Hello everybody. I´m an spanish vietnam war modeller, and these are some pictures of the cockpit of my OH-6a (dragon 1/35) for a vietnam diorama named "Low level hell".
The minigun is scracht over part of the piece of Dragon, and still to do the support frame betwen the weapon and the ammo case.
The original kit had to be rebuilt because doesn´t look good for a Loach in Vietnam. All the details I put in the kit came from real pictures of Vietnam loaches. Still to do more details in the chopper main body ... As you can see, the loach was a very small chopper, and the gunner was more out that inside ¡¡¡¡
The Loach will be finished as "Darkhorse 19", a OH-6a of scout platoon "Outcast", C troop, 16th cavalry regiment in Vietnam 1972.
The loach in the diorama will be shooting a group of running NVA regulars, with a DSHK NVA AA machine gun ready to fire out of the sky the chopper ...
After thinking about it , I cut out the old 1/32 Revell instrumeny panel, and uodate the original one from Dragon 1/35.
That´s how it looks:
Once painted with a lot of care, looks like this:
I painted too the panels for interfonos, radios, etc… between the seats (the piece is a scracht one with all the details, because the original one is really no so god)
Now I´m making the details for observer interfono in the back seat, and other details of the comuications system.
You can check Google Books, seach for "Organizational maintenance manual: electronics equipment configuration Army" and "Operators manual: helicopter, observation OH-6A"), and you will see the technical manuals for OH-6ª with all the details you need for making an accurate loach (EVERYTHING¡¡¡¡). After select the PDF option, you can download the manual tl your PC.
About the minigun, check Google books seach “Direct and general support maintenance manual: armament subsystem"; you will found there all the details of the XM-27e1 minigun system, to the last piece you can imagine ….
No excuses of information lacking for making a Loach ¡¡¡¡¡
Comments are welcome, because this is my first scale helicopter (I use to do only dioramas with figures and armour 1/35).
More news soon…
Best regards.
Santiago