able to remove these for transportation.

 

 

 

 

I finally decided where to fit my receiver switch, it’s snug but there’s just room for it behind the ejector seat. It’ll be out of sight but just about accessible with the canopy removed.

 

 

 

With everything in primer it was now time to start with some colour. As per Phil Cooke’s recommendation I decided to use Lifecolor paints from airbrushes.com. After some research and from their ‘Mimetic’ range I used UA095 – Sky for the underside and UA516 – Dark Sea Grey for on top, along with the Lifecolor thinner. Six of each colour and a 250ml bottle of thinner proved about right for the task.

 

 

I used the airbrush and compressor I bought last year for my little Alpha jet build I’ve not had much experience of airbrush spraying, all my previous Correx builds have been finished with rattle cans and/or vinyl so once again I’m on something of a learning curve here. That said it all went reasonably well and before long I had everything painted up in the sky colour. It took 4 or 5 coats to get a consistent even finish.

 

 

 

Initially I had been using a 0.2mm spray nozzle but soon found the larger 0.4mm provided much better coverage. At times I was suffering with a gradual build-up of liquid paint in the nozzle which if left unaddressed would then splatter onto the surface I was spraying so found that soaking this away with paper towel every so often would help. I was mixing the paint like for like with thinner so maybe a different ratio would have helped or different pressures, I was spraying at around 20psi.

With the sky done I couldn’t resist finishing off the arrester hook and applying some gloss.

 

 

After some careful masking it was then onto the grey. The grey seemed to cover so much better than the sky had done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blob on the tail fin was a nightmare to mask. I first masked off the plane and sprayed the whole blob in Tamiya flat yellow after which I then masked off the yellow and sprayed the black. I had a bit of seepage in places so there was quite a bit of touching up required afterwards but it didn’t turn out too badly.

 

 

And then I masked and sprayed the concave exhaust surfaces in silver too.

 

 

I finished my pilot and ejector seat off, making his harness straps by folding masking tape back on itself and cutting the required width and then painting.

Perhaps he could really do with an oxygen mask and maybe a visor too so maybe I'll have a go at that sometime.

 

 

 

I added my instrument photos to the unit I had made previously, after which I was then able to spray and fit the canopy.

 

 

 

The Callie graphics vinyls were a delight to apply. I had to cut some of them where they overlapped the servo covers and ailerons.

 

 

 

 

I was a little fearful when applying the fuselage roundel that the opacity of the vinyl might not have been sufficient when bridging between the grey and sky colours but my fears were totally unfounded. The ridge from my masking between grey and sky can be seen but the colours of the roundel are completely unaffected by the fuselage’s colour change.

 

 

I wanted to add some further detail over and above the Callie graphic vinyls so with some assistance from my daughter in the graphics department we made some additional waterslide decals.

 

 

I printed them onto clear waterslide paper so their colours got dulled down a bit once applied to the fuselage but they look ok nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

 

I decided I wanted to add one or two panel lines, something else I've never attempted. I’m not sure quite how far I’ll go with them yet but for now have added a few around the exhaust, the trim tabs on the rudder and elevators and the flaps on the wings. There’s more still to do on the fuselage. Initially I planned on using some water based ink art pens I had since there was a good range of colours to be had but found they didn't mark that well and smudged all too easily so ended up using a black ultrafine Sharpie instead.

 

 

 

Before finishing the fuselage and whilst the weather was good and warm I chose to spray a gloss finish over everything else instead. I am using Plastikote clear gloss and will probably break into a third can by the time I’m done.

 

 

So here we now have a little SHINY kit of parts, all now ready for assembly 

 

 

All that remains for me now is to finish detailing and then glossing the fuselage and I’ll then be able to put it all together, if all goes to plan I reckon I should have a finished plane by the end of the month. 

[Tosh McCaber]

That's a superb finishing job Phil!  I'd be scared to fly and scratch it (at a minimum!)!  Great lesson in painting techniques!

[Saint 1]

2 hours ago, Tosh McCaber said:

That's a superb finishing job Phil!  I'd be scared to fly and scratch it (at a minimum!)!  Great lesson in painting techniques!

Thank you Tosh, I'm no paint expert by any means and am still learning as I go but if my blog gives others some help and inspiration along the way then that's great. A lesson I learnt this time and forgot to mention in my last post was using newspaper for masking the fuselage when spraying the grey was a bad idea. Some of the print transferred itself onto the sky paintwork, I was subsequently able to clean most of it off but some areas needed another coat of the sky to fully restore it.

And you're absolutely right, I will be extremely nervous come maiden day, landings have never been my strong point 😄

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Stunning work Phil. 😍

[alan p]

Superb job on an iconic aircraft. 👍

[Phil Cooke]

Phil you've done an amazing job with that, great painting and detailing, superb stuff!

[Saint 1]

Thanks chaps, I must admit I'm somewhat pleased with how it's turning out too, I know there are bits that aren't perfect but so long as I don't mess up finishing off the fuselage then it should look pretty good when all together 🙂

[extra slim]

You have got to love this hobby, Phil spends months creating what is inarguably a masterpiece and will then walk to the edge of a cliff and throw it off!!. Beautiful job 

[Harry Twist]

Hi Phil, well done! Stunning effort for a first balsa bash and a fabulous job all round. You've produced an impressive model and also explained it all in an informative and detailed blog as you've moved the build along. Great work.

[Saint 1]

10 hours ago, Harry Twist said:

Hi Phil, well done! Stunning effort for a first balsa bash and a fabulous job all round. You've produced an impressive model and also explained it all in an informative and detailed blog as you've moved the build along. Great work.

Thank you Harry, it wouldn't have been half as good without all the help and guidance I've received from yourself, Phil and all our fellow PSSA gang along the way and of course reference to the invaluable mine of information to be found in all the past mass build blogs.

[Andy Meade]

She's looking lovely Phil, super build 👍

The ridge under the decals can be a pain - Chris Barlow told me about wet sanding your top coat to get rid of this, which I've tried a few times but usually too afraid to go too far!  Of course others may have a good solution for that ridge, but it's the only one I've tried.

Looking forward to seeing this one in the air!

[Saint 1]

6 hours ago, Andy Meade said:

She's looking lovely Phil, super build 👍

The ridge under the decals can be a pain - Chris Barlow told me about wet sanding your top coat to get rid of this, which I've tried a few times but usually too afraid to go too far!  Of course others may have a good solution for that ridge, but it's the only one I've tried.

Looking forward to seeing this one in the air!

 

Thanks for that Andy and thanks for the tip re wet sanding, that’s something I’ll have to consider on any future builds, I’ve not attempted to sand either the sky or grey on this build, they’re both as sprayed (and touched up) prior to me spraying the gloss coat.

 

I’m nearly there with it now, I’ve done all the detailing I intend to and all that remains is for me to spray the gloss coat over the fuselage but the poor weather has now put that on hold until the weekend at least so for now here’s how the rest of the detailing went…

 

I’ve found that marking panel lines on surfaces with compound curves is not the easiest of jobs 

 

There are a series of panels over the top of the fuselage, rearwards of the canopy, two banks of six, they open so I presume they are engine related but I don’t know for sure. I marked them out on the fuselage as best I could using tape and then cut a rectangular hole in an old credit card to then use as a template to draw each panel.

 

 

This went reasonably well barring one or two slips but I got through a number of marker pens in the process. Marking onto the sky colour had previously gone well but the grey colour had dried to leave quite an abrasive finish which I think started clogging the fibre pen nibs.

 

 

I marked an area to position the four gun ports on the underside of the nose, applied the outermost two vinyl stickers we had made previously and then spaced the other two equally between them. That was a mistake, which I’ll come back to shortly 

 

 

With the gun ports applied I was able to draw the panel line around them and then add the panel retainer holes. I drilled a few holes of varying sizes in the old credit card until I found one that looked about right to me and then placed the edge of the card against some tape to ensure each hole was a consistent distance in from the panel edge.

 

 

 

 

Suitably pleased with the result we went on holiday for a week and whilst we were away I did a bit more researching and realised my gun ports weren’t spaced correctly, so the first job when we returned was to carefully relocate them. I had spaced them equally when in reality there are two each side with a much larger gap on the underside.

I managed to rectify things by just relocating the two innermost vinyl stickers without too much drama but then also had to reposition two of the holes as well. I tried using some methylated spirit to remove them which worked to a degree but also spread the ink over a wider area in the process so there was quite a bit of touching up to be done also. So, not the prettiest job but we got there in the end.

 

 

The undercarriage panels are quite noticeable so I wanted to add those too. It took me an entire morning to mark them out and draw them on, the compound curves of the nose being particularly awkward to draw on to. Again, not perfect by any means but I’m glad I’ve given it a go. I also added the continuation of a flap from the wing.

 

 

 

There were a couple more filler cap type features on the top of the fuselage I thought worth adding so with the help of our daughter once more we produced them as waterslides.

 

 

And that is it for me detail-wise, there are a couple of features protruding on the underside of the fuselage that I have chosen to omit as they would invariably get knocked off on landing anyway.

 

With everything else already glossed I have at least been able to build the wings up by adding the ailerons, servos and servo access panels. I put a smear of petroleum jelly around each Robart hinge pin and then secured the body of each hinge in place with super phatic glue which seems to have worked.

 

 

Now I just need a nice calm, warm and sunny day to finish coat the fuselage 🙏

[Andy Meade]

Calm, warm and sunny?! I think we're out of those for the rest of the year!  

Over time, you'll fine you end up with loads of different hatch and cover templates in cardboard that can be use don future builds in all sorts of places.

Panel lines on compound curves are a nightmare.  Thick masking tape gently applied over your paint can work, as can one of those bendy graph rulers that you may have used at school.  They are sort of rubberised with a soft lead core inside that lets them stay in the shape you've formed - you can get them from WHSmiths or Amazon.

[Saint 1]

2 hours ago, Andy Meade said:

Calm, warm and sunny?! I think we're out of those for the rest of the year!  

Over time, you'll fine you end up with loads of different hatch and cover templates in cardboard that can be use don future builds in all sorts of places.

Panel lines on compound curves are a nightmare.  Thick masking tape gently applied over your paint can work, as can one of those bendy graph rulers that you may have used at school.  They are sort of rubberised with a soft lead core inside that lets them stay in the shape you've formed - you can get them from WHSmiths or Amazon.

You may well be right Andy, but I live in hope. I'll give it a week, failing that I'll be making a temporary spray booth in the garage.

I'm sure I still have my school days flexi-curve somewhere, I'll have to dig it out, if it's not perished by now that is 😁