Troy,
There's differences in the window shapes and size between the two aircraft, especially the Chin Bubbles. When I did mine, I used the clear plastic top from a greeting card box to make the side transparencies and windshield
(for the side glass, I simply held the kit supplied transparency under a clear piece and traced the shape - the windscreen was done the same way, except I taped the two fuselage halves together and held a clear piece over the front to trace it)
The Chin Bubbles are very different between the two aircraft. With the two fuselage halves taped together, I tacked the kit supplied chin bubbles in place, filled ALL cracks and seams, then sanded/wet sanded the entire nose section until it was glass smooth.
Now one could use this surface to mold a new nose, but this may result in heat warpage of the kit plastic, so I used the smoothed out nose section to create a Nose Blank by spraying a bit of "Pam" on it, and inserting it into some half set-up plaster I had poured into a coffee can.
(done too soon, and the plaster fills in.... done too late, and the plaster cracks)
After the Blank set up, I coated the inside with more Pam,
but no bubbles or pooling, and poured more plaster in the hole and positioned a wood screw in the top center
(for extracting the mold after set-up). Once that set-up, I lifted the mold out, rubbed out any imperfections with a piece from an old T-Shirt, used the embedded wood screw to mount it in vice grips, heated the clear plastic, and laid it over the mold.
Example here:
http://modeling.gunsagogo.org/tnt1.jpg
The kit chin bubble frames are not shaped correctly... use reference material and a thin tipped permanent marker to mark the correct shape ON the taped together fuselage halves... then I laid the clear formed piece onto the fuselage and traced the corrected lines. I used a Drummel saw to cut out the correct shape from the fuselage, then cut out the new chin bubble from the clear piece.
Walla... accurate Chin Bubbles!
![Wink [;)]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile_wink.gif)
Various references can be found on my assembly site:
http://modeling.gunsagogo.org/
*Remember, on the early Chinooks, the lateral windscreens had laminated gold de-foggers, which can easily be duplicated using some Bronze window tint material from an auto parts store.*
Hope this helps some, also, that "
Aerofax Minigraph #27" book and the "
Squadron-Signal" book are excellent references.
Take care,
Frank