After a choice on the Airfix Navy Lynx was made on the airfix.com forums for the next group build, I quickly snapped one up off ebay for a snip. I hadn’t built a helicopter for as far back as I can remember so it seemed like a good opportunity.

After scouring the net with google for lots of information and inspiration, I found a picture of the Royal Navy Lynx Mk.8 in a hangar with the tail folded back and the main rotors folded back and the cockpit and cabin doors opened up, along with the main rotor fold back stay rods and remove before flight tags it was the inspiration I needed. I ordered the Airwaves detail set from Hannants and got started.

The first step was to dry fit the fuselage halves and determine whereabouts the fold in the tail section is, I held it together with clothes pegs and got the razor saw out and took the plunge and cut it on the softly moulded detail of the fold line. I then needed to detail the interior parts of these areas so after a good search on the net and some helpful people on the Aircraft Resource Center website chat room I got the pictures I needed, the main panel detail is included in the Airwaves detail set but it also needed some wiring to add the hydraulic cables, I used fine copper wire and fuse wire for this. I also thinned out the rotor gearing housing and fixed some fine ribbon I got from a florists to simulate the mesh cover over the gearing housing, I framed it with some etched fret ‘sprue’, it looked right in this small scale when painted up . I dry brushed it with dark grey when I had nearly finished the model and it looked fine.

Onto the cockpit and cabin interior, in the kit there is a large inflatable seat that takes up the interior of the main cabin, there is an alternative seating arrangement however, it has the tubular frame seats that are the same as they army lynx carries. I decided to use these instead of the inflatable seating unit , I drilled out the lightening holes in the back rests and then added the seats to the cabin floor after I had filled and sanded the ejector pin marks. I also added the airwaves etched parts to the main pilots seats for the seat legs, and added the metal frame structure to the back of the pilots seats from etched parts from my spares box as well as adding the fire extinguisher and seatbelt retraction cans on the back of the pilots seat from scrap sprue. The raised instrument details were removed from the kit cockpit panels to allow the airwaves etched parts to go on to a flat surface. I used a new technique to paint the etch instrument panels that I found in the tips section over on ARC, basically, I paint it with a dark grey acrylic, then coat it with clear acrylic (future/klear works well) then paint it light grey enamel, when its dried for approx. 1hr, I then wipe a clean cotton cloth dampened with white spirit over the parts and this removes the enamel form the raised parts of the etch leaving the recessed parts in the light grey and the raised parts in the dark grey which is protected from the white spirit by the acrylic clear coat. When this is all dry the details on the dial etc was added by painting with a fine brush and a toothpick.

I next added a scratch built collective lever for the pilot and the cyclic control from the kit, I omitted the controls from the co-pilots side as these are not always present here, the etched avionics console stand and a scratch built avionics box was added to the rear of the centre instrument panel console as well as the overhead etched instrument console with the various levers and switches. When all detail painting had been done, I fixed all the cockpit components together and added the seatbelts from the airwaves etch set. This was the most time consuming bit of the entire build.

Now I could get on with the building, first I needed to fill and sand the ejector pin marks in the interior of the fuselage halves, then I made the footlight windows the correct square shape as opposed to the almost lozenge shape of the kit windows which are based on the prototype Lynx machine and so are wrong for a production model, these were masked from the inside to allow me to paint the model then make the footlights using Kristal Klear afterwards. Next the cockpit section and roof sections were added to the fuselage halves and the two halves were joined together. Then I fixed the new nose sections together and added them to the fuselage with the relevant parts for the HMA8 model, as there are four possible different mark’s of Lynx that can be built from this kit. This was a bad fit and needed a fair bit of filler and sanding to blend it in with the fuselage.

On the underside there was quite a step between the fuselage halves that needed to be built up with filler and then wet sanded and the holes were filled and sanded which are there for the ski’s to be added if the army version is built (Airfix make both army and navy versions of the Lynx and share some common parts and sprues).

Onto the main and tail rotors, in order to make the main rotors folded into the stowed position, I needed to scratchbuild the main rotor stays, these were made from styrene rod glued to some little parts from my spares box.
I glued the main rotor blades to the main rotor hub and made sure they wee all properly aligned at 90 degrees. I then sliced them off at the fold line with a sharp scalpel blade. Next I raided the spare etch I have accumulated for some suitable parts for the fold mechanism and found some suitable parts left over from a set for a Tiger tank of all things!

These were glued into place and I painted the main rotor hub after adding some more details to the top of the hub using my references and more spare etch. I painted them light grey and then when dry I gave them a wash using thinned tamiya smoke. The tail rotor was assembled as per the kit and then painted with the various colours and also given a smoke wash.
Next job was to mask up the transparencies and fit them to the main fuselage and the cabin sliding doors, no problems there. I added the wheel sponsons and the various antennae from the kit and the airwaves set under the tail boom area, I drilled out the recesses fro the tie down hooks on the wheel sponsons too and added the etch hooks.

Next was the Sea Owl passive ID sensor for the nose of the kit, the hole for it was too far aft so I filled it and drilled out a new hole enabling it to turn, also the details were a little soft on this part so I drilled out the rivet holes to enhance the details on it.

I then added the cockpit roof with the roof light windows masked up after I had tinted them with tamiya smoke, the fit of this part was terrible to say the least but nothing a bit of filler and patience with wet n dry didn’t solve. I painted the interior colour of the cockpit doors too then fitted them with white glue to allow for spraying with out paint getting inside the open cockpit area. Once the rails for the top and bottom of each fuselage halves were fitted and the sliding cabin doors were fitted into them, I was nearly ready for paint. Before painting I added all the various lumps and bumps like the sensors and flotation aids etc, and made some FOD covers for the exhaust outlets and the intakes using foil from a scalpel blade pack, then stuck some wooden cocktail sticks onto the undercarriage holes and prepared to start spraying.

Overall paint was easy, its all one colour, Sea Grey Medium, I used Humbrol enamel for this as they spray wonderfully well when thinned with cellulose (lacquer) thinner.
Whilst the paint was drying I got on with the undercarriage, now here I hit a problem, the Airfix kit undercarriage , if built out of the box gives the Lynx a very odd stance, its almost as if the undercarriage is moulded for ‘in flight’ configuration , so I shortened each oleo by 1mm and added the etch scissor links too, I painted the wheels with Tank Grey for the tyres and White for the hubs and main u/c legs with a thinned smoke wash for these too.
I then added the decals to the main airframe and these were fine out of the box with the exception of the national insignia, these were out of register and also too dark, so I found some alternatives in the spare decal box I have from an old Desert Storm Tornado sheet.

I painted the FOD covers by hand with Humbrol Red enamel paint and when dry also gave these a wash to add some depth to them and to tone down the red. I unmasked the glazed areas and then added the final details and the main rotors and the stay rods and tail rotor fold details. After adding the various ‘Remove Before Flight’ tags from an old Verlinden sheet I had, I added the UHF aerial wire from Aeroclub rigging thread, fixed the u/c onto it, painted the flotation aids green and the sensor covers white, made a RBF cover for the Sea Owl sensor and turned it around as it is when stowed, fixed the cabin doors open and the cockpit doors open and it was finished.

I am very pleased with the overall model now its finished and really enjoyed turning the quite basic Airfix kit into something a little bit special.
 

Photos and text © 2005 by Mike Williams

April 18, 2005

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