It has probably been more than 10 years since I last put together a model. After my retun last year this is probably the second kit I have produced that I was fairly proud of. I still have some painting things I need to work on, and I will eventually invest in an airbrush.
Shortly before leaving the work area for the display area:
A couple quick pictures before moving to the man cave:
Pictures were taken with my Blackberry.. Because my regular camera doesn't seem to want to work. Overall, this was an OK kit. The fit on the lower fuseleage was especially horrible, but some styrene, a ton of putty, a lot of patience, and almost a week of free time made it look acceptable. The decals were the typical Academy awful, but I managed to make them work for the most part. My biggest complaint is the rotor decals were not big enough to wrap all the way around, so I have gaps on the underside. The main rotor assembly looks better in person. I had some issue with the interior ceiling, so I am less than proud of how the cargo bay turned out.
The paint is an undercoat of Testors white primer, then Tamiya light ghost grey, and Tamiya medium grey. Then a coat of Testors high gloss, then two final coats of Testors Dullcoat. I used Eduards masks with a reasonable degree of success, and I used some of the Eduards PE interior set.
The crew, and their carbines are from http://propaganda.kompany.free.fr/en-us/dept_25.html and they are actually pretty decent. Although, it did take better than a month for them to reach me, and they seem to be a tad too tall for the cockpit. I found a lot of pictures of crews wearing mixed flight suits, some desert, some sage and I thought that would add a little bit of interest to the model.