Building a fleet of 1/72 Italeri UH-34 Seahorse's

Does anyone know what the color scheme is on this H-34/S-58

John,

Giving both patterns of landing gear would have been way too easy. Unfortunately, it wasn't the aircraft designation that determined the gear, but the point in the production history. The same is true with the kicksteps up to the cockpit.

I don't believe I have a color picture on file of that Sikorsky demonstrator, but I'll see what I can find out for you.

Cheers,

Len

Hi Len ,

Thanks for the info , I do have your illustrated History H-34 Book and Its an awesome book , I also have the sikorsky  HH-52A book .

I understand what your saying about the designation of the helicopter during the point of production , many photo's in your book show the UH-34J with both landing gear styles ; It's just the way Italeri box their kit without giving the modeler any idea of what we are getting....very frustrating

I'm waiting on the arrival of an Westland Wessex book I ordered recently along with some more 1/72 scale Sikorsky/Westland H-34/S-58 kits . At last count of whats in my stash and what I have ordered there are 11 UH-34J kits , 7 HU-5 Wessex and 5 HAS-3 wessex  , lots of aftermarket decals for the wessex birds along with some resin and PE stuff . Also 3 Hobbyboss H-34's [2UH-34D's and 1 UH-34A] , it's a shame Hobbyboss molded the droop in the main rotors upside down , I snapped two rotor blades trying to bend them back the opposite way , I'll have to be more carefull with the other two sets of hobbyboss rotors .

The UH-34J kits with the Bent gear legs came from overseas online hobby stores , the three with the V style landing gear I picked here locally in Australia , so I took the gamble and ordered 5 more UH-34J kits yesterday and this morning from some local hobby stores , I'm kinda hoping  they might have the V style landing gear , if not , your book has plenty of reference photo's for lot's of other options .

Kind regards ,

                                           John .

That is odd, I have one Italeri UH-34D kit with the bent leg landing gear, and several UH-34J kits which so far all have the V style landing gear, although I haven't checked every one of them. It really would be nice if they included or at least clearly labeled which style was in the box (which to this point I thought they did).

I've been buying the Hobbyboss kit as needed for aircraft with the bent leg, but have been hoping Italeri would bring back their UH-34D since the Italeri kit is better. Worst case I'd be willing to swap you a few V style parts for the bent leg, but I think  shipping would make that somewhat unattractive.

John,

The overall colors for that particular Sikorsky S-58 demonstrator are medium grey and dark blue. Go to www.airliners.net and do a search on N866 -- your best bet for matching will be to find paints that will give you the same shades as the Chicago Helicopter S-58Cs. There were a couple of other demonstrators, none of them with identical schemes.

Hope you'll post some images during the builds, or at least of the finished products. I've got a pair of the Italeri UH-34D kits set aside for an S-58C conversion and my ship's hack in Vietnam.

Len

Aaronw

 It really would be nice if they included or at least clearly labeled which style was in the box (which to this point I thought they did).

That was exactly my thinking Aaron ; the original Italeri Seahorse kit was labeled UH-34D and the 2007 release was labeled UH-34J , [ despite having the same box art picture as the earlier UH-34D kit ]

My purchases are quite recent , if you have had your UH-34J kits for a while now , like my first three kits , they will probably have the V style landing gear . Italeri may have fired up the mold to issue more and most likely didn't think many modelers would worry about the different landing gear styles ; and as Len mentioned , it would be just to easy to include both . The rest of the UH-34J kits I've ordered should arrive by the end of next week , I would be interested in a bent gear leg for a V style landing gear swap , I'm happy to absorb the shipping costs by adding some locally produced aftermaket decals or resin kits etc , I'll just have to wait and see what's in each box when they arrive , there coming from four different hobby shops .

                          John .

I'm very gratefull for the link , Len .

I'll check out the airliners web site .

John.

I just finished this HUS-1G USCG helicopter today

Here are two previous H-34 builds ...

USMC UH-34D

Israeli IDF S-58

                                                                      John .

I started some more Sikorsky H-34/Wessex builds ;

I'm not sure if I may have already consumed to much chocolate this Easter weekend , once I opened one H-34 kit box , the easter madness started ....

                                            John.

I decided to make a cabin roof section to fit into the H-34's ;

I cut some plastic sheet and airbrushed the pieces interior gray .

Cobra Company's S-58 nose section fits okay , I just needed to taper the cockpit floor and front bulkhead a little .

                           John

Nice looking H-34s you have there John!  Thanks for the pictures.

-Derek

I have made a little more progress on my 13 H-34/Wessex birds ;

Hobbyboss UH-34A and UH-34D , Italeri [UH-34J] S-58T , Italeri HU-5 and HAS-3 and UH-34A's and D's

Before installing the cabin and cockpit windows , I diped all the clear parts in some Future ;

I'll close up the fuselage halves next , everything seems to be going okay...

                                                             John .

I'm hoping to get some paint on at least three of the H-34's this weekend , maybe even six  would be great ???

S-58T in Air America official colors , Hobbyboss UH-34A for the RCAF and the UH-34D VNAF and if all goes well three Italeri birds , UH-34A US. Army , UH-34D USMC 'Evil Eyes' and another AAM UH-34D .

                                     John .

Wow ! What a collection , Now thats a ' Group Build' for real , Can't wait to see it all finished . Looks like you have the rotors all worked out  but can I ask please ? Where are all the interior seats from? .I have some of those kits but do not remember seeing any ? I think I will have to open them all and see which one has and which hasn't .

Hi FPdog ;

All the Italeri UH-34J Sea Horse kits come with cabin seating as does the Wessex HU-5 ; Only the Wessex HAS-3 kit doesn't include rear seating .

I have four H-34's ready for decaling ;

USMC "Evil Eyes" and VNAF UH-34D's ; Also a West German H-34G I and a US.Army H-34A . I found some spare nose antenna in a Italeri H-21C 'Shawnee' flying banana kit , so I decided to use those on the army bird . I'll continue airbrushing this weekend and hopfully have some more ready for decaling shortly .

                                            John .

Four more HAS-3 kits arrived during the week along with some 'Modeldecal No.99' Royal Navy decals ; I like the dark blue/gray and red scheme , also the overall light stone finish for a MK-1 Wessex .

Five more HU-5 kits also arrived with the Modeldecal No.96 Royal Navy sheet ; There is a dark olive green and red scheme and I also will do an overall yellow scheme.

A modeler over at ARC was selling a lot of kits , I bought a few helicopter kits from him including a Matchbox HAS-31 and a Italeri UH-34D . I have some Aussie decals for a RAN Wessex and I can't decide between a Navy VC-8 Sea Bat or another Marines Sea Horse .

I still have another seven UH-34J kits on order , I'm hopfull that one or two of them may have the V style landing gear , I only had three kits with the V-style landing gear , I started the second one and I'll build her as a Apollo Recovery Marines helicopter No. 44

I saw these decals over at hannants.co.uk

I like the two VIP color schemes along with the two tone green and an overall dark gray finish so I ordred the decals and four more HU-5 Wessex kits .

                                               John .

Thanks Helo 53 , this would explain it , I have the Itelari and the Revell and  the Matchbox H.A.S. 31 and non have seats , and it looks like you have the market share of the rest of them . You must be the reason we cant find them on the shelves anymore.

Some very nice work going on in your hanger , can only imagine how they will all look when completed   

Fatpigdog

  You must be the reason we cant find them on the shelves anymore.

 

Sorry about that

It's probably why I had to visit Hong Kong , England and the US online to find some more UH-34J and HU-5 kits . I did notice recently that some hobby stores were stocking Tamiya helicopter kits , which are ex-Italeri molds , I realize it's wishfull thinking on my part but it would great if Tamiya would consider re-issueing this one ...

I found the Tamiya box art pic while searching the net ; Also seeing that Revell seem to have lots of their HAS-3 kits in the shops , it would great to see them re-issue the H-34G kit...

I pray everynight to the Lord Helicopter that this might happen and I promise only to buy 5 or 6 of each kit , so to leave plenty of others for the rest of you guy's

                                            John

Hey, John,

Sweet looking work. Just to be picky, the nose antenna belong on the Army's H-34Cs, not the A models.

Cheers,

Len

and I thought I was a Sikorsky S-58 geek... 

Hi Len ,

I'll try and match the Army serial numbers to suit a CH-34C , another mistake I made was the Marines recovery helicopter was for the Mercury Spacecraft .

Thanks for the tip

                           John.

Aaronw

and I thought I was a Sikorsky S-58 geek... 

Yeah , I guess I went totally into the helicopter 'dark side' with these birds ; I forgot to mention while visiting hannants.co.uk , they also had these decals for the S-58...

I always like the picture on the front of Squadrons H-34 book , with the Belgian Air Force HSS-1retirement scheme, I also ordered a couple more Hobbyboss UH-34A kits .

I've given up on trying to correct the droop on hobbyboss's rotor blades , the one's that didn't snap only ended up badly kinked , so i'll leave the rest as they are .

                                                John .

I was searching the net for images of the H-34 and saw this pic of a die-cast West German Navy H-34G

All of the pic's I have seen so far , have shown the 'Marineflieger' [Naval Aviation] H-34G's with the V style landing gear . Len Lundh's H-34 book mentions that nine H-34G's were transfered from the German Army to MFG5

I was wondering how accurate the die-cast model is with the overall aluminum / orange scheme and the markings , with the bent leg landing gear . Seeing I haven't had much luck tracking down any more UH-34J kits with the V style landing gear , I was a little curious as to the accuracy as I would really like to add a German Navy H-34 with the aluminum/orange finish to my H-34 builds ???

                                              John .

While looking through the Westland Wessex reference book , I noticed that the HC-2 and the HAR-2 Wessex helicopters have the same square shape fuselage cabin windows like the Sikorsky UH-34 helo's .

I guess I'll have to use one of the UH-34J kits and add the HU-5 Wessex nose to the fuselage to give me more accurate HAR-2 Wessex with the overall yellow paint scheme . The Wessex book also shows the duel pipe ducting under the fuselage , so I'll add that as well .

I noticed that the Italeri HAS-3 kit has an option for an all over yellow RAF Wessex HAR-2 , however I couldn't see any reference to the RAF using the HAS-3 version with the dorsal radome and horse collor on top of the oil cooler exit louvres and the fuselage cabin windows seem to be the wrong shape , so I'll just use the RAF decals from the HAS-3 kit on my hybrid H-34/HU-5 bird .

                                          John .

Helo 53

I noticed that the Italeri HAS-3 kit has an option for an all over yellow RAF Wessex HAR-2 , however I couldn't see any reference to the RAF using the HAS-3 version with the dorsal radome and horse collor on top of the oil cooler exit louvres and the fuselage cabin windows seem to be the wrong shape , so I'll just use the RAF decals from the HAS-3 kit on my hybrid H-34/HU-5 bird .

                                          John .

Yep, Italeri didn't do their homework very well or they just really wanted to model a gate guard. I was curious about this when got the kit, so did some poking around online. The story I found is rather complicated.

The decals are for a company owned helicopter used as a gunnea pig for various Wessex upgrades over the years. When the Wessex was coming to the end of its service this airframe went to the RAF I think to their flying school and then to a local air museum. The museum painted it up as an RAF Rescue helicopter for display and apparently Italari used this aircraft for their decals as the numbers match up.

Aaron , thanks for the tip about the RAF decal markings , I'll make sure I use serial numbers that actually match a HAR-2 version .

Something else that got me a little curious , was while searching through airlinners.net for images of the S-58 , I saw some pic's of non military commercial S-58's without the transmission deck covers . Although this looks kinda weird , it got me thinking about the way Matchbox produced their HU-5/HAS-31 kit .

The rotor shaft is molded seperatly ...

Of course there would be a lot of work adding some plumbing and an oil cooler to the deck but it got me thinking about modifing another UH-34J and using the Matchbox rotor shaft as a starting point .

I like this pic I lifted from airlinners.net ...

Coming up with decal options to suit commercial versions would also be quite difficult , so for the time being , I won't put together the Matchbox Wessex , I'll see if I can figure out some way of getting/making an oil cooler and piping lines ??? 

                                               John .

I've been trying to scrounge up enough decals to go on a previous built H-34 with an overall fluroescent orange color scheme . I have some Numbers in various sizes I can use but I haven't had much luck finding letters the right size to suit .

Something that caught my attention and is a little worrying is the fluro orange is starting to fad to a light pink color on one side of the fuselage ...

I only airbrushed this helicopter about 18 months ago and I'm suprised how soon the color is fading , "I'm not sure if it shows up that much in the pic I posted'' , I guess I will have to re-mask  the Helo and airbrush Gunze H-14 orange , I don't think I'll use those Fluroescent color's again .

                                  John .

I've finished three more UH-34's ;

First is a Italeri , U.S.Army CH-34C...

Next is a Italeri , UH-34G I for the West German Army...

Thirdly here is a Hobbyboss , UH-34D for the VNAF...

Here is a group shot ;

                                                          John .

Hopfully by the end of the week , I'll have another three H-34's finished .

I had some masking tape issue's with the Air America S-58T and the RCAF UH-34A ; I forgot when trimming the masking tape that the outer edges on sides of the tape tend to be a little feathered to start with ; When I pulled the masking tape off , some decarmation lines where nice and neat but other lines were not , there was some masking tape residue in a few spots as well , so I have lightly sanded both birds and I'll re-mask and airbrush the color's again . A little frustrating but I'll get there eventually.....

                                                                                    John .