I've had a bad habit lately of doing every build in custom livery, and this one was no different. This is my first helicopter build in probably 15 years, and was a nice departure. This is Academy's 1/48 Hughes 500MD ASW kit built in kind of a "what if" livery for a NUMA (National Underwater Marine Agency) chopper from Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels. I've been a fan of his since forever and I wanted to pay tribute by building a NUMA vehicle.
I decanted some Krylon Sea Foam color paint for the paint job, and printed my own decals for the insignia and NUMA markings. Other markings came from the kit or the spares box. I stole figures from the Revellogram P-61 kit for it and made some duffle bags out of Milliput. Also went to town on a helipad for it, which turned out ok, but the surface peeled up on one side and gave me fits, which you'll see in the pics. All in all though, a fun build.
Got a little too much tilt on the rotor head, I think. Might need to fix that, depending on how much it annoys me:
Here you can see the "concrete" peeling up. I used drywall joint compound. Not sure I'll do that again:
Yeah, I'm gonna have to fix those rotors. Oh well. Think I'll shelve it for now. 