t's taken nearly a year to complete this one. We picked it up at a LHS. I was browsing, and came across the kit. My wife likes Apaches, so it came home with us. I had already started it, getting kind of frustrated with the bad moldings and soft plastic when I read some of the reviews on it, and realized I picked a real stinker.
I decided to make the best of it, and detail where I could, but eventually got very frustrated with all the remediation work I was having to do, and just finished it up. I may get a better version later, but I'm done with this one. Some of the things I did include:
Replacing the hand holds and foot rungs with wire, so I didn't have to clean up all the flash off the kit versions.
Fabbed up and added the engine nacell supports.
Added the intake and cleaned up the exhaust for the APU.
Detailed, somewhat, the main rotor.
Drilled out the rocket launcher so they had more depth.
Filed-out and reshaped the main engine exhaust diffusers a bit, so they looked a little more realistic.
Added cable cutters.
Added cable shield over the windshield wiper.
Added the electrostatic energy disapaters (the little wires off the trailing edges) to the horizontal stabilizer. You can't see it in the pictures, though, so I didn't post a pic of those.
I tried a 'dip in Future, mask paint, and unmask' trick I read on here for the canopy, but the protective cover of future I added to the edges of the masking tape bled under and really messed up the clarity of the canopy. I'll probably not try that tip again, it really messed things up.
Shooting the side with future, decaling, then re-shooting with dullcoat did work well, I WILL do that again.
Well, enough of the talk, here's (hopefully) the pictures:
http://public.fotki.com/gbeaird/revell-148th-apache/chain-gun.html
http://public.fotki.com/gbeaird/revell-148th-apache/cockpit.html
http://public.fotki.com/gbeaird/revell-148th-apache/front-left-three-quarter.html
http://public.fotki.com/gbeaird/revell-148th-apache/front-view.html
http://public.fotki.com/gbeaird/revell-148th-apache/main-rotor-detail.html
http://public.fotki.com/gbeaird/revell-148th-apache/rear-port-side.html
Well, none of the imaging posting I'm trying to do work, and searches for solutions lead to posts that are no longer available. Looks like you can't post a Fotki image. Oh well. Follow the links. Sorry.
Gene Beaird,
Pearland, Texas