Kitty Hawk 1:35 SH-60b Seahawk: Start to Finish Build

As an epilog... Here's what my work space looks like when I'm done.

 This phenomenon only occurs every so often when work is done. Sadly, it doesn't last very long.

And here's my high-tech method of dealing with the sharps that are created constantly. I buy my #11s in the 100 piece packs and change then very often, especially when using it to cut decals, masking, bare metal foil, etc. I toss them all in a yogurt container and when full, tape the darn thing shut and toss it in the trash. I don't handle them any more than I have to. Being an AFid person and on a blood thinner, I try and not cut myself.

Lastly, when I said there were a lot of unused parts, I wasn't kidding. These are not all of them. I threw out a bunch of sprues that had parts on them besides these. It seems like a lot of waste.

Well... that's that. Next up will be the massive Missouri Turret project. I'm still waiting for the kit and guns to come to my local hobby shop. I'm finding more and more reference images and am busy drawing all the parts. I'm posting the whole deal on the ships part of this forum.

Thanks all!  It's a free country. You can post any thread you'd like AND I'd be interested to see how you tackled all the challenges that I fumbled my way through. I know you'll have it dead on...

Ahh you're going to kill me.

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Nah, great job and now I'm even more concerned about trying to build mine! 

Hope I would not be stepping on anyones toes if I did the same thing if and when I eventually start mine. Make a build thread that is. Although mine would be more about correcting the kit.

Superb work Builder 

Very nice.  She came out great.

Big day! Had a gall bladder imaging session this morning to see if it's working right and finished the Seahawk this afternoon. Won't know about the gall bladder for a couple of days, but you'll learn about the finished Seahawk tonight.

Before putting the rotor on I had to get the tail boom on. I chose to use epoxy putty since there wasn't much gluing surface for conventional adhesive AND the surfaces themselves were not very secure. I put a wad of putty on the back of the fuze side of the ResKit hinge component and pushed the parts together. Had to hold it for a while by hand and then used some tape. The putty cures pretty fast, and while this was going on I removed a lot of the stuff that had oozed out of the joint all over the place. 

After it cured I did more fine cleaning using various dental tools. BTW: you may want to ask you dentist if he has any tools that are no longer usable in the practice, but could be very useful for us modelers. I got a bunch from my dentist. After cleaning I had to go back and touchup paint any areas that degraded during all this fussing.

I did final touchup on the main rotor, trimmed all the extra-long pins that are now holding the blade hubs, and did final finish on all the wires and bits. 

I had to repair the rear blade brace since it fractured right near the fuze joint. Don't know when it happened. I drilled and pinned it. Not easy with the model so far completely and the brace glued to it. Kitty Hawk styrene was a bit brittle and broke way too often way too easily. The rotor went on easily and all the blades aligned perfectly with the braces. Miracle! 

I then remembered that I had to add paint and add the missile warning sensors that go onto the port and strbrd EMS pods in front, and the HF antenna wire. I also had to reattach the open engine cover this time with wire. It's now a bit flexible so you can bump it without it fracturing off. CA is too darn brittle! 

For the antenna, I used E-Z Line Lycra inserted into a 0.030" Albion micro tube held with some thin CA. For those that haven't use E-Z Line, it's great for rigging antenna and small naval ship rigging. It is hugely elastic and when slightly stretched stays taut. It also glues almost instantly with thin CA. I think it has to do with the huge surface area within the fiber itself. The stands making up the yarn are very fine. The tube was inserted into a hole I drill in the fuze at the antenna entry point. Also a pain in the butt since the model (including the rotor) was already there and in the way.

With that it was done. I still plan on doing the base, but the model stands on its own nicely. Here's the album.

So there you have it. Work started in mid-Oct and ended in mid-Feb about 4 months of pretty intensive work. My opinion of the model:

Pros:

1. Beautiful surface detail especially with the addition of the ResKit parts.

2. Lots of choices on build and configuration. (Huge amount of parts still left on many sprues.)

3. It's a great model in a great scale. You can really go to town on super-detailing.

Cons:

1. Instructions leave something to be desired. Terrible instructions on creating the stowed version

2. That reversed part HD33 that i had to redraw and 3D print.

3. Styrene was fragile and broke at the worst possible times. You better be a good problem solver.

4. The ResKit parts did not mate 100% accurate with the kit's requiring further problem solving.

5. Fits - While having the interior as a separate box seemed like a good idea at the time, in reality it made getting a good main joint nearly impossible requiring a lot of filling.

It was singularly the most complex aircraft build I ever did and I've been building models almost non-stop since 1954 at my 9th birthday. I've made a practice recently to have each project I attempt to push my skills. This project did not disappoint. That said, I love how the rotor head and engine came out. They met the image I had in my mind's eye and for that all the work was worth it.

Now that's what I love about this forum (all forums for that matter). There's no way I as a  non-naval person I could have ever gained this level of knowledge without the contribution of the folks who join in the discussion. I suspected it was a worm drive turning the blades. The level of complexity to convert the Blackhawk to the Seahawk is staggering and tells you a lot about the increase in costs to design craft to serve in more than one branch. I suppose the Blackhawk would also have some way to index the blades and lock them so they wouldn't windmill when sitting on the ground in strong breeze.

I finished the rotor head, did the repaint, connected the deice lines, and refinished the blades including painting the pop-out nitrogen leak indicator. I also did the anti-collision belly light and finish painted the rear landing gear. I fixed all the blade lock indicators putting on fresh little slivers of PE fret to complete them. They do need some touch up paint. And I notice that I didn't trim the phos-bronze rotating pins. 

There may be a few more areas needing attention such as cleaning up the accent around the blade bolts.

While mounting the rotor and attempting to position the blades into the holders, I broke one of the holders. I also knocked off one of the blade clamps. I drilled both and pinned them.

Ran out of time today to put it all back together. I also broke off the engine hatch by grabbing the model in the wrong spot. It's a very delicate beast. It will be finished on Monday.

So everyone have a happy Super Bowl Sunday! I'd like Cincy to win, but really don't care who does as long as it's a good game that doesn't embarrass anyone.

Some interesting tidbits about the SH-60B.  Sadly they no longer exist in the Navy's inventory nor do the HSL squadrons that used to fly them.

The aircraft has 13 pop buttons to show if something is clogged or empty.

The tail used to fold automatically

There are two large and very heavy vibration absorbers in the cabin ceiling.

If the MAD towed body hits the water or gets hung up on something it will automatically have the cable cut by a modified .38special cartridge.

There are only 6 driveshafts.

The tail rotor spins at 1100rpm

The main rotor spins at 256rpm

The engine output shafts, or high speed shafts, spin at 30,000rpm.

Every 365 calendar days the aircraft is completely gutted for inspection including draining and entering the fuel tanks.

Every 150 flight hours the aircraft goes through a major inspection A, B, C, and D.  The D inspection is the complete teardown of the rotor head.

The rotor head is made completely of titanium.

The entire aircraft is run on what is basically two Commodore 64 computers.

The UYS-1 Spectrum Analyzer, which analyzes the sonobouys signals is smart enough to re-route past failed circuit cards and costs $1.2m dollars to replace.

The aircraft has three software programs that it can run.  One is to operate the aircraft.  One is to operate the ESM system and the last is for troubleshooting the aircraft systems.

The aircraft data link system is capable of sending voice, aircraft telemetry  and video from the FLIR back to the ship.  The helo can also allow the ship to control several systems onboard the helo via data link (AKA Hawk link).

The aircraft can be towed down to the flight deck in rough seas using the RAST system.  This same RAST system is used to move the aircraft into and out of the hangar aboard ship. (FFG, DDG and CG). (missing from the KH model kit)

The aircraft can carry the following weapon systems:
Mk46 torpedo

Mk50 torpedo

AGM-114 HELLFIRE missiles (with the AAS-44 FLIR installed)

AGM-119 Penguin missiles (with the AAS-44 FLIR installed)

M-60D machine gun

GAU-16 machine gun

Mk240B machine gun

While it all makes sense in how it is set up, it still amazes me that the blades just didn't fly off the rotor head.  Aint technology a beautiful thing?

Fabulous build, BTW.  I have one of these in the stash.  Not sure if I will go to your level, but nice to have a blueprint if I wanted to.

Thanks!

Bob

Folding the blades was quite involved.

First the rotor head had to be indexed.  So the correct two blades are facing forward and in the correct position.  There was a line painted on the swashplate that showed the index if it had to be done manually.  Typically an electric motor similar to a starter engaged the rotor brake to turn the head. The motor was on the backside of the main gear box.

Once the head was indexed the hydraulics would move all the flight controls to a certain position.  Once in place there was a pitch lock motor on the rotor head that would lock the spindles into their proper angle for folding.  

Once the pitchlocks were good the lockpin pullers would open.  The bladefold motor would drive the lockpins out. These would unlock the blades from the spindle hinge.  Once the lockpin pullers were fully extended they pulled a gear which then engaged a worm drive electric motor inside the cuff on the spindle. This motor would fold the blades back. These would run until they hit the limit switch shutting them off.

Clear as mud.

I believe that paraphrasing Yoda would be appropriate at this time. "Scared... you should be." or something like that. Yes... the Reskit products are great when off the model and a total bear to build, but they're even more challenging when attempting to integrate them into the model. For example. The transmission, barely fits and I had to do some surgical procedures to make it fit. The blade claws (don't know what else to call them) don't seem to go over the rotating motor head and more work needs to happen. The bumpers on the blade claw seem to keep them from rotating inward far enough to get in line and I removed them too.

Good to hear that the real birds folding was no fun either. I can just imagine. Do you know just what the mechanism was that actually turned the blades. I'm envisioning one of two methods. A spur gear in the head that is rotated by a hydraulically operated rack, OR a worm gear turning a worm wheel in the head. Creating the rotating motion in the blade arms seems more difficult than having a hydraulic cylinder in them. Do you know?

I will attempt to weather as you've described.

Builder 2010

Something was wrong with FSM's Forums yesterday. I kept getting an error about not accessible yesterday, on both this and the one I'm writing on the Turret project. Today it seems it was fixed. Good.

I did (FINALLY) get the four blades attached to the hub. My new parts worked although they still required a styrene spacer and then do some creative carving of both the claw and the rotation motor head on the hub to get the new parts to sit correctly on the hub. Again, the pinning idea was the reason I could do this at all. The hub's taken quite a beating and will need some TLC to bring it back to it's prior self.

 

Here are the two sets of claws. I'm glad I made a bunch since I did use a few before I got it right.

And here are the four blade facing in the correct direction. The broken hub came loose again, but the pin I inserted kept it in position. I'm letting it float until I put the blades into their racks and then I'll hit it with some CA. I have to hook up the blade deicer lines and repaint the rest that show their underlying copper. Actually, considering the abuse it took and the number of times I dropped it on the floor, the fact that it looks this good is a minor miracle. I have to put back most of those PE straps on the ends of the blade lock indicators. I have to touch up the blade paint, detail the sensors on the hub end and do some slight weathering on the bolt heads.

 

Getting the blade fold working correctly on the real aircraft is almost as hard is it on the model!

For weathering:

The bolts on the blade root are all  covered in 8802 which is a sealant and prevents them from rusting.  The bolts that hold the blade to the rotor head are all stainless steel and also do not rust.

All the wire harnesses on the rotor head would be black with no metal showing except at the ends.  The damper lines are blue as you already have them painted.

The bifilar weights on top of the rotor head are usually lubed up with lubriplate which is a whiteish-grey color.  The bolt heads and washers underneath are silver.

I really need to look into a 3D printer.  You've also got me scared to use the reskit rotor head!

Something was wrong with FSM's Forums yesterday. I kept getting an error about not accessible yesterday, on both this and the one I'm writing on the Turret project. Today it seems it was fixed. Good.

I did (FINALLY) get the four blades attached to the hub. My new parts worked although they still required a styrene spacer and then do some creative carving of both the claw and the rotation motor head on the hub to get the new parts to sit correctly on the hub. Again, the pinning idea was the reason I could do this at all. The hub's taken quite a beating and will need some TLC to bring it back to it's prior self.

Here are the two sets of claws. I'm glad I made a bunch since I did use a few before I got it right.

And here are the four blade facing in the correct direction. The broken hub came loose again, but the pin I inserted kept it in position. I'm letting it float until I put the blades into their racks and then I'll hit it with some CA. I have to hook up the blade deicer lines and repaint the rest that show their underlying copper. Actually, considering the abuse it took and the number of times I dropped it on the floor, the fact that it looks this good is a minor miracle. I have to put back most of those PE straps on the ends of the blade lock indicators. I have to touch up the blade paint, detail the sensors on the hub end and do some slight weathering on the bolt heads.

Good deal. I'm glad the blade fix wasn't too bad. Looking forward to seeing it all together.

The problem with having your thread read by people who ACTUALLY know about the model you're building is sometimes they tell you things you're doing wrong and that you must fix. This happened with yesterday's post. I was told by words and pictures that I installed the blades in backwards. Ugh! They were awful to get in the first time. However; there is a silver lining... sort of. 

By spending the time to pin the blades to the knuckles and not gluing them, I was able to pull the pins and remove the blades without breaking them. 

While trying to get the blades back on I re-torqued the knuckle that I broke yesterday and rebroke it. This time, knowing that more CA wasn't going to do the trick, I drilled and inserted a 1/32" diameter phos-bronze pin. It was much more secure after regluing.

I got three of the four blades in again. The last one is the one with the 3D printed end. I just printed the mating half which I've also pre-prepared with hole positions to pin the parts together and to the end of the blade since I'm also cutting of the battered plastic end. This will give me two good eyes into which I will put the mounting pin.

Tomorrow, the blades will be on I promise. I'm still having trouble positioning them fully folded. The resin knuckles and the plastic blade ends do not conform well to each other. I've had to grind away little bits of the blade end to let it swing further towards the hub's center.

Meawhile, I'm continuing to draw like mad on the Iowa Turret Project. I got the gun loading apparatus finished. This was a very challegning SketchUp task. Here is the cradle in the loading position. The gun is held at 5° during the loading procedure. This gun can be reloaded in 30 seconds.

And here it is in the firing position. There's still more detail to add around this equipment which I will eventually get to.

Again, I'm fully describing this project elsewhere in the forum.

Spent a lot of time today fussing with getting the blades mounted and didn't finish. I did get the blade racks installed. i found that there was a pin on one end of the bottom member that could go into the holes in the fuselage if there were holes there. There were keyslot-shaped engravings at the correct locations on the strbrd-side. I measured the pin and drilled out those areas. Then I realized that I had put the mounting pins on the wrong end of this member and had all the paint schemes backwards.

I had to make new pin on the rear set using Evergreen round styrene of a very similar diameter. The front one's pin was intact and I was able to use this. I repainted all their bottoms to conform to the scheme on the rotor head. I also added all the blade clamps before painting. The red was air brushed. The rest was hand painted.

Then came the real fun. Getting the kit's plastic blades into the scale-like attachment points. I was able to use metal pins on all of them without further wrecking the plastic components. Getting these things in was approaching a horror show. At one point I over-torqued one of the hubs and broke it off. I reglued it.

The remaining blade was an hour's worth of work. Besides using another 3D printed knuckle after I wrecked the first one, I also had to fix where I destroyed the connection journel for the de-icing wiring. I broke the copper wire off from manhandling the knuckles to stay glued. So I re-drilled the tiny hole to reapply the copper. Then it happened again. This time I broke off the carbide tiny drill in the hole and couldn't get it out meaning I couldn't redrill it. It's impossible to re-drill a hole with a chunk of tungsten-carbide buried in it. 

I ended up cutting the whole journel off and replacing it with some Albion micro-tubing. That too took wayyyyy to long because I kept losing pieces as I was cutting them off using the razor blade. It was getting late. I was getting tired and hungry and the basement was getting cold.

I finally got that done and next session I'll get this blade finally mounted.

As you all know by following my work, I generally do not give up. I will keep trying until I get it. Meanwhile, the  blades will need repainting due to all the messing around with them.

In the home stretch.

In the photo showing the tail strut scissors.  If you look above the HSL-41 (I went to FRAMP there) straight up from the 4, you see three dimples in the fuselage next to the door that should not be there.  The top and bottom hole should be flat red.  They are indicators to let you know if the engine fire bottles have gone off.  If the fire bottles get used the pressure pops out the indicators leaving an open hole.

In the same picture.  That piece just ahead of the tail strut is the lower anti-collision light.  The bottom is white and the top is red.

On the "torpedo".  I only say it that way because I have no idea what torpedo they are trying to represent.  In the green section you will find 4 raised ribs.  Those should be painted stainless steel. 

For the blade fold poles they are all red with the color markings for the blades as per the picture.  The struts that hold the poles are red on the blocks with matching color codes.  The pole is stainless steel and the round piece in the middle (locking mechanism ) is black.  On the stbd tail boom you'll see two little pear shaped covers  One about halfway and the other near the access panel near the hinge section.  Those are the panel that flip out of the way for the blade struts to go into the tail.

The clamps themselves are red.  The part HE47 would be stainless steel color.There are two rubber pads on the inside of each clamp that are black.  The clamps themselves are not color coded.

You can attach a small line to part HE47 or use a boat hook as in the picture to close/open the blade clamps when installed onto the blades.

Here is a pic showing the light and all the orange goo is hydraulic fluid leaking from the drains

It was one of those days where I spent 30% of my time doing new stuff and 70% of my time fixing crap that I broke off. 

For the new stuff, I built the blade support racks and their associated blade clamps. The kit parts have a very narrow, scale-ish, connection between the forward half of the two-part assemblies and the main part. There are two sets that vary in size. I was seiriously concerned that this narrow part wasn't going to make it especially after it got softened by the solvent cement in its proximity.

I fixed this by drilling and applying a piece of 0.014 guitar string and a corresponding hole at the correct angle in the main part. I put on accelerator and then pooled some thin CA in the joint. Much, much stonger.

You can't use sprue cutters to cut guitar string (or any music wire for that matter). It's so hard it will put nice half-moon dents in the cutters and ruin them. You need a good hardened cutter. I have a Xuron Hard Wire Cutter. But surprisingly, my 30 year-old Channellock long-nose pliers have a cutter near the hinge and cut hard wire with no damage. It's all abou the metallurgy. Chinese tools generally don't hold up.

The Xuron cutters can't cut a tiny piece due to the thickness of the jaws, so a bit was sticking out the bottom of the assembly. This will imapale you so it needed to be removed. I used the Dremel with a diamond-coated burr. Took my time and didn't grind away the much softer plastic surrounding the wire.

The blade clamps were another small assembly that too much too much time due to the poor engineerig. They needed to be glued together OFF the blade since I'm going to airbrush the entire blade clamp, but I needed it to be spaced as it would be on the blade. I measured the blade's thickness at the point where the clamps go and then used a piece of cardboard of that width to glue the clamps. When they were reasonably set, I placed them on the blades to finally cure. 

Here is the gluing set up.

And here's all the parts waiting for paint (on Monday).

I glued the rearview mirror back on. First I tried 30 minute epoxy, but it wasn't viscous enough to stay put and there was no way to clamp it. I wiped off the epoxy and then used some epoxy putty. This worked! It help the part still and cured hard. The mirror is firmly attached. It needs a little cleanup which I'll do next week.

While fussing with the mirror, I had the model supported on a foam block. It fell off and a main wheel came off, a tailwheel came of and the scissors link broke again. That's the seond time it broke off since I replaced the original with my 3D printed one. It had become a mess. I still had some printed ones left over, so I made a new one. This one I actually got the hinge wired too. Needs painting.

I painted the main rotor color coding. The tape idea wasn't working so well. Besides the hub there's also coding on the swash plate connection links.

Lastly, I got all the loadout items installed. Had to reglue the torpedo. Very small contact area for these parts... i.e., really fragile. This is NOT A TOY! IT IS NOT FOR CHILDREN TO PLAY WITH!

So, that was a pretty big week! Got a lot done and it's almost finished. What's left is putting on the main rotor blades with their stowage clamps, and put on the tail boom in the folded position. I may use epopxy putty on this application due to the small gluing area and the weight of the part. 

The blade mounts when you look at a prototype image show a connection into the fuselage to locke them into position. The model does not have this, but I'm going to add it. Otherwise, all those blades are just hanging out there.

All y'all have a nice, safe weekend.

Had an ice/sleet/rain/snow storm today and into tomorrow. Good day to spend some time in the basement building cool things.

It was pointed out to me that I mounted the engine hatch at the wrong angle, but couldn't get the work platfom part flat. Well... after carefully looking at a guy kneeling on the hatch and working on the engine, I realized that I put the wear strips on the wrong wing of the hatch. The strips go to the hinge side, not the outside. With that understanding, I removed the strips, fixed the paint, made new strips, applied them and redid the weathering. I also had to repair where I had glued the door in the wrong position to the helicopeter's body. All's well that ends well.

I then got the wipers on using the wire. Touchy, but not too difficult.

Lastly, based on Svt40's additional info, I'm adding the color-coding strips to the various places identifying all the blades, their holders and other parts. I painted some Tamiya tape and attempting to use that. It's not sticking as I wish it should. I think I'll give it a little patch of clear gloss since things stick to gloss better than flat.

Onward and upward!

It looks like they had to destroy one of these Seahawks in that successful ISIS raid last night. Mechanical troubles. In look how complex these beasts are it's amazing they work at all.

I tried to get it horizontal, but from where the hinge is, that's as far as I got. Does the hinge articulate to let the door swing out and then down?

Looking good.  The bottom is nice and dirty like the real deal.

The engine door should be parrallel to the deck when open.  It only has a 90º arc from closed to fully open.  Also non skid strips on the bottom inside of the door since it doubles as a work platform.

If you decide to add an exhaust trail to the bird then the stbd side will be heavier as the MAD pylon breaks up the flow and pulls the soot down more on that side.  So the stbd stab is always dirtier than the port stab. 

I sincerely hope that's the last one because we're days away from being done with the model and I don't want to go back and fix stuff.

I will add the color coding becasue I thinks that's a cool tiny detail that only the in-crowd will know anything about.

I finished all the weathering I'm going to do. I dirtied the bottom up and added dirt on the walking arees on the roof. I got the engine door installed, broke it off in handling the model improperly and glued it back on again. I got the front door mounted with wire. And I spent WAYYYYY to much time screwing around with the tiny marker lights on the wheel sponsons and the windshield wipers. Didn't finish them, but will do so today.

Here's the bottom: Notice the wheels are now on.

And here's the model showing its newly attached doors. I'm very happy I was able to fix that door window. Dodged a bullet on that one. 

Lastly, the wipers. I find that some of the smallest details drive me the most crazy. It's the Pareto principle at work, except it's 3% of the parts take 90% of the work (and aggravation). It's a small gluing area and they weren't drying correctly. I ended up using gel CA. I'm wiring them on since the mount points weren't holes, just tiny flat spots. I want the model to be able to put for the long haul.

When laying the model on its side while putting on the cockpit door I broke off the port side mirror. Glued it on with gel CA and then broke it off again. This time I'm going to J-B Weld it and then not touch it again.

Tuesday's post... I had left it open and didn't sent it. So I'll try and re-create it and post it.

Builder 2010

I won't kill you, and you do make trouble, but it's "Good Trouble". So I immediately put all of your actual real helicopter knowhow to build a better model.

 

Lastly, I stripped the decal off the airbrake on the MAD (magnetic anolmaly detector) which I have been erroneaously calling a towed sonar device, and painted it flat white to simulate the styrofoam that they are now made of. I will paint the aluminum pad that holds it on tomorrow.

That brings us up to date. I need details of the engine bay cover latch. I'm going to mount both the bay door and the cockpit door with bent wires. We're getting closer to the end each day. I still have the running lights to install, do the powder weathering, and then mount the blades and the tail boom. I have to paint and install the main rotor folding in clamps. And it will be done.

Bis Morgan... (see you tomorrow.)

 

The piece that holds the tail to the MAD is grey plastic.  I have no pictures of the latch mechanism for hte engine door.  But it's simply two rods that go from the latch.  One short one in the front and a long one to the rear. There is also a keeper at each end of the door that the rod slides through.  The latch mechanism is usually either grey or a dull aluminum color

One last hint is each blade is color coded.  The PCRs and PCLs (on the tail) will have a colored ring painted on them to denote which blade it is.  The spindles will also sometimes have a small stripe painted on them as well.  I mention this because with the head being folded the main rotos blades will be in a specific position.  The fwd stbd blade is blue, aft stbd is red.  Fwd port is yellow and aft port is black.

Here is a good pic of the blade poles and one version of the color markings for them.  We had ropes that attached to the clamps to open and close them.  In this picture they have a boat hook for doing the same.

Tail rotor showing the color markings.  When folded the tail is not indexed to a certain position other than to allow the stab to fit between the paddles.

Here you can see the stripes on the PCRs.

Hopefully that will help you out some more.

And here is another pic of one of our aircraft I painted up for the 50th anniversary of D-Day in Portsmouth England in 1994.  We came home on a Friday and went back to work on a Monday and the the squadron immediately painted over it over the weekend!

I won't kill you, and you do make trouble, but it's "Good Trouble". So I immediately put all of your actual real helicopter knowhow to build a better model.

I put in the brake lines. I used magnet wire and diameters of Albion tubing to make a faux fitting. I made a strap clamp out of wine bottle foil. This stuff works great, but you first must remove any printing or coating on it with acetone. The coating prevents good gluing.

I realize that is not the kind of clamp they actually use, but the kind they use is really hard to model.

i then finished all the painting on the sonobuoy rack and it looks much better. I also painted the break line leaving the brass natural metal since the actual junction is natural metal also.

Lastly, I stripped the decal off the airbrake on the MAD (magnetic anolmaly detector) which I have been erroneaously calling a towed sonar device, and painted it flat white to simulate the styrofoam that they are now made of. I will paint the aluminum pad that holds it on tomorrow.

That brings us up to date. I need details of the engine bay cover latch. I'm going to mount both the bay door and the cockpit door with bent wires. We're getting closer to the end each day. I still have the running lights to install, do the powder weathering, and then mount the blades and the tail boom. I have to paint and install the main rotor folding in clamps. And it will be done.

Meanwhile, if y'all are interested in ship stuff, I've started another thread on this site in the building of the missing interior for the new Takom 1:72 USS Missouri 16" main turret. The model's cool, but has nothing but the exterior shell. I'm drawing and will 3D print all of the interior apparatus down to the first projectile deck. I've finished the main guns yesterday, and starting working on the below turret decks. 

Here's the guns...

Here's the link to the thread.

https://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/p/190013/2187110.aspx#2187110

Bis Morgan... (see you tomorrow.)

Looking good.

But you're going to kill me.  The MAD towed body tail is actually white styrofoam.  The round thing on the back of it with the bar is grey plastic to secure the foam to the MAD body.

The earlier fiberglass tails were painted as you show here but look completely different.

Here are some more photos for you.

MAD towed body tail.

Main landing gear brake line routing.  Sorry I have no pics of the brakes and where the line connects.

And a shot of my last bird with the HELLFIRE missiles mounted up and ready to fly.  Somewhere in the North Arabian Gulf.

Again, your imput caused me more work. It was one of those two-steps back and one forward.

I tried to save the damaged door window, but it was a mess. The other two door windows in the kit were for other version of the Sikorsky bird inlcuding the Blackhawk and their cockpit door windows varied slightly in configuration. I woke up thinking about this and decided to go for it. The model's coming out too good to let that crappy window detract from it. 

I filed and sanded the replacement and got it to fit reasonably well.

I installed it without mess up, repainted the door's interior and did some trim painting around the outside. This took quite a while.

I then repainted the landing gear shock strut to do it like it's supposed to be. Still needs just bit of tending loving care.

Here's the fixed door and the towed sonar rear portion freehand. No decals for that. I had to blend Tamiya yellow and white to get to the lighter yellow.

And I'm repainting the sonobuoy bays. The inside is tan, and the holes are completely black as I could see looking more closely to some photos. I didn't finish this job today. I got the tan done and most of the black. I will have to back paint the body color next session.

The main struts need some brake lines. I should add them since I added all those tubes on the rotor head.

Till next time...

The 3D printing is nice.  I'd love to get into that myself!

The bottom of the bird is usually very dirty.  Oddly enough there will actually be mold at the drains towards the front and it turns more oily in the middle drains then more hydraulic fluid towards the rear especiialy the two large gange drains at the back.

The main mount should be chrome on the skinny part at the bottom.  The very bottom will be gray and the part you chromed would also be grey.

The sonobouys are a creme color.  Like a light colored vanilla pudding.

That's a lot of information.  Today was a milestone day with the panel accenting, flat coat and unveiling of the glazing. I got a got set of prints, but they're too thin. I got the profile dead on, but the depth needed some shimming.

Here's the comparison to the original

After fitting it on the hub and blade I found that it was about 0.040" too thin and used some styrene CA'd in place to do the job. It all fit nicely.

It all fit nicely until, both eyes fractured when I put a little bit too much downward pressure when fitting the hub on the craft and trying to determine how much droop the back two blades will have to have. I will epoxy the blade without the full eyes and then use some Bondic to reconfigure the contours.

I used the Tamiya Black Panel Accent to highlight all the doors, seams and compartments this machine has. It looks pretty awful when you first put this stuff on. You have to let it dry before removing the excess.

The bottom had a lot of places.

I use the traditional Q-tip lightly dampened with low odor mineral spirits. I was annoyed that the mission paint dissolved in the mineral spirits. That's not supposed to happen. Tamiya paint DOES NOT. Also on the bottom, some of gloss coat was not sturdy enough and the accent leaked into the flat paint underneath making clean removal of the excess difficult.

But, with all of that, the final results after shooting with Tamiya clear flat boosted with a bit more flat base, came out pretty nicel

There will be more dirtying the bottom with pastels since even on clean Seahawks there enough stuff being discharged from various vents to make things interesting.

I actually almost blew by getting all set up to spray the flat only to realize I didn't do any of the panel acccenting. You can't do that on a flat finish. It makes a mess.

After the flat dried it was time for the "great unveiling". I took the tape off all the glazing. I was worried that the canopy cement might not have enough grip to resist the pull of the masking tape and I hate when my worries come true. The first window I de-masked popped out. it was the window in the sliding cabin door so I was able to put it back carefully using solvent cement. All the other windows de-masked without problem except for the co-pilots door. The tape was too tight, especially where I sealed the edges with clear gloss.

That window got damaged. All the others are perfect. I put on several coats of Pledge with Future floor wax and hope it will be okay. There are two other sets of cockpit doors, but they are not for the SH-60B. The "B's" window has a curved notch taken out of it, while the others are straight. If this window is too damaged, I'll make one of those work.

Here's the glazing exposed. It's nice to see the engine again. I missed seeing it.

I did a few more punchlist items. I filled the hollow rear-view mirror housings with Bondic and then painted them with Molotow Chrome. Decanting the marker was one of the smartest things I've done in a while. It's really slick to be able to brush the paint where you want it. The felt tips work good for the first application, but make a mess if you have to go back and add more. I also used the same to paint the oleo strut on the main gear. There's still some more tiny paint jobs that need doing and that will wait until Monday.

Above the oleo strut is an elastomer bellows. That will be painted rubber black.

I also did the back painting on the sonabuoy noses and they look good now.

I also took Gino's advice and built the fuel tank. So I'll have the torpedo on one rack and the fuel tank on the other.

The model proper will be done some time next week. The base and figures are still out there. 

Builder 2010

So get it out of your stash and get cracking while this stuff is still fresh in your mind. Svt40, I am following your terrific instructiosn as best I can.

That's the goal but I have three 1/72 scale Abrams and an FT-17 to finish first.  Plus I have no real place to build.  Just using the coffee table and couch ATM.

My intention with the KH Bravo kit is to do similar to yours and show a full build.  Showing all the things that need to be removed or added to make it a true Bravo.

The kit KH put out is obviously done by someone who has never seen a Bravo in real life.  The fuselage and cockpit center console are both Foxtrot/Hotel bits.  It's missing a lot of things that are Bravo only items as well.

It's actually real close to the aircraft we had at the Key West Florida SAR squadron.  It started on the assembly line as a Bravo and halfway through construction was converted to a Foxtrot.  Then at the end they did another conversion to make it similar to a Hotel.  It was a nightmare aircraft as it had a lot of one off parts that could not be used in any other aircraft but that one. We could not even swap parts between the two birds we had for troubleshooting.