Avro Atlantic C.mk 2

[The wooksta V2.0]

Some shots of my recently completed Avro Atlantic. All courtesy of Falcon - cheers, Chris!

[Gary West]

That's interesting Chris - what was the fuselage before you made it an Atlantic?

[The wooksta V2.0]

No, Chris took the photos!

It's laminated balsawood, cut to shape and sanded, filled with Revell Plasto and about three cans of Halfords primer.

[falcon]

Excellent build there Lee. It certainly is a great looking model.

Here are a few more pics .......

[GrahamEM]

Superb, i bet that takes up some room what scale is it Chris ?

[The wooksta V2.0]

Me name's Lee! Chris (Falcon) took the photos.

It's God's own scale of 1/72, using an Airfix Vulcan as the basis.

[hatchet]

Me name's Lee! Chris (Falcon) took the photos.

Looks great Wook ( )

Balsa eh? I can remember working with that some 20-odd years ago! I'm pretty sure I couldn't do as good a job with it as you did!

[The wooksta V2.0]

And now for the build itself.

The fuselage is laminated balsawood, with a section cut out for the nosewheel bay and a lot of lead inserted. Laminated on the saturday, cut to shape on the sunday and sanded down on Bank Holiday monday in August.

Sprayed with clear lacquer to seal it in and then sections cut out to allow it to sit over the wing spars, a week's worth of filling and sanding commenced, with repeated sprayings with Halfords primer. I mainly used Revell Plasto buit as I seemed to be running out, I used the Italeri filler instead. Big mistake as it's utter f*cking garbage. It shrank and cracked and I could never get a decent surface wherever I'd used it.

Once I was happy with it, the wing centre section was fitted. This was a standard Airfix Vulcan with the centre removed and two spars fitted - one thicker than the other and glued to the backside of the engine compressor faces and the other further back. Disaster almost ensued when I dropped it and one side cracked out. I couldn't get it to sit square and almost threw it off a wall (anger management issues...). However, after I'd calmed down, I simply carved off some of the balsa and fitted the broked side after I'd fitted the centre section to the fuselage.

Then came the next problem. The gap between the fuselage and lower wing section was massive, a yawning chasm that would defeat most mortals. Some plastic card to seal the upper gap, a load of sprue offcuts as hardcore and about half a pack of milliput filled the rest which was shaped whilst still wet with plenty of water and then sanded down the following day.

The tail went on the same day, with the fillet removed from the wreckage of what remained of the Vulcan. It wasn't quite right and I used some more milliput to shape it. The front end looked wrong, so I cut out a section and fitted the clear section from an AWACS for the cockpit "glazing".

More filling, more sanding ensued. I scribed the crew entry hatches and the cargo door, but gave up after several portholes. Too much like hard work. Primer and then the wings went on. More filling, more sanding.

Then spraying. Time to choose a scheme. I love the grey and white scheme with the blue cheatline, but as I'd made a bit of an bottom of the carving (the fuselage isn't quite round whilst in top view it's not symmetrical) I'd decided to go for the DSG/DG/LAG disruptive scheme that the Hercules wore. LAG first, then the DSG. I was also doing a Vulcan as a companion piece and disaster again struck - my compressor was dying...

It got shelved until I could get a replacement but more problems ensued when I did. Suffice it to say, I managed to get another compressor to finish it and on with the green.

Now for markings. Time to choose a squadron. One of the Hercules ones and I got the Xtradecal sheet for the 25th anniversary of the type in service which had all the squadron crests. I selected 36 Sqn, as it had been formed to defend Newcastle. The serial code selected was for one of the final batch of Victors which were cancelled, so it seemed in the right timescale. On with the decals, a day or so to settle and then a coat of satin varnish.

The finish line was in sight, with only the u/c to sort out. Disaster again struck but I wasn't about to allow defeat to snatch me away from the jaws of victory. The problem was that the u/c which I'd taken from the Vulcan had a built in "sit" - the Vulcan is decidedly bottom down with it's nose in the air. I had to clip the supports in place and allow it to find it's own level whilst jacking up the nosegear on plastic rod. Some superglue to hold them in place, I sawed off the scissor links and trimmed them before fitting them back in place. Several coats of gloss black and they were ready to fit. Quickly painted the doors and fitted - 12 midnight on the thursday before Telford.

Now I had to find a box big enough!

[Skii]

Very cool - very imaginative and very well executed

[dswoofie]

I saw this when wandering around Telford on Sunday... very good! I pondered for a while trying to work out what the fuselage was, but couldn't... now I know why! Spotted that the cockpit was from a 707 type, but that was about it...

An interesting concept!

Karl.

[The wooksta V2.0]

And now a shot with it's companion piece to emphasise just how big it is!

[Mike]

It's an impressive display piece isn't it? I wouldn't have fancied being in the rear seats though... the roar of 4 Olympus engines 10 feet away would have deafened the passengers!

[atdb27]

Lee,

What a fabulous model and just love the pics.

What did you do for plans? Scale ups from drawings in various Vulcan books?

Would love to see some underside shots if at all poss please?

Now how would she look with Air Transport Command and blue cheatline on White/Lt Grey?

Adrian

[GreenDragon]

Excellent piece of whatifery Lee!

[The wooksta V2.0]

The plans... I'd found a site somewhere on the web with a seating plan (http://www.chat.carleton.ca/~jnoakes/ram/atlantic.html) and One of the guys on the What If forum sent me a three view, so I blew them up to 72nd. The former I used to make some card templates for use when cutting it out (ironically with the lid of the Vulcan kit that was the donor kit) and the latter to ensure I had the wing/fuselage positioned correctly.

Underside. I'll need to get my new camera sorted out first.

I'll do another in the white/grey scheme at some stage but I really want to do the Vickers V1000/VC7 first.

[robvulcan]

WOW !!! That sure is a cool piece of whiff modelling.

I ways thought of the proposed drawings of the avro Atlantic to be like a delta wing comet.

You made a great job of this, Interesting scheme too. Reminds me of the lizard VC-10.

Thanks for sending me the link. It's ace