Italeri 1/48th AH-1W

The horizontal exhaust diverts the hot gases away from the helicopter and prevents the tailboom from heating up.  This in turn helps reduce the helo's heat signature.  There may be other advatages as well. However, those turned exhausts do "ugly" up a truly beautiful helicopter if you ask me.  Better to be alive than pretty I guess though.

   Ray

 Here's the turned exhaust:

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Here's the old style exhaust:

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grandadjohn wrote:

Back to the bench wrote: Nice job thanks for sharing the pics. The Cobra has always been my favorite chopper, just something about the "all business" look I guess. I am curious, I was looking at kits a few weeks ago and then started googling images for the AH-1W. I noticed some of them had the rectangular engine exhausts oriented vertically like yours and some images showed the exhausts oriented horizontally. Are these just different steps in the AH-1W development?   The horizontal exhausts were developed for the Z model, but are being retro-fitted to the W

Thanks for the info, sorry I took so long to acknowledge. Now I guess I have to ask what the advantage of the horizontal orientation is

Back to the bench wrote:

Nice job thanks for sharing the pics. The Cobra has always been my favorite chopper, just something about the "all business" look I guess. I am curious, I was looking at kits a few weeks ago and then started googling images for the AH-1W. I noticed some of them had the rectangular engine exhausts oriented vertically like yours and some images showed the exhausts oriented horizontally. Are these just different steps in the AH-1W development?

The horizontal exhausts were developed for the Z model, but are being retro-fitted to the W

Grandad,

  Woo hoo a finished model!  One day I'd like to know how that feels.  She looks great!

     Ray

Finally got it done, glue around the canopy is drying and it needs a little touch-up. Will take some photo's later and post them

Great PICS!!!  I just got home from being forced out of town since May.  I have some catching up to do on my Whiskey!  Haven't worked on it at all!  The wife made me change my modeling station around.  Hope to see the final pics.  Hopefully I'll be posting new pics of mine.  Keep up the good work!!

Sweet!

Looks like you're getting there!

Grandad,

  Painting is always my biggest hurdle. Looks like you are rolling on this build.  I can't wait to see her finished.  thanks for posting pics!

     Ray

Got it painted, now to do the detail painting, decaling and final assembly

Grandad,

  Looks like she's almost there.  I can't wait to see her finished.

      Ray

Nice progress.
It looks good this way, too!

Finally got around to airbrushing the top half of this build. A little touch up and let it cure so I can mask it and paint the bottom half, then on to somedetail painting and decaling

Grandad,

  This one is gonna be nice!  Thanks for posting her for us all to admire.  

      Ray

Great work so far. It's just too bad the kit comes with raised panel lines.

grandadjohn wrote:

Anybody have a good diagram for painting the current two-tone gray scheme on the Whiskey?????????

Here's a PDF of MAW's "Leatherneck Featherweights" sheet showing how to paint the helo.

HTH

WOW I really like the cockpit detail

That's a really great build you have going on grandad .

                                          Kind regards John

She is looking Great Grandadjohn...want to see more! I never realized the whiskey blade tips had so much curve in them. She is going to be a very good looking medel when completed.

Charlie

Finished the cockpit

Got the main rotor done. It should be noted that Italeri molded all thier Cobra's rotor blades to turn the wrong way. I simply turned them over. I may have lost some detail which could have been corrected, but after almost breaking off a blade, I decided to just leave it alone. Kit is OOP and with no replacement I didn't want to damage it more