1/96 HMCS Bonaventure

[NavyShooter]

A couple of hours of 3D work tonight and I have a set of 3 saluting guns on the printer now....

[NavyShooter]

The bubbling flight deck seems to have been defeated at last.

3 light coats, and a couple of weeks of drying time.

[NavyShooter]

Well, the COOF has caught me, so I've got a week of self-isolation ahead of me, so I decided to start work on the Bonnie's Bridge.

Here is step 1.

Basic layout, and the details gets added from here!

[NavyShooter]

Alrighty....so 6-8 hours of 3D design work translated into 41 hours of printing, and here's the result.

Generally pleased with the outcome - it is a good basis to add some more detail, and the printing process identified some flaws that I have to fix.

[NavyShooter]

About 285mm x 85mm.

[NavyShooter]

My 3D printer has had a bit of a blow-out in the hot end. Parts ordered...but in the meantime, production runs are on hold.

So, I decided to try my hand at putting some decals on....and here's the result. This Banshee is the first of 8 that needs a decal treatment, and I spent about an hour and a half putting these ones on - there's more to come yet.

[Fliger747]

Panther and banshee really interesting periods in Naval Aviation. Closet I got was a friend flew the Cougar. Bit of. Challenging time for the carrier guys, straight decks and a bit higher approach speeds. I dis flight dynamics for flight sim banjo, instead of 90 knot approach it was about 110 knots. To make up for that the view over the nose was very good and no torque. Bad news, waveoff acceleration very bad. 5e good news, I never had to try a waveoff. To help approach was made with speed brake extended to keep RPM up for better spoolup.

Enjoy your project!

[NavyShooter]

I went to a production line system for the decals....wow....there's a lot of 'em!

[Fliger747]

Ah De-Cal-ing, an essential part of a diet! Fortunately a small carrier with a small air group. All part of your creation, one by one!

Enjoy your project! Tom

[NavyShooter]

David,

I'm planning on a 'full' air department, though flexible. 10-12 fixed wing at a time, and 4-6 rotary wing.

At various points in her career, Bonnie had 4 types of aircraft - H04S Helicopter, F2 Banshee, S2 Tracker, and Sea King.

I have found 3D printable models of all of these, and am working towards having a few of each available to put on the deck.

That said - the Banshees and Sea Kings never actually 'shared a deck' on the Bonnie - the Banshees were retired before the SK's came into service in Canada.

I have decals for 8 Banshees, 8 Trackers and 4 Sea Kings, and I will be getting decals for the H04S printed up.

Referencing the pictures I've found - the ship never seems to have operated more than about 10 fixed wing and 4-6 rotary wing aircraft at the same time. Chatting with some of the former crew, they indicated that the ship, while having a 'listed' max aircraft of 28, seldom had even 20 onboard, even with hangar storage.

So, my plan is to have a 'rotating' air det when I sail the ship. Banshees and H04S plus maybe a Tracker or two to represent her 'early' Air Det. Sea King and Trackers to represent her later Air Det.

I found a picture the other day of the Fly-past of the Trackers for the Bonnie's Decommissioning - there were 13 in the picture, plus the 14th being the aircraft that took the picture. At no point have I found more than 12 Trackers in a picture of the ship, and it's usually 8 - often 6 parked on the bow in the deck park, and 2 in the 'work area' of the flight deck.

Having recognized that most aircraft on aircraft carriers had their wings folded at every moment except when at the catapult for launch, or landing...while I had 8x Banshees printed and ready to decal...I had to print 7 more with wings folded. So now I have 15 Banshees...but decals going on 8 of them.

I also had about 8 or 10 Trackers printed, then I found a better 3D model of it, and so I'm printing 8 more of the new version. The old ones were - marginal...good from afar, but far from good due to flaws in the original files, so I threw most of them out.

I have 1 Sea King printed - and was ready to hammer out a few more until my printer had a hiccup last week - parts are on the way and should arrive tomorrow.

The H04S 'demo' print was when the printer had it's problems - so I don't have any of them done yet.

It's a work in progress...each airplane takes about 24-30 hours to print at fine resolution on the printer. Good think I'm not in a rush!

[NavyShooter]

Here's a picture of the first failing print - you can see scorch-marks on the rear of the flight deck of the Bonnie in this little 3D printed model of her.

Then you can see the real failure - the H04S print where things really...well...fell apart.

The bodum tube on the printer was leaking a bit of filament out the top, which was puddling on top of the heater, and then dripping randomly onto the model while printing...what could possibly go wrong there, eh?

New parts arrive tomorrow.

[NavyShooter]

A couple of hours of work last evening with some fiddly bits on a printer (mostly because I didn't bother to read instructions...) then another hour of sorting out alignments, and I have my printer back online again.

Here is the new/improved HOS4 print!

Not perfect, but adding some rotor blades and some paint will make it the best 1/96 scale versions of these available!

[NavyShooter]

Last night I got a couple of hours of work done in the garage - you can see that I put the Bonnie up on the wall temporarily.

She's actually on the Liberty Ship's shelf, but I was working on the Liberty ship last night and needed the bench space.

There will be another lower shelf coming for the Bonnie soon!

[NavyShooter]

I printed Version 5 of the Island last night - it'll be done when I get home from work today.

Some supports to knock off, then it should be good to go!

[NavyShooter]

The Banshees are complete - I have to glue the wings on in the folded position for some of them...but the decals are now coated with about 3 layers of clear gloss paint to seal them in.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out! I can highly recommend Above Below Graphics for Canadian decals! A niche market, but very well filled!

[NavyShooter]

I also finally got around to printing off the landing light platform - here it is in all it's glory! I'm pretty pleased with how this looks!

[NavyShooter]

And...for my next trick....I have some new 3D printed Trackers that need to be assembled, painted, and detailed.

I know that the Trackers usually have 'issues' with being tail heavy, so the plan is to put a lead/copper weight in the nose area (I'll drill a 0.30 hole into them, insert, and glue the 'weights' that I have handy) to give them some home of staying on the deck properly.

Getting the Liberty Ship's new rudder on last evening and getting ships up on the wall means that I actually have space to work on my bench...and having recently cleared out some furniture from my youngest minion's bedroom from my garage, I actually have some space again. Life is good!

[NavyShooter]

Well, I printed off a smaller version of the Island and gave it to a friend for his use and feedback. He's working on a 1/350 scale Bonnie from scratch.

He pointed out that I got some dimensions wrong somewhere/somehow.

In 1/96 scale, it's 29mm short.

That was...a bit of a shock. I thought I might have been out 3-4mm (thickness of two walls) but nope...turns out I'm 29mm off.

Not quite back to the drawing board...I scaled the whole thing up by 11% and that seems to have fixed most of it...it's now 2mm too wide...which is, literally, the thickness of the walls...so...I'm sticking with it.

I spent this evening fixing some other issues with the model, and have generated new print files. Unfortunately, it's now too big to print in one piece, so I'm having to slice it up and will end up gluing it together.

Alas!

On the other hand, having it the right size is a good thing.

NS

[NavyShooter]

So, some additional printing has been going on in the background, and things are progressing.

The Air Det is my current focus - and the Trackers have center-stage for now while I'm printing a new Island.

I've finished assembling and painting them. Each aircraft received approximately 15 grams of lead/copper in the nose to provide some weight, and to balance them so that if they're tipped back onto their tails, they'll return to resting on the nose gear properly.

I also spent a few minutes last evening, having finished the last layer of varnish, and put up the 'boat rack' for the Bonnie - an 8 foot x 16 inch plank on the wall of the garage so that I can get her up and off the work-bench to provide me some work-surfaces to use!

[NavyShooter]

So....not a lot of progress on the Bonnie lately, because we're in the midst of a major home reno.

I did get out yesterday though to have a look at an Anchor.

It's the sailor's monument to those lost at sea during the Cold War. I stopped and paid respects, including to a shipmate that we lost in 2005 north of Poland. Really neat thing about the monument is that the anchor cable is both fouled, and then leads off into the ocean, a lasting connection to those lost at sea.

If you look carefully at the information plate though, you'll see that this is a special anchor...it's one of HMCS Bonaventure's Anchors.

So...the model builder in me then pulled out my tape measure and took some dimensions...I now have a new set of anchors ordered, and some new anchor chain!

Then it was off back to the renos...