help need some direction.

Can't really add much, other than to say good luck with the kit, it's not the best. Also there's a thread called Vietnam Hueys (here)which has tons of useful info.

thank you for your help and knowledge, from my family to yours thank you for your service to our country. Ill do my best to do this right and Ill try to get pics up as soon as i can.

It’s hard to put a “Work Horse” label on an aircraft and not include all operations.  In my personal experience, an 8-10 hour flight day or night was the norm.  I recall this because we had a 25 hr Intermediate Inspection that would come due every 2-3 days.  With that said along with high flight hour rates, we did not have wash racks that you find in today’s aviation, nor the time to wash aircraft.  A big point on wreathing is that in later years, the birds did have the IR Suppressor (toilet Seat) installed, so the exhaust weathering was on the second 1/2 of the tailboom.  If a IR Suppressor is not installed the exhaust trail starts at the dog house (exhaust cowling) and continues the leng of the boom getting lighter as you progress aft.  The underside of the aircraft would get pretty dirty with the monsoons rains and unapproved landing areas.  Mud was a big factor since with the mud trail was in and out of the aircraft during loading and unloading.  The Dustoff aircraft were down in the jungle as much as any other mission birds; so the Dustoff birds got just as much as a beating as other hueys.. 

Hope this helps; good luck with your build.

On the bench...

1/35 Night Hawk low bird

1/48 Huey II

tanx for the help, how about weathering was one area of opperations worse than others as far as were and tear and just overall abuse of the helicopter? Im gonna stage this like a dust off bird should I go alittle more or a little less on weathering?

As usual, HeavyArty is correct.  With that said, Viet-era is a funny animal because we used what we had as the base huey.  As Night Hawk, all mine were black interior.  Although not the best solution we spray painted the stock gray sound proofing and interior.  There were also cases where we did not have sound proofing due to wear and tear, so the interior bulkheads were still a gray color.  When all is said and done you are safe with gray.

For a Vietnam-era Huey, the interior should be all shades of medium gray.  The floor and other metal parts are a little darker than the fabric on the walls and ceiling.  The seats were generall a medium green colored faberic.

reference pics Im seeing show it to black and gray Im new to the chopper world thanx for the help. it looks to be almost two tone front half gray and then black floor pans in between. Im doing a vietnam era huey for my father inlaw who has passed but was a green beret captain.

Post 1980s US choppers tend to have black cockpits for use with night vision goggles. Prior to that, it would have been gray.