Thanks, Spiros. Mostly painting done at this early point. Lots more to see in today's update, below.
Here is the latest update on the Lynx interior. I have been working mostly on the seat-belts in both the cargo cabin and the cockpit. The first job was to study available pics and figure out the basic structure of the belts. Any scale representation has to be approximate and I experimented combining bits of paper, masking tape and photo-etch until I hit upon a decent replica design. This is all scratch building as the existing Eduard set looked very flat to me and not especially accurate. I was going for a jumbled look of an in-service machine where the harnesses were not buckled and tucked away but rather had been recently thrown aside in action. Here are two pics of the real thing with that look.
To start copying what I could glean from pics, I assembled the bits and pieces and planned the belt design with components that would be identical for each belt (there will be 9 in total for the cabin seating) - the bits shown include bits for the cockpit belts I will show later in the post.
When I was satisfied with the basic shape, I clipped on two partially completed examples on the port side seat (still missing two pieces of etch each) to see how they would sit and line up with each other.
I proceeded to add detail to each belt in overlapping layers of paper for the fabric part and photo-etch to represent buckles and clips. The yellow-orange belts were cut from a single long strip of paper of even width and pre-painted with Tamiya acrylics. The final stage before gluing the first three belt assemblies to the seat was bending, twisting and crumpling them to make them look more realistic, bendy and scuffed up.
The originals are clearly quite long and hang all over the place (see above pic). The alternative was to twist them all together as they look when properly stowed but that seem less authentic to me for an Afghanistan active airframe (also paper doesn't wrap up very well in such thin pieces). Here are pics of how the scratch built belts look now from various angles.
. At the stage I was hoping for feedback on how the belts look relative to the photos of the real thing. What do you guys think? Do you think they look right?
I have also mostly completed the harness for one of the cockpit seats. It is a quite different design from the cabin belt and I constructed it from multiple layers of different colored paper, including very thin retaining straps that hold layers together.
I am pretty happy with the design and execution so far.
The mostly finished pilot's seat harness is not glued down yet, so it doesn't drape naturally yet. I have to do repaint some etch and paper details here and there and also figure out how to weave in lap belts and other seat details. In later pics, I have painted the top lap cushion Marine Corps Green.
Finally, I have also glued in most of the etch for the control panels and surface details like grills and vents. I had to airbrush a lot of this in advance, although the IP and other panels are pre-painted.
Well, that's it for now. I may get more done this weekend. The seat on the rear bulkhead will need three more belts and some detail painting (tubing unpainted at this stage).
I am very busy with work these days so time is scarce. I hope you find this update worth following. Stay tuned for more. Happy modeling.
