Subject: Westland Whirlwind H.A.S. Mk 22

Manufacturer: Airfix

A developed version of the Sikorsky S-55, Westland built over 400 under licence in the 1950's. This kit must have been first issued in the early 1960's - hence evidence of the legendary Airfix phantom riveter. Restrained in size and number, they are easily dealt with by a gentle application of fine wet-and-dry.
Markings are provided for machines of 781 Naval Air Squadron and U.S. Marine Corps Transport Squadron HMR-161, which is the version I am going for.
There are 43 parts, of which six are transparencies and the rest in light grey plastic.
This product of a 45 year old mould does have it's inaccuracies but with a little effort will give a convincing end result and this quite recent re-issue was bought on eBay for a couple of pounds both as a nostalgia trip - my first one was built when I was eleven years old and came with markings for a civilian BEA example - and as a guinea pig to test a new rotor-drooping method.
The interior consists simply of a cockpit floor with seats, joysticks and instrument panel. Having added seat belts cut from masking tape to the assembled and painted components, adding the six transparencies to the fuselage halves (each set of three cockpit side windows is supplied as one poorly fitting moulding) and adding 10g of lead ballast to the nose, the fuselage was closed. The passenger compartment side windows have very pronounced sink marks.
The front undercarriage legs should project from the open-bottomed engine bay but for reasons I don't understand, Airfix opted to have them sprouting from the fuselage sides, as can be clearly seen on the boxtop illustration. I have drilled location holes in the kit's fuselage bottom, filled the redundant, incorrect mounting holes and shortened the legs to fit.
The underside of the engine bay is enclosed and will remain so. 
To carve it out would simply create a mammoth detailing job that nobody will ever see once the thing is on the shelf. 

The picture above shows the work that would be involved and quite honestly that sort of time and effort would be better put into the current Italeri offering rather than this 45 year old product.
The four small upper cockpit glazed panels are represented in outline only. They will be picked out in grey as per travel agent models. I could cut them out and glaze with Microscale Kristal Klear but life is short and this is a kit with ancient origins. Having offered up the windshield, a need for copious amounts of filler between it and the upper right hand fuselage half was revealed and dealt with, along with a deep sink mark on the starboard engine bay door, filled with my favourite quick drying and easily sanded small blemish filling medium, correction fluid.
The rear undercarriage assembly consists of four struts. Tackle them with a clear head and, no worries, but fail to do so and they will pose the same challenge as a Chinese wire puzzle!

To be continued...........

Last updated 29 September 2006