Friends,
Onto another CH-53 build, this time I am dusting off one of my 1985 1/48th scale Revell CH-53A/D kits for a Marine Pilot. He served in both CH-53A's and CH-53D's. The first build I am doing for him is a CH-53A from Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina, circa 1975-1980. His first squadron he flew in was HMH-362 "Ugly Angels".
The kit:
An example of the high gloss Marine Corps green seen on this Ugly Angel bird aboard an amphibious assualt ship.
There is no detail in the old revell kit as compared to the CH-53E kit by MRC/Academy. But I have seen some of our fellow modelers really dress this kit up with scratch built details. I am going to build it pretty much out of the box, and detail the rotorhead as much as I dare. The kit has two options for which CH-53 you would like to build. A straight CH-53A, and a CH-53D, with aux tanks installed. However the kit rotor head provided as is, an "Elastomeric Rotorhead", or "Dry Head" as we called them, meaning the sleeve and yoke assemblies were elastomeric rubber, no P2 head oil required for lubrication. The CH-53A never was delivered with this rotor head, only an oiled "Wet Head". So I will modify the kit part to resemble the wet head he flew. To do that I must cut down the beanie ring that covers the MRH sleeve and spindle assemblies to better resemble the correct rotor head he wants. You can see by the picture above how tight the rotor head cover sits down to the S&S assemblies and rotor blades.
The kit includes the GE T-64 413 engine with the engine access panels covering most of the exhaust, which was the way we had our -413 engines. The original GE T-64 -6B engine had a more pronounced piece of the exhaust pipe sticking out of the rear of the engine more like the CH-53E does, but I am not going to tackle that in this build. The picture above reflects a -413 installed on this aircraft as you can see the access panel goes almost all the way to the rear covering the exhaust pipe, but also there is fading around the top of the cowling showing ribs through, which meant excessive heat built up here, and on all the -413, -415 engine installs on the CH-53A/D's these cowling needed constant maintenance!!
Even in its high gloss green paint job, you can see the 'ol 53 leaked oils like an old used up Chevy!! The crewchiefs of these glossy birds used to wipe them down with MIL-H-5606 hydraulic fluid to keep them clean and somewhat shiny. Another note on this photograph is the Tail Rotor Blades demonstrating the "Red-White-Red" paint scheme as directed by Naval Systems Command markings guidlines. But also see that when it wore off the tail blades, it was not rapidly re-painted, but left alone.
Build pics coming.
r/Gunny Dan