Four 1/72 Navy Seawloves Huey's

John,

  Those are some real beauties!   I really like the 50 cal on that first one.  Where'd you get the rotors?  Or id you just put trim tabs on the Italeri ones?  You are a Huey machine my friend!

      Ray

Hi Ray , Thanks for the kind comments . Your right about the Italeri rotors , I just added the tabs from some spare plastic . The 50 cal came from the Italeri UH-34J Sea Horse kit and the mini gun from a HH-53C kit , I scrounge around the spares box to make the mounts , I was constantly looking at squadrons Huey walk around book to try and make the gun mounts reasonably accurate , I guess they look okay for 1/72 scale . I also tried to copy what you did on your Huey Gunship with some M-16's on bungee cords in the doorway's but I couldn't quite get it right !. I would like to redo the M-16 arrangement . How did you do your doorway gun arrangement , it looks perfect...Also just as I was about to set up to take the pic's earlier today , I put all four Huey's in a box to carry them downstairs and outside to the table I had set up and as I went to put the box down , the bottom corner of the box hit the edge of the table and all four Huey's came flying out !!! I couldn't believe my stupidity , all of them ended up on their sides , with doors , rocket pods , antenna's and the like strewn all over the driveway . I spent the next ten minutes on my hands and knees searching for tail skids and spade grips . By some miracle none of the paint finishes were badly marked or the clear parts scratched . So I ended up spending a couple of hour's this morning re-attaching all the bits and pieces with superglue and tooth picks. I really think I was very very lucky

                                                          John

John,

I have wanted to model the one of the Seawolves' birds ever since reading two books about them.  Excellent job with all four of those little Hueys!  Bummer about the box spilling them all over the driveway, but looking at the photos I cannot see any evidence of the damamge.  Well done!  Thanks for sharing the pics, I am very envious!

Not to hijack your thread, but do you by chance know of a source for 1/48 Seawolves decals?

John,

  You are one lucky man!  I was tranporting my Huey and forgot it was in the front seat and threw something on top of it and broke the rotor off.  I was really upset, but thankfully it wasn't too damaged.  That bird now resides with my dad so hopefully will not be subject to my lack of coordination!

  As for the 60 bungee cords, I used very thin wire so they are not flexible.  I made a loop in the end of the wire and put the M-60 handles through it.  However, my 60's were a combination of photoetch and spares from a Italeri OH-13 kit. Therefore, the handles were thin enough to swing freely on the wire and thus more closely resemble the real thing.  Yours look fine though and I wouldn't sweat it.  I wish I could crank em out asfast as you do!

   Ray

Here's a couple of pics of my 60's:

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Daywalker wrote:

Not to hijack your thread, but do you by chance know of a source for 1/48 Seawolves decals?

I'm sure John will tell you to get em the same place he got his 1/72 sheet: Fireball Modelworks.  Joseph makes the best helo decals bar none in my opinion and the Seawolf sheet is awesome and the price is right as well.

  Here's the link: Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}

http://webpages.charter.net/osborn82/fm_D03.htm

Ray

Hi Frank , earlier in 2008 I built four 1/48 Gunship Huey's . One of them was this Revell/Monogram Huey Hog kit number 85-5201 . I used the 1/48 Fireball Seawolves Decal sheet and I also bought the Cobra Company UH-1C Conversion Set . This set has the correct tail fin for the Revell UH-1C . As you can see in the third pic it also has larger synchronized elevators and weapons set . The conversion is quite easy , the only trouble I had with the Revell Huey is the fit of the seperate nose section to the cabin . I might suggest glueing the chin /lower windows to the nose section first and then glue the nose section to the cabin . Everything lines up better at the front end . Just be VERY CAREFULL you dont get any glue on the clear parts . Other than that the Revell Huey goes together okay . Perhaps some support plastic strips on the inside of the fuselage bottom halves to support the bottom join .

Thanks for posting your huey again Ray , I'll try drybrushing my M-60's with some silver , maybe they will stand out a little better.

                                                        John

Those look great, I bought that decal set and a couple of UH-1 Bs and Cs but have never gotten to them.

There is a good book on the Seawolves I read a few years ago (I think it was just called Seawolves or something simple like that). Really interesting how they came about, and just in general a good read.

Frank I'll third Fireball, not only does he make nice decals he includes great reference material with them, slick glossy full color booklet to help you out. Most of his sheets include several options and enough decals to do more than one build. Nice stuff and a good bargain, to top it off Joe is really easy to deal with too.

There's enough decal lettering to do at least eight Navy Seawolves Huey's and even more as the sheet has lot's of Seawolves nose Emblams . You have to cut each decal seperatly off the sheet and trim to size , just be carefull when sliding the decal from the backing paper . the decals are very thin and it's easy for the ends of each decal to fold around itself . It happened a couple of times with some of the individual numbers . So lots of care is requied .

                                                         John