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Revell's UH-34D

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  • Member since
    July 2004
  • From: Sonora Desert
Posted by stikpusher on Sunday, July 7, 2013 11:09 PM

Yes, I picked up both recent issues of this kit. Gonna do the Revell USA one as a Vietnam Marine Corps bird and the Revell Germany one as a Falklands War RN bird.

 

F is for FIRE, That burns down the whole town!

U is for URANIUM... BOMBS!

N is for NO SURVIVORS...

       - Plankton

LSM

 

  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Fort Knox
Posted by Rob Gronovius on Sunday, July 7, 2013 9:56 PM

No, the H-19 was a box scale kit that was undersized and not a true 1/48 scale. The H-34 was a more modern kit and every review I've found about it and the new Gallery model mention those molds were lost* for 25 years. That'd put it around 1988, but it was probably initially released by Revell USA a few years earlier. The reissued kit probably has a date somewhere inside.

Those were my 'Nam modeling years and this was one of the big time kits I was excited to get.

*Revell retooled the kit to make it a Wessex and the original part molds were recently discovered.

  • Member since
    July 2004
  • From: Sonora Desert
Posted by stikpusher on Sunday, July 7, 2013 4:37 PM

IIRC, the original kit is far older than the 1988 issue. I want to say possibly 1970s vintage like their H-19.

 

F is for FIRE, That burns down the whole town!

U is for URANIUM... BOMBS!

N is for NO SURVIVORS...

       - Plankton

LSM

 

  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Fort Knox
Posted by Rob Gronovius on Sunday, July 7, 2013 11:10 AM

This is an older kit that's been reissued. I had to look it up and a review said it was released in 1988. That would fit with the time frame when I would have bought and built it (I was stationed in Germany from Dec 1987 to Dec 1990).

The version I built was a Revell AG Bundeswehr HEER kit (which helicopters sites said was worth over $90 before this current reissue!). I don't know how an H-34G in 1988 becomes a UH-34D in 2012 though. It only included West German markings that I remember. I do know I did the standard OD German green color with crosses.

I do not recall any assembly problems, but my building skills and tastes have improved over the last 25 years. Back then Revell of Germany decals were pretty nice compared to US company kits.

The decal issue might stem from the Revell-Monogram merger. Monogram had traditionally thick decals that were caked in a milky adhesive. Although the name Revell remained, the company is located in the Illinois area that was home to Monogram and not in the Venice, California home of Revell.

This old kit was probably reissued when Italeri and Gallery Models announced a new tool kit.

  • Member since
    January 2012
Revell's UH-34D
Posted by scapilot on Monday, July 1, 2013 3:01 AM

Just curious as to if it's just me or not.  I had a guy send me this kit to build for him.  Upon first look, I figured it would be pretty cut and dry.  For a little background, I only do aviation modeling, however, this was only my third attempts at helo's in the past year, my other two being the Italeri UH-60, and their offering of the OH-58D, which in my opinion, were both fantastic fun times, despite the challenges.  This kit was anything but.  The sparse details were easily overlooked, as I didn't expect too much.   I initially thought that the lining up of the cockpit, and cabin were going to be the hardest, but I actually breezed through the installation of those with little or no problems.  My biggest issues came towards the end, ESPECIALLY with the decals.  I used Mr. Mark Setter and Softer on these things, and still had a horrible time getting them to conform.  I've had struggles with Hasegawa decals in the past, but geez, these things just did not want to budge for anything.  This wouldn't have been nearly as bad of an issue, but on a subject like the UH-34, which is essentially one big contour, this was more than frustrating.  My second biggest issue was the construction of the prop and rotor.  What should have been probably the easiest part of the build turned out to be miserable.  The rotor was supposed to feed down into the cabin, and have a retaining ring at the bottom to hold it in place.  No matter what I tried, or how I tried to work around it, the provided part in the kit that's supposed to feed down into the cabin and receive the retaining ring just was not long enough.  I wasn't going to force it any more than I already had, for fear that I was going to break it and be at a loss.  The rotor still seats atop the mast nicely, but the planning in the instruction manual just baffles me at how it shows you to do it so easily, yet no matter how you try, it doesn't come across.  Same thing with the tail.  The entire prop is supposed to just fit onto the supplied male part that protrudes from the tail.  Only problem with that is that it's about five times bigger than the alloted hole on the back of the prop itself.  I wound up having to drill, and bore, and shave the stem to barely get it to be super glued into place.  Again, the pictures in the instructions showed just a very casual and simple install.  Yet it was anything but.  I've never been happier to be finished with a build as I was this one.  Just thought I'd ask around to see what everyone elses experience with this kit have been. 

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