"Battle for Mogadishu" ***COMPLETE*** 24oct09

always having your hands full huh model?? well, since yer engaged in this building...i look forward to seeing it...always loved the whole "little bird" thing! sorry about the job...but welcome to the club!! hope things work out better for ya.

Thanks, brother....

I always thought they looked mean and nasty. Then the first time I saw one and how crazy maneuverable it was ... and deadly to boot. Then a buddy "hooked" me up and I went for a bench ride ... HOLY CRAP!!!

This one has been in the back of my mind ever since. Just glad I got ahold of the kit!?!

After looking at the benches though, I'm thinking that they might be a little too ... robust. I might have to figure out how to trim them down a bit. Maybe I'll just leave them alone until I can see the figures on them. Honestly I could change them all the way down to the very end and it wouldn't hurt.

Hmmm..... I'll probably put these aside so I can continue progress.

yeah, no sense changing anything until you see what the figs look like. mujst've been one hell of a ride...leave it to the military to put men on the outside of a perfectly good helicopter!

black hawk down is one of my favorite movies, it reminds me the sacrifices the soldiers paid to make the world a better place. what figures are you using becuase im very interested in making one of these dios

There will be six figs total. The two pilots will be coming from the Academy OH-58D "Thugs" kit. The four operators will be heavily modded from Dragon's Delta Elite series. I'm also receiving some casted pieces from a friend to help out with the modded figure.

Spent today just adding a little more detail into the interior ... not much else. We'll get some more pics up once I get more completed.

calvin, i think what your really trying to say and u can correct me if im wrong, is it shows how vulnerable we are while showing how curagious our men and women really are! i dont want to put words in your mouth or turn this into a political rant so i'll just stop right here. this is also one of my favorite movies...but it hurts deeply for two reasons...1) cpl smith (who's leg artery was severed) went to school with a friend of mine and 2) well, 2 would sound more politcal and i wont do that to u model! so i'll leave well enough alone! cant wait for more pics model!!

hey camo junkie, you can correct all you want, im 14 and im still learning, yes thats what i was trying to say. i just feel really patriotic and thank those who serve

its ok calvin. i understand and wasnt trying to make it something. i assumed you were a younger age and also assumed what u were trying to say. and as someone who served its cool you think like you do. perhaps though, it just hit me harder than most but that's another story!

Can't wait to see more of this... I will be keeping my eyes on this trend for sure.  I have seen so many war movies but 'Blackhawk Down' is one of the few movies that can get me really emotionally involved because of the soldiers heroic actions to rescue the others. 

Well, as it turns out, THEY (yes they) are starting up a helo group build over in the GB forum, so I'll be ... re-starting this thread over there and continuing it there as well. But don't worry, once its complete, I'll come back here and post the finished product .... unless there's such an uprising that Kelly and the guys will have to shut down the site IOT control the rioting .... then I post updates on both forums.

.... I can almost hear camo pitching a fit right now ... , HAHA, JK brother!!!

no fits!! i dont go over to that area of the forum so i see it like this...if you dont post pics...i wont give a #$%^#!!! j/k. better post some finished pics over here!!!!

Lost a buddy there too, CJ... One of my peers from ANCOC..  I think that's why none of my "modern" armor/troop dios stray OCONUS...

See! ... I knew camo would have a problem! GOSH!!!! HAHAHAH!!!! I've pretty much decided that trying to play catch-up with this thread after its done would be a pain, so I'm just going to keeps updates going here and do small updates on the GB forum. Besides, the GB forum is really more for everyone involved in the build.

HVH, I think that you and I have touched on this before, but we all have reasons for why we build. Just because we like playing with plastic usually isn't one of them. Glad to see you on this thread.

Don't mean nothin' MC..

'Side's, I've done some pretty funny stuff in dios that I was involved in during FTXs... It's pretty fun to make a dio of an incident that happened in the field and then give it the HMFIC that it happened to...  Like the Battlion Commander's M151A2 "Foxhole Detector"...

Hans von Hammer wrote:

Like the Battlion Commander's M151A2 "Foxhole Detector"...

very funny!!

sorry to hear that hans...anyway, dont want to get into that. this is model's thread and i dont want to take over another of his threads!!!

Sorry to hear about your job.

Come join the dark side (alias Heli GB)!

Great work so far, especially on the wiring.
I undertstand you made the planks that way to have a structural stability, but they look a little to thick to me.

No need to say, keep us posted!

Yeah, I know ..... they look like floats for a helo to land on water! UGLY!!! I just stared at them tonight ... at least I only built one. :)

No worries camo ... :)

You were spot on to have a sturdy structure.
I glued the planks directly to the beams without any pins and recently the plank detached. I'm planning on adding a thin (but no too thin) metal wire to reinforce the structure.

Awsome work MC, Love to see your scratch work....makes me want to build a helo and makes me sad that I had a LARGE Apache years ago and never finished it, location unknown. Keep it comming, looks great!

Stern0 wrote:

makes me sad that I had a LARGE Apache years ago and never finished it, location unknown. Keep it comming, looks great!

yeah me too...many many years ago. met an unfortunate accident with enemy ground fire!!

Modelchasm,

Looking great!  Can't wait to see how this one turns out.  I think I'm going to have to copy you with using that C beams.  I was able to pick a 1/72 AH-6 off of ebay that I am going to convert into an MH-6J and do the first crash site rescue.

Take care,

Austin

Ugh, I hate the fact that photobucket links are blocked at work. Here's one I'm anxious to get home and see.

Thanks again Ark, nice to see you aboard.

If you can get ahold of evergreen's I-beams, I think that would make it a little easier than gluing two C-channels back to back like I did. I had a really hard time getting the framework to look right and actually redid them about four times. But I ended up going back to my original method due to its simplicity. I wanted to be right on with the detail sketch that Avus posted for me, but in the end, I just don't think that the "average joe's" eyes are going to be drawn to that detail. I think that even if an MH-6 pilot were to look at it, it would be forgivable.

I'm working on pics right now for a nice update for you kids .... pls stand-by ...

First of all, let me just say that I should check up on this thread a little more often. I didn't realize that it had drawn such a prestigous crowd. Thanks to all the compliments. I hope that you will continue to follow this one .... so here we go ....

***UPDATE*** (and its a big one ...)

I'll start off by giving you a shot of the movie that gave me the inspiration. This is pretty much the shot that the dio is being build from. Obviously, this will be the back side. The dio will be viewed from the front.

Now, let's look at the figures I plan to use. These come from Academy's OH-58D "Thugs" kit. True to previous posts, these figures are pretty good for a plastic kit. For the price, they're the best. If you wanted REALLY good figures, you're going to pay for them. This way, i've got my pilots and a Kiowa Warrior to build for the Helo '09 GB.

Front:

Back:

This shot gives you an idea of how I put my figs together ....

Here, I've hollowed out the torso a bit to give a more realistic fit btwn the torso and the legs. I also beveled the waist a bit to fit into the hollow...

On the left is the pilot, and the co-pilot on the right. The pilots arms fit perfectly into postion to fly. I cut the cyclic off the cockpit and glued it to the hand just to simplify construction later. The CP's arms will need a little more ... love. They're postioning is really weird and doesn't make since at all. I'm planning on having one hand holding a map and the other hand pointing downward toward either the target building or a possible threat.

Now to fix the skids ... or the boat floats, whichever way you view them. I completely rebuilt them using two strips of sheet styrene each, and sanded styrene rod for the ends. IOT attach them, I plan on drilling holes into the benches and the framework, attaching them by gluing in pieces of wire. I also plan on using a rivet tool, masking tape strips, and wire to detail the skids themselves. The framework was also finished (well 95% complete) for the skids.

The back wall attached with skids along side.

Ooo, the tail boom ....

So before I go any further, let me just say that I'm . I started working on getting the fuselage halves ready for work when I discovered a fit problem. Completely disregarding that I had set up my paint booth IOT paint the cockpit/ interior, I completely got engulfed into figuring out the problem ... and yes ... I sealed up the two halves w/ the interior inside ... before painting it. RRrrrr rrr rrrrr, I know. I tried a little to separate them, but since they were reinforced ... no dice. If I'm careful, I should be able to paint the interior just fine. It'll be a little harder, but its a learning point....

The fit problem ... Ewww....

The fix. I styrene strip to add strength, and wire pins on the bottom as there were no tabs to glue.

Drilling a hole in the bottom, I added a aluminum rod to the backside of the back wall. Strengthened with styrene strips, this will serve as the mounting site for another rod to slide into. This will make the helo removable from the building/ base for easy moving.

Here, I've added wiring detail to the interiro ceiling. I looked high and low for detail pics of this and only ended up with one no-so-decent one to work with, so I used some artistic guesstimation.

Misc details ... I'm using a gas mask bag from a 1/32 figure to serve as the medical kit aboard. This will be attached to the back of the cockpit wall and should be easy to pull off simply by adding a red cross to the front. Next is the SATCOM antenna that I originally built for my HMMWV dio, but decided not to use it there. Looks better here anyway!

Soooo .... that brings me to where I leave off for today. We'll get started with the main/ tail rotor details tomorrow.

As always, C&Cs welcome. Thanks for following ....

 

so far so good. the figs look good and the current build is looking good.

Thanks camo, appreciate that!

As posted above, this is the shot that's the "idea" for this build.

I'm not quite finished with the bird yet, and I'm still waiting on pieces for my d-boys to come in. (thanks again BTW, and you know who you are ...) However, righ now, I'm starting to look at my base/ the building for this dio.

I've decided that I'm going to scratch my own as I'm having to watch my .... "funding" at the moment. Camo has a great building on his dio and has posted "behind the scenes" pics on his thread, constructing his out of styrene sheet. These gave me good ideas as far as how to construct it (I too spent 3 1/2 years in architecture before moving on to something else ... overall bad idea ...) However, Grimmo posted pics for his dio, making his building out of styrofoam sheets. This too looks pretty good.

I'm considering starting out with the styrofoam sheets as the are cheaper, and I'd like to save my styrene pieces for other builds. Overall, I feel pretty confident that I can get a good building which will support the helo overhead in the finished product.

But here's my question ... After looking online and watching the movie scene over and over ... its really hard to tell how large the building is that the bird landed on. Even Google Earth uses a computer image ... FROM THE MOVIE ... to depict the target building. (I'm just planning on using my artistic "freedom" in making the building for the dio ... using the above pic for reference.) However, I don't want to build a 1/35 3-story building. I think that this would make the dio just too tall and top-heavy in regards to interest ... i.e. there's nothing going on down below. So how do I make a tall building no-so-tall? The only thing that I can come up w/ right now is to have the top, flat section of a wooden base painted black. Then attached the building, built up to only about one story or so ... maybe just a hair shorter, then paint a black, wavy border to the bottom of the building as if to show it coming out of the black base ...  Does that sound stupid!?!?! That's the only thing that I can think of right now .... I'll try to sketch it out and post the sketch later.

Need some feedback for this idea. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

just as u were explaining this idea i started to think exactly the same thing! no it doesnt sound weird with what ya want to do...i think you can do it and pull it off without it costing you really anything. well, judging by the other buildings in the pic i would have to say its at least 2/3 stories tall! but i would build it just below the awning/roofing tiles on up. plastruct makes a sheet of roofing tiles just like that at different scales in case your interested! the rest really will be a piece of cake. hell, even if you have some spare 1/4 thk wood sheet laying around you can build it out of that. my building was really cheap, i had the styrene laying around...just had to buy the 3/16-1/4 sq "rods" $3 a piece! my figures are the only real "expensive" things on the dio. anyway, if ya had some wood, you could build it, apply plaster, use the nail to scribe your bricks/cracks...the rest is just detail work! but again your foam idea is fine too. looking at the pic though, thats a piece of cake...only one opening in the roof...no doors, no windows, no shutters.... hell even i could finish this one!!

HAHA!!! .... I'm sure that you could .... oh, wait ... you already did! I'm planning on adding in a few false window on the sides .... just shallow cut-outs in the stryo, backed by more styro in the back, then painted black. It'll give the illusion w/o distracting from above or w/o showing the bracing and stuff from the inside. My LHS here has a NICE array of plastistruct, so I'm hoping to find those "spanish tiles" there. If not, I'm sure that I could "fake the funk" with a soda can. It would just be a pain in the butt!

I'm planning on making my building a little deeper than the one in the picture. In the pic, you see that the helo hasn't quite gotten over the building. I want mine to already be a little over the building (1. so that I can support the bird, and 2. so that it helps to balance out the overall dio), but with a little more room to land.

The only thing that I'm not sure about is was glues eat styro? I know I've heard this somewhere ... or am I just listening to the voices in my head? Couple more questions for you ...

1) what type of plaster did you use? Just the regular hydrocal stuff from the model RR section? That's what I've got....

2) how do you think I should carve the bricks .... before or after the plaster? I know this sounds like a retarded question, but I was thinking that if I carved them before, wold the plaster take their shape or just fill them in?

3) ... uhh ...maybe that was it ...

Thanks again for your help camo. We'll keep you posted.

ok, i didnt use the hydrocal...it was spackling compound simliar to drywall mud...spread it with a putty knife! had some knives already but bought some cheap plastic ones at the dollar store for (obviously) a buck!! if you use hydrocal you will need to make a mold etc...unless your just going to let it go "everywhere" until it hardens then cut it to shape? to answer another ?, if you use the spackling compound, you can apply one layer...let harden, scribe your bricks,cracks, etc. then apply a thin second layer over top of it leaving some bricks, etc. exposed!! that works a whole lot better!! you'll see what i mean if ya try it. but its up to you. btw, how are you supporting the bird?? using "ropes" like another posting? just curious! your lhs should have those tiles...they come in an 8"x 8" sheet...or something like that! the hydrocal...well...i wish you luck with...its messy and can be a pain because its so watery, etc. let me know what's up.