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Huey UH-1D - Finished

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  • Member since
    February 2003
  • From: Southern California, USA
Posted by ABARNE on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 1:37 PM

Rich,

Good luck with yours.  Look forward to seeing it in the rather bright livery.

Andy

  • Member since
    November 2005
  • From: Southport, North West UK
Posted by richgb on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 6:54 AM

Hi Andy,

Cheers for those tips. I see what you mean for that windscreen...a bit on the chunky side. I've built a few Italeri kits and never had any probs with the decals, they've always gone on well like you said, so I'm hoping I wont have too much trouble with those German ones.

Rich

PS. I love that head on shot with the guns sticking out

...this is it folks...over the top!
  • Member since
    February 2003
  • From: Southern California, USA
Posted by ABARNE on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 2:28 PM

 richgb wrote:
 

No wonder your boss was made up. I can see a promotion in the near future!! Very nice build and I like the door guns, something that is lacking in 1/72. I'm in the process of building one of these. Any major issues/fit probs you can make me aware of. I'm going to attempt to decal it in the German army flyout colours which will be a bit of a challenge for me, and as the doors will be closed, I'm not going to spend too long on the interior, just put belts on the pilot seats and maybe a bit of wiring here and there.

Thanks for sharing.

Rich

 

Thanks Rich.  I think the door guns really made the build.  The final look more than justified the hours spent (included all the failed attempts!) fabricating them.

I was really tempted by the German scheme, but decals are often a nemesis of mine and combined with the fact that Pam flew in the Army, led me to go for the Army version.  The decals went on really well.  I used Testor's decal solvent on them, and although they didn't crinkle up before flattening down, they did snuggle down quite nicely.  I did use a toothpick to press them into the panel lines.  I think I was going to build another one for myself, I might well go with the German scheme. 

The biggest issue I had were the windows.  The windscreen in particular was just ugly.  When I test fitted it to the fuselage, the thick edges just stood out like a sore thumb.  So I sanded the interior surface to thin down the edges and generally give a smooth shape.  I then worked it over with a polishing stick, coated it with Future, and it was a vast improvement.  Had I had more time, I could have even done more, because it still distorts and magnifies a bit.

The windscreen, cockpit door, and cabin door windows also all had some major gaps.  In an ideal world, I would have liked to have painted it, and then glued in the windows afterward, but the windows were so loose, that I had to glue and fill during assembly, which necesitated carefully masking everything, and even then the results weren't perfect.

The next major fit issue I had was with the cabin interior when gluing the fuselage together.  There were a few interference issues.  I did a lot of test fitting and sanding, although even then, I think I still missed an interference area in the forward cockpit floor.  If you look carefully at the head-on shot, you can see that the right side of the cockpit floor has a slight lean to it.  No doubt that was caused by it being just a tad wide, causing it to slide up the the side of the fuselage a bit. 

All in all, it's not a totally bad kit, but neither is it a box shaker.  Be preprared to spend some time test fitting.

Andy

  • Member since
    November 2005
  • From: Southport, North West UK
Posted by richgb on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 3:13 AM

No wonder your boss was made up. I can see a promotion in the near future!! Very nice build and I like the door guns, something that is lacking in 1/72. I'm in the process of building one of these. Any major issues/fit probs you can make me aware of. I'm going to attempt to decal it in the German army flyout colours which will be a bit of a challenge for me, and as the doors will be closed, I'm not going to spend too long on the interior, just put belts on the pilot seats and maybe a bit of wiring here and there.

Thanks for sharing.

Rich

...this is it folks...over the top!
  • Member since
    January 2007
  • From: Auburn, Alabama
Posted by rotorwash on Monday, June 25, 2007 1:58 PM

Andy,

  Nice job!  I wish my first chopper looked that good!

         Ray

  • Member since
    February 2003
  • From: Southern California, USA
Huey UH-1D - Finished
Posted by ABARNE on Monday, June 25, 2007 1:45 PM

Hi all, 

I finally finished my Italeri UH-1D "Slick" that I picked up last month.  This was actually the first chopper I had ever built.  I picked it up to be a retirement gift for my boss.  She had been among the Army's early female chopper pilots and has a particular fondness for the Huey, so it seemed an obviuos choice.  Due to time constraints, I planned to build it as much as I could out of the box.  Unfortunately the kit has a bunch of problems, so it entailed a lot more work, and more importantly time, than what I was expecting out of a 1/72 kit.  Fortunately, everything really came together last weekend, so I was able to finish it with a day to spare!

The kit came with gunship rockets and mini-guns which has been pointed out are not correct for Army 1D's, so I scratchbuilt the door guns out of a variety of Evergreen styrene sheet and rod.  They are a tad overscale and a bit clunky, but the chopper looks a lot better with them than without.

The kit also lacked seatbeats, so I cut some from painted paper.  They don't show up well in a lot of the photos, but once crinkled and laid over the seats, I think they look reasonably plausible, and a lot better than having nothing.

Italeri didn't have anything to hold the doors to the fuselage when in the opened position.  Because the doors needed to be forced against the fuselage, I was afaid that if I simply tried to glue them in place, they might pop off under tension.  So I used a pieces of wire, drilled through the fuselage to make the door clips in the back that look semi-close and be structurally sound as well.  

Most of the windows had clarity issues.  The thick edges of the winshield were extremely prominent, so I did quite a bit of sanding, polishing, and coating with Future.  Like the seat belts, the result is not perfect, but was a big improvement on doing nothing.  I used Tamiya Clear Green mixed with Future for the upper windows.

The kit was a challenge to build well.  Aside from the decals which were excellent, just about everything was a bit of a fight, but with some TLC, it made a decent looking Huey.  My boss was thrilled with it, and her reaction really made the effort worthwhile.

Andy

More photos may be found here:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v624/ABARNE/Huey%20UH-1D%201-72/

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