Novo/FROG 1/72 Westland Wessex Mk. 1
This is a recent build I made for our club's Helicopter group build. It is a 1978 boxing of a Novo/FROG 1/72 Westland Wessex Mk. 1, 845 Squadron (Commando), Fleet Air Arm, H.M.S. Albion. FROG originally released this kit in 1960. This was a build that I enjoyed very much, the cockpit only came with a narrow floor, two seats and a rear bulkhead. So I put a lot of attention on scratch building the cockpit area and had to add some the extras on the outside too. It's an old kit but the overall shape was pretty accurate.
Most of the decals are from the kit but I messed up on two pieces, the nose letter B and right side of the "Royal Navy/S.N.". I should have used Microscale Decal Saver on them first but I did not and they dissolved almost immediately when the water was applied. I did use the decal saver on the later decals. So I ended up using Model Decals for the letter in which I could use only the letter H and for the Royal Navy/S.N. piece, the old ESCI sheet.
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- 1. A pretty basic kit. if you ever use old Novo decals, applied one or two coats of Microscale Decal Saver.
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- 1. A thin plastic mesh and stretched sprue was used to make up this area.
- 2. One decal piece cut into three pieces to make this look right.
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- 1. All three are FROG kits.
Bob what a great build! You really did a great job on the Canopy work. The kit itself looks really good. Are those tires from the kit?
Thank you David, the tires are from the kit. I flattened all three by sanding them down. The rear undercarriage the part that extends to attach the rear wheel was broken, missing. So I used stretched spruce to replace it. I should have given it a more shallow angle.
I always enjoy seeing your work on these old kits ! Very nice . Thanks for posting them.
Jay thank you, it has been a pleasure to post them. I am really enjoying everyone’s builds on this site including yours.
Well done.
Thank you Haslam.
Nicely done, You really made this old kit shine!
Thank you Robert.
This is such a wonderful build, Bob! Your scratch building skills are simply amazing, transforming this sweet but simplistic kit into a masterpiece!
Spiros thank you. The scratch building part made this a fun build, I really enjoyed that part. I know my skills will never look like a fine tuned build made with resin and PE parts, that takes a lot of skills and patience. I am not a big fan of extremely small PE parts….but I do enjoy cutting up bits of styrene sheets and stretched sprues, it looks like a human made it.
Awesome build, Bob.
With the scratchbuild additions it looks really great.
No worries about the decals.
John thank you. The letter part was a bummer, I should have used the decal saver first. Still I am happy with it.
Nicely done Bob.
Thank you Allan.
I'm not too much into rotor-tops, but saw the Novo/Frog and had to look, as I enjoy building those old kits. You made a great-looking model out of this one - a scheme I hadn't seen on this subject before also. Well done.
Greg, thanks. My last helicopter I worked on was when my father and I built Monogram’s 1/24th Phantom Huey in 1969….so this was my first since then and made me fall in love with these great aircrafts.
Excellent work Bob, your scratch building is awesome and really adds a lot to the end result. Very nicely done.
Thank you Anthony.