1/96 HMCS Bonaventure

[Fliger747]

An interesting stockless anchor, somewhat different than the USN ones. Lifting the Bonnie onto the uppermost shelf must be interesting it is a "BAS" (Big, as Ship).

Cheers: Tom

[NavyShooter]

Indeed - plan is for her to live on the lower level - the Liberty Ship will be up higher.

Some more progress pictures on the air det and other bits...lots of work to do.

Visited one of the local aviation museums and had a peek at their 1/200 scale model of the Bonnie for some inspiration. Also got some detail pics of their Tracker. Alas, not in Bonnie-era markings.

[Fliger747]

We had a guy here in town owned an S2 Tracker. A good friend of my dad was one of the first 9 guys transition from the S2 to the S3, I think when he retired he had over 500 arrested landings. I did flight dynamics for a bunch of the S2 series for Microsoft Flight Sim. Rather interesting that the R 1820's she was equipped with developed one hundred fifty more HP than the R1820 did in the FM2 Wildcat of WWII.

[NavyShooter]

I actually saw a Tracker for sale on F-book the other day - someone wanted $250K for it. Not gonna happen in my lifetime, but interesting to see it up for grabs.

I have spent a bit of time consulting with some former crew of the Bonnie, and they've given me solid numbers (4 separate people confirming) that at the tail end of her career, Bonnie's Air Det was as follows for normal sailing:

12 - S2 Tracker
6 - SH2 Sea King
1 - HO4S "Horse" (Plane guard aircraft)

The ship's role was shifted to primarily ASW, and this was deemed to be suitable.

The ship sailed with 1.5 crews per aircraft - so with 12 Trackers, they'd have had 18 sets of 4 aircrews, and apparently the crew's nickname for the Horse was "Pedro".

Very useful info going forward!

[NavyShooter]

A bit more 3D design work today - here's version 1 of the "hockey stick" folding radio mast.

[NavyShooter]

While I'm waiting for my 3D printer to be free (printing a test module for my anchor system!) I decided to hide in the garage and work on one of the Trackers. I was initially only going to do some of the decals...in the end, I put them all on.

Here's Tracker 530 in her full plumage!

There will be a couple of layers of clear-coat added to seal things up, but this is 1 of 8 Trackers complete...to go with the 8 completed Banshees in the background!

[NavyShooter]

And here we have another Radio Mast with base added.

I'm tracking them as being 30 foot antennas, but in looking at some of the pictures, there are identical base units for some 20 foot antennas too...so I'll just print a bunch of them and snip the ends off to get the right size!

The draft version of the Hockey Stick mast is complete - I'm generally pleased, but have added some additional braces/stiffeners in the Version 2 model...I'll try printing one of each of these when I get home with reduced supports and we'll see how they look.

Other piece of good news is that my Anchor Test module finished printing last night, so that's going to keep me busy over the weekend.

[NavyShooter]

Version 2 of the Radio Masts...looks good. Bases need work.

[NavyShooter]

Had a bit of time today to plug away at some RADAR masts...

I had previously attempted to create the main mast and had some...issues...with my design in DSM, so I decided to go 'simple' and try Tinkercad for this one.

Here's the drawing I worked from...

And here's the 3D version ready to download and print. I'm thinking I'll try this one with 'no supports' just for S&G to see what happens.

I suspect I'll need to do this with 'buildplate' support.

Bear in mind, I'm using an FDM printer, so things are a bit different for me compared to those using resin printers.

[NavyShooter]

Thank-you!

I'll do a bit of correcting!

NS

[NavyShooter]

OK, so 2 prints tried, and now I've taken an idea from a buddy in another group and have split the mast into sections that I'll glue together.

The first print failed hard - it was, well, not good. Way too thin, so I had to increase thickness on some parts to make it workable.

The print that was waiting for me this morning worked better, but still not very nice looking. I can probably clean it up and make it work...but I figured I'd try chopping things up and see how it goes.

We'll see how this comes off the printer and go from there.

[NavyShooter]

David,

To be honest, doing up a 3D print of it with the model means that if I damage it, I can print another in short order. Additionally, the 3D printed version will be considerably lighter than a brass/soldered one (which I've never made...so that'd be another new skill to learn from scratch!)

Here's what Version 3 looks like. I'm generally pleased. I have to add a couple of support braces to the upper platform, but that's pretty simple.

[NavyShooter]

Alrighty....some progress!

The Trackers now have all of their decals applied, and are effectively complete....except for having to cut some wings off to position them as 'folded.'

I did one of them up like that last night - I am quite pleased with the result!

NS

[NavyShooter]

Some progress....the printer has been running steady- but printing stuff for a friend. I got his stuff shipped out on Thursday, so back to cycling my stuff!

Masts - printed, painted, and re-printed because I tried to clean off the 'hairs' of filament with a flame, and things got melty/bendy.

[NavyShooter]

And, with the fixed wing portion of the Air Det complete, time to switch to Rotary...

Here's the 4 H0S4's, and 6 Sea Kings.

Of note - I am working on getting one of each motorized, and we'll see how that works out, these 10 will be painted/detailed properly. The motorized ones will be a work in progress.

[NavyShooter]

David, I think you're right - it seems offset about as far in as a set of guardrails. Maybe 6 inches?

[NavyShooter]

Sadly, the 'easy' way to 'fix' the error was not to actually push back the edge of the funnel by a couple of mm...it was to pull the wall below out. (Compound curves in the funnel vs straight wall...) so I'm going to end up re-printing the whole shebang.

That said, I'm also adding more detail...I've pulled off the flag lockers and have done up a separate design for them and will glue them in place (I am hoping to find a good picture of the flag deck so I can see how the signal lines are rigged!) and there's a few more bits (phone boxes, director bases, etc) that I'm going to add.

Turns out Bridge V5 isn't the final product. LOL

I think I'll hold off on printing it to see how I can tie in RADAR dishes and motors as well this time.

[Fliger747]

Bon Chance!

Regards: Tom

[NavyShooter]

NavyShooter, why not just cut the funnel off at the funnel base then either repair the funnel at that area or print off a new funnel to be positioned at the correct spot?

Because....I'm not that good at this stuff and it didn't occur to me to do it that way...?



Thanks for the suggestion!

[NavyShooter]

The funnel wall is about 5mm.

I've made some progress on the Sea Kings over the past bit - I'm pleased with how the helos are coming along.