Sikorsky Dragonfly
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I built this as the upgraded HR.5 variant - I'm not entirely sure of the external differences, but I added the searchlight under the nose which seemed to be present on HR.5s. WN946 was based with 705 Squadron at RNAS Lossiemouth near Inverness in Scotland, which was the first land base to receive the Dragonfly in 1953. It was written off in a take-off accident there in 1961.
Dragonflies came in four colours from what I can see: Gloss Sea Blue (the US Navy shade), high-speed silver, edsg/sky and RAF Blue-Grey. As I was building this HR.5 in around 1960 I went for the latter scheme, which had replaced most of the other schemes from 1958. The Hataka paint shade is just right I think.
This is Miniwing's nice and simple kit to build, but it does require quite a bit of work to become a faithful replica. It is moulded in transparent plastic. This is quite thick and grainy so I spent a lot of time polishing and gloss varnishing the canopy to improve the transparency which is otherwise very foggy.
The plastic is also thick on all of the other parts like struts, steps, winch and rotor blades. These either needed to be sanded down or replaced altogether. The plastic is also quite brittle - I'm afraid I didn't dare try and droop the rotors, fearing these would just snap. I may try and replace the blades with plasticard altogether next time.
I scratchbuilt the winch, added the tail bump and pilot/passenger steps from wire, added a lot of the pushrods to the rotorhead with stretched sprue and used brass rod for the exhaust pipe. The Dragonfly also had slightly different cockpit glass arrangement to the Sikorsky - it's worth looking at references as the lower pilot window is not actually rectangular.
Unfortunately, I don't think the shape of this is quite right - it's fine for the S-51 and the Dragonflies operated by the RAF (HC.2s and HC.4s) but the naval Dragonfly had a boxy rear fuselage just short of the tailboom that is not represented. I'm afraid I opted not to try to add this - I had no confidence I could do it without creating a colossal mess! If you only look at the Dragonfly from certain angles, it's possible not to notice... and if you want a totally accurate Dragonfly, your best bet is Russ Dutnell's 3D printed option.
Decals are lovely (thank you Jiri and Eduard) - no problem whatsoever with those and they bedded down very nicely into the surface detail. I added white stripes to the landing gear strut walkways and used a sharpened toothpick to add various small red and yellow details on the fuselage to make things appear a bit more busy.
The kit comes with vinyl masks. I'm not sure I'll actually use these next time. Being vinyl they have a tendency to ping up from complex shapes when you least want them to (i.e. when spraying!) and they are also much too small, meaning that if you do use them the framing on the canopy area is colossal. I used them but widened the masked areas with tape. Next time I may just use tape from the outset. BUT - in principal, it's really nice to have masks in the kit!
This all sounds a bit critical and negative - it's not meant to be. More just a record of building notes that others may find useful. I really enjoyed building this. It is brilliant that Miniwing continue to produce these early helicopters - long may that continue.