Anyone built Italeri 1/72 OH-58D Combat Scout 'Kiowa'

Mikeym_us wrote:

Helo 53 wrote: Actual name is Strella it is used to confuse the seeker head of IR guided MANPAD missiles. Or you can call it a IR suppression Disco Ball.

Helo 53 wrote:

Thank's for the pic Matt , There's some type of sensor that sits on the tail boom in your pic . I'm not sure what is actually called ?[IR Suppressor] but looks like I might have to scratch build something similar .                                                   John

Actual name is Strella it is used to confuse the seeker head of IR guided MANPAD missiles.

Or you can call it a IR suppression Disco Ball.

That is an IR suppressor.

Charlie

Thank's for the pic Matt , There's some type of sensor that sits on the tail boom in your pic . I'm not sure what is actually called ?[IR Suppressor] but looks like I might have to scratch build something similar .

                                                  John

Ok, that is what I thought you meant but wasn't quite sure.

I picked up one of these and an OH-58A last year with the thought they would be nice quick builds. Other than the one problem everything else goes together well?

Thanks for posting your question, I know you were looking for some help but you fixed it and that will help me when I do mine.

Here's another pic , I sanded down the section I marked with the red marker .

                                           Kind regards John

Hi Aaronw

I took another pic of one of the sprue's of another Italeri OH-58D . I tried marking the section with a red marker where I would file down with a sanding stick . Also on the instruction sheet when you look at section 1 , the diagram shows part 6a with the letter A inside a black circle and it's pointing to the underside center strip , I sanded that center strip down about a 1.5 mm along it's length . Sometimes I'm not very good at explaining things but I hope this has helped a little more , if not let me know , I'm more than happy to help as much as I can .

                                                     Kind regards John.

I have one of these kits but haven't built it. Can you explain the issue with 6A a little more?

Did you shorten it front to back, did you have to remove some from the bottom along the full length or a little of both?

I fixed the problem with the nose section . Part 6a in the top pic shows a shaded area which tells you to paint the underside center strip olive drab but it also appears thats where the problem is . I removed the clear bottom nose section [part 14c] and filed down the underside center strip [6a] . This seemed to fix the gap as when I glued both nose pieces back onto the fuselage the gap was gone . I'm still not sure if this is a fault with the kit or something else I did wrong ? .

Anyway it's fixed now and I'm happy , I have three more of these little Helo's in the stash , I was going to build two for the U.S.Army and two for the Israeli IDF/AF . However one of my reference IDF books only mentions the Israeli's using the OH-58A version , so I guess all four will be U.S.Army birds .

                                                Kind regards John.