Dragon 1:35 UH-1H Huey WIP

Carl- I can't wait either! LOL  Gonna add the wire cutters as soon as I get home hopefully I can have it primed tonight.  I was tired after working on it for nearly two days in a row. 

Gene- Thank you so much!  ALWAYS appreciate your feedback.   I wasn't sure if the doors were set properly.  That's why I used the putty to hold em and check with you guys.  My biggest concern is that the doors may not fit because of the MG set... it will be very tight. 

Please bear with me... I am still learning here.  I wasn't sure what you meant by 'tail boom' so I googled for pictures and it shows the whole body of tail.  Did you meant by the space where tail and fuselage meets? 

  Yeah Andy, the "tail boom" is the entire structure of the tail. I'm talking about where they meet there just under the "tolet bowl". We did have our own language, but it was a whole lot simpler the "bureaucratese"!

  The door should be fine, it wont go far enough forward to hit the gun mount. Just enough to align it with the back edge of the well (the side facing seats where the gunner sits).

Gene- Got it about tail boom!  I applied more gap filling CA to the gap.  I may add more after the primer job to see if necessary. 

Guys- Added the wire cutters...  they were very fragile and I hope they stay there til the end. First of all Dragon had instruction wrong once again.  The wire cutter is supposed to be in the center but the rod was already there.  So I had to move it.  What do you call that?

Final look...the rod thing was supposed to be left from the center according to walkaround pictures I googled.

Added wipers stop ends but I see one of them has been bent down so gonna fix it.

 That's the "pitot tube", it was located on the nose on the UH-1D and is one sure way of telling the two apart. The pitot system is what reads the airspeed.

  I can't help but wonder where Gino is? MIA?

The piece you have moved is the pitot tube.  It is hollow and measures forward airspeed.  You are correct, it is offset when the wire cutters are used.  Also, you may want to cut the square block off the base.  It only had a small circle for a base.

Gene beat me to it.  I'm back.  Just a quick vacation for Presidents Day.

Andy, that "rod thing" is the pitot tube, a pressure measuring device that works off air flow velocity to provide input to the airspeed indicator, the vertical speed indicator, and the altimeter.

As Gene said earlier, aviation (especially rotorwing) has a language all its own.  If you've been around it a long time, you don't realize that some need a translation when talking to us.  My wife says that listening to some old friends and me is like speaking in another tounge.  She has learned to translate.

Ron

By the way, you have a great build going.

Ron

  Hey Gino glad your back at it to catch my mistakes.

  Loachman are you a VHPA member? What unit? 

Gene- Thanks!  I recall it had something to do with air speed just like the planes. 

Gino- Good to have you back!  Hope your short vacation was great! It shouldn't be a problem to turn the square block into circle base.  Typical Dragon error...

Hope to post another update... I have decided to add bolts to the landing skid.  Walkaround pictures show bolts where the strut and skit meets.

Ron- Sorry I missed your post earlier.  You just made me feel grateful that I am deaf so I don't have to learn how to speak in another tongue. LOL  Appreciate you stopping by... thanks!

Gene,

SGM (Ret) Aviation Maintenance and Operations

Ron

loachman

Gene,

SGM (Ret) Aviation Maintenance and Operations

Ron

One more thing you may want to try is the wire frame around the bases or the windshield wipers.  These are part of the wire strike kit and keep wires from catching on the wipers.  You can see them below.

They are pretty easy to make with some thin wire. 

Gino- Wire frames?  Is that a double dare? LOL I will see what I can do... I agree it shouldn't be that hard. Again thanks for bringing this up.  I didn't notice those wire frames til just now in all walkaround pictures.

Guys- Little update... the landing skid lacked details.  A guy in other forum brought up about the bolts and it sounded like a good idea. 

Here's the actual thing...

I wanted to add four big bolts on the strut only... other bolts were too small to be noticed at 1:35 scale.  Maybe I will do that in my future build but time is starting to run out for me.

Absolutely no details on the landing skids... shame on you Dragon!

Drilled holes and used .10 mm styrene rods... they were allowed to dry overnight.

After a day of drying, they were solid, I cut and sanded the excessive parts off.

I like it now... I wish I could add more details but again I have less than two weeks to prime and paint the Huey.  March 2nd is the deadline...

Gettin close Andy but you will make it ! Man , the details are somethin else .

Carl- Thank you my friend... do appreciate you tagging along.  Finally I am going to call the building part done so I can move on to the next stage priming and painting.  But I am not sure if I should apply Zimmerit first?

Guys- I took Gino's challenge to add the frame wires around the windshield.  I thought it would look cool too and it wasn't too bad... about an hour of work. 

First I drilled holes... inserted two styrene rods in the middle then I used guitar string 12 gauge.  They don't bent easily.  VERY firm and it was just perfect for this.

Unfortunately something very fragile broke while I was working on it...   Remember I warned you I can be a klutz sometimes!  Not only that it broke... it broke into two pieces.

Fortunately the kit came with antenna PE that I didn't use... cut it to fit the resin base.  I hope it holds better than fragile resin.

So far I am very pleased with this...

Can't wait to have it primed tomorrow night!

Looking great.  I knew you could do the wire protectors.  It's going to look great once painted.

Gino- Thanks man!!!! What did I win from you?  Kidding. Really appreciate all of help I am getting here.  

My wife will be spend the night at mother's tonight. You know what it means?  More bench time!!!  Life is good.

With the queen away from the castle, I had the Huey cleaned and taped up for the paint job.  It has been primed with Mr Surfacer 1200... love that stuff! 

There was a nasty seam on the nose that required few coats of Mr Surfacer and sanding between coats.  It looks a lot better now...

I am going to allow it dry overnight then I will do very light sanding job before I do pre-shading job.

Nice job , nice job ....................

Very nice! Do you thin the Mr. Surfacer before you shoot it?

Carl- Thank you, thank you! and one more  

Hercmech- Yes, very little!!!  I learned that if you add too much thinner it will be like shooting a web.  It happened before when I added too much thinner. I added about 20% of same brand thinner to Mr Surfacer.  And it didn't shoot any of web out of my airbrush so it is safe to say the Spiderman stayed home this time. 

Thanks for stopping by!!!   Wait a minute are you legal to drink yet?

deafpanzer

Carl- Thank you, thank you! and one more  

Hercmech- Yes, very little!!!  I learned that if you add too much thinner it will be like shooting a web.  It happened before when I added too much thinner. I added about 20% of same brand thinner to Mr Surfacer.  And it didn't shoot any of web out of my airbrush so it is safe to say the Spiderman stayed home this time. 

Thanks for stopping by!!!   Wait a minute are you legal to drink yet?

 

Thanks for the info Andy...and I passed the age to legally drink many moons ago.

Spent two hours pre-shading the Huey... all edges, seams, and details were airbrushed with MM flat black.

A section part of the roof was sprayed.  Bob's Huey had black top...

Also all blades were sprayed black too just as a base coat.  Then I will spray some kind of metallic paint on the blades BUT first I need to figure out which color is the best fit. 

Thanks for looking!

Gettin closer

Looking good so far.

I'm not following this part though...

"Also all blades were sprayed black too just as a base coat. Then I will spray some kind of metallic paint on the blades BUT first I need to figure out which color is the best fit."

For an '80-'90s Huey, the blades and all rotor mast parts should be flat black with just a bit of metallic drybrushing on the mast parts.  The blades themselves are all flat black though.

This one has pretty much all the features of yours, but is a little more recent.

Gino;

 With the later model Hueys did they still have the paint wear off the leading edge of the rotor at the tips like we had back in Nam? Or was the paint more durable by then?

From what I have seen, the paint was pretty duarble and you didn't see much wear on the blades themselves.

 OK guess they solved that issue, you would have noticed as you can see in this picture it was easy to see

Guys- You are the BEST!  Thank you so much for following my build and taking time to post comments. 

I wasn't sure which color... I have MM black metallic but wasn't sure if it is the right one.  I will go ahead and spray more flat black on the blades then drybrush the edges lightly with MM Metalizer gun metal.