Kitty Hawk 1:35 SH-60b Seahawk: Start to Finish Build

The main rotor is pretty much done. I did more detail painting, painted the white patches on the distributor, added some bright brass at the pipe ends, added some panel accent block in some strategic locations, and painted a single pipe to the snubbers a blue that matches what I've seen in the pictures. The ResKit was challenging and at times, so daunting that I wondered if it was worth it. That said, the results are definitely worth it. If you can stand breaking more than a dozen tiny carbide drills and lots of CA gluing frustration, I would recommend it.

Here's a side view.

There's one more line that goes on after the blades are installed; the nitrogen leak sensor line that goes to the spot of the arm where the other half of this line was previously installed.

Just for comparison, here's the real deal showing that blue line going to the snubbers.

I could still add some more metallic accents to the tubing clamps. I'll see what my mood it...

The intake fairings didn't fit well over the ResKit's angle drives. They are bigger than the kit's I think. Some selective shaving took care of it, but if you'll notice on the above picture, the fairings DON'T full close the drive housing openings. The instructions DO NOT clearly show this and I was attempting to get them to fit. 

Here's the rubber-band clamps getting it all together, but now I have to go to the shop to see if I glued the forward part in error. Nope... not an error. Here's the fit. Again, instructions do not tell you how this should fit. That acts as a splinter to not injest boundary air, also gets some cooling to the trans and final drives.

I wish Tamiya made this kit! I'm having trouble with some of the fits and the aftermarket stuff isn't helping. I spent a lot of time today, filling gaps and preparing the surface after that activity. I was unsure about how the intake fairing fit and my suspicions were well-founded since the engine hatch didn't fit well and needed a piece of fitted styrene to fill it. Later on I checked the entire assembly onto the fuselage roof and the fit there was quite challenging. It's going to require a shoe horn and some patience to get it settle down as it should. That step is very late in the assembly and that, unfortunately could make it more difficult. There are two slots on the fuselage top that mate to two tabs on the inner engine compartmemt walls. It's a blind joint and would really benefit by having your finger pushing up to engage the pins. But... you won't be able to do that because the cabin will be installed and nothing will be able to get in there. It may be better to just cut off the tabs so nothing has to go into blind slots.

I didn't like the obvious seam running down inside the exhaust stacks so I filled that with Tamiya putty. I used some adhesive backed sand paper wrapped around a paint brush handle to sand it smooth.

I used shaped styrene to fill the intake fairing gap.

I then finished it with a bow-sander with fine grit. I had to re-engrave the seam lines. I used masking tape to protect the surfaces around the fill to not do more damage.

There is another fairing that encloses the other half of the exhaust outlet. It too has some more seams that needed a little help although nothing to the extent of the intake gap.

I again used Tamiya putty to fill and the sanding bow to level it. Not only was there a gap and I also got a significant glue smear resulting from putting the liquid cement in the back, but having it wick out the front under my thumb.

Here is the sanded version.

Lastly, some PE and some antennas and such went onto the engine housing roof.

Y'all have a nice weekend. We're due for some strange and rare weather tonight and I'm not happy. There is a significant tornado threat all night long as a major cold front crashes into this unseasonably warm weather we've been having. Most of the most agressive parts is supposed to be west of Louisvile, but you never know. I don't like tornado threats!

Happy Monday. First of all I want to tell everyone that Louisville was spared any damage from the monster storm that ran through KY. Unlike many, I do not either blame a diety or praise one regarding where a weather front decides to become malevolent or benign. It is almost the pure definition of random. it's that randomness that drives people to want to identify an actor, but there is none. With tornadoes, a house on one side of the street is reduced to molecules and the one on the other side of the street is untouched. Gods have nothing to do with this. What I would want a god to do would be to prevent the storm from happening in the first place.

On Friday afternoon, I listened to a broadcast from one of our local weather forecasters where he was discussing "Athmospheric Caps." I hadn't heard the term, but it was very interesting. It is the high pressure that exists high in the atmosphere that can limit the ability of a storm front to make tall super cells. It results from when low and high pressure areas collide and the high pressure rides up over the low.

It was strong over our area and weak in Western KY. He said depending on how long it hangs around, it could mitigate how strong the storms would be over Louisville. I feel this effect was the main reason the storms broke down as they reached our area. Tornadoes did form about 25 miles south of the city. Meanwhile, my trash totes didn't even move. Others in the Commonwealth did not fare so well and it was horrific in the extreme.

So I am extremely happy that my wife are I are alive and well... that our house is intact, and my workshop is here so I can build this model and write about it to you.

Today began with gluing the interior onto the right hand fuselage side. I used some Quickie clamps to hold it tightly in place. The fit was pretty good so far. 

This view shows how nicely the rear of the cabin fit the fuze side. I forgot to put in a piece that lay inside the nose one each side. I had to stick it to a sticky picker and slide it into the narrow space, and glue it. No harm no foul. I did glue it to the other side that wasn't attached.

I then attempted to fit the left side in place and was greeted with terrible gaps. If I got the top to fit tightly, the bottom was wide open and vice versa. Two factors were at work. With the cabin being a completely enclosed structure, you can't look and see if it's aligned properly as you could when it was just on one side, and I suspected that the cabin bulkheads were just too wide in spots preventing closer.

Here was the bottom: Notice the bulb in the front. That was an option that I decided after it was all glued in that I didn't want to use it since I wanted the FLIR option on the front end.

And this was the top! Ugh!

This was totally unacceptable and made for bad fits of the engine housing and the front fairing.

I selectively reduced the outer edges of the bulkheads and kept trying the fit. I finally got it as far as it would go, so it was time to glue. But first, the rear landing gear has to go in because it's trapped by the two fuze halves.

I painted the gear silver only to identiy that it was probably white. I first tried bare metal foil for the oleo strut, but scrapped that and used Molotow chrome brushed on. Meanwhile, the scissors link broke. I glued it together once, and it broke again when I was fussing with the foil. This time I drilled and pinned the scissors joint and glued it again. This time reinforced with thin CA.

But then, disaster struck again during all my manhandling when trying to close those pesky joints. Another piece of the scissors broke in another place and got lost.

I'll have to scratch-build or 3D print another scissors. Annoying! My UV 3D printing resin is tougher than styrene... or at least the Kitty Hawk styrene.

I changed out that front piece before commencing the fuze gluing. This one has the mount for the FLIR in front.

It was time to glue the fuze together trapping the landing gear and the front piece. I worked the bottom joint first since it's exposed more. I let the top joint go for a while. The bottom will get a little filling tomorrow after the joint is fully dry.

The top joint still ain't so hot, but it's hidden. It could cause fit problems with engine housing, fairing and the front glazing that I'll have to figure out as I go.

I'm going to fill this seam with styrene and then filler. 

The tail seam was the best of the bunch and looks pretty good. I apply the liquid cement on the inside in as many areas as I can before wicking it in from the outside.

While the paint on the gear was drying I assembled the wheels and made some masks for the hubs. I use a small machinist dividers with one point ground to a sideways chisel edge. I measured the diameter with the digital calipers, divided it in half and used this setting to set the dividers. I added a dab of Molotow Liquid Mask to cover the tiny hole from the dividers' point.

Fuze cleanup will start tomorrow.

Glad you made it through safely.  Coming along nicely.  Keep at it, it will look great in the end.

Thanks Gino!!! I am persistent and today that persistence paid off. I decided to go for it and mount the entire engine housing on the craft. It took lots of handling, pushing and shoving and if any more add-on details were on the plane, I would have surely broken most of them off.

Before doing this I started working on the major gap issues. For the top gaps I used a combination of strene strips and med-acccelerated CA. 

When dry I used a single-edges razor to slice the excess off near the skin line, and then using power precision sander and other sanding tools to level it. This entire joint is buried beneath the engine housing. I also used the razor to scrape the joints, not just rely on sanding.

For the bottom and tail seams I used mostly Tamiya filler and some strategic CA to fill it all. In this case I didn't use the power sander, but used the bow sander for all the convex curves.

Getting the engine house on required some surgery and lots of pushing and pulling. I though I wouldn't be able to use the ResKit trans because fit issues, but that was a red herring. The real culprit was the engine itself. It was too fat and was holding the entire assmbly off the plane. I also had to pop off the intake fairing to so more cutting. I relieved the front edges also. I lost the control rods on the trans, but they would be buried under the nose fairing. 

I had to grind some of the engine, and cut one of the pipes so the engine would fit properly.

With the interference removed I was able to rubber band and clamp the housing and start gluing all around.

One joint needed some more attention with the addition of a piece of 1/32" rod and CA. That joint, even with removing the interference, was still too high and need persuasion to get where it belonged.

Here are some of the other fits after correction.

I was rewarded after all this work to see that the nose fairing fit almost as it should. This is not glued. There's some internal pieces that must go on first. You can see what's left of that Phos-bronze pin.

The last gap was due to a mismatch of the fuze sides at the rear engine mount vertical face. I could see this offset, but it seemed in a difficult to remove it, so I decided to handle it with filling.

Again, I used styrene (2 pieces of 0.015" stock) to fill it. It will dry overnight and I'll sand it the next work session.

This is now the 3rd time I've started writing this post. The second time was when I had to replace almost the entire thing because I swiped right on the touch pad and the page disappeared. I then started a 3rd, but stopped in the middle due to being late and this morning that too disappear since it timed out. 

So here we go. First I unsuccessfully printed a gaggle of scissors links that turned out to be too thin to properly drill for the assembly wire I was going to us. I'm going to redesign.

I then finished cleaning up that complex fill area where the engine house joins the tail section. I used various sanding aids including a riffle file that works on concave surfaces.

The rest of the long work session was spent installing lots of little bits that make the model unique. The SH-60B LAMPS version has a lot of antenna and sensor sticking out everywhere. I reinforced some of the most delicate with wire. The instructions called for the canopy to be installed now, but I'm holding off until much later. I will mask the interior without the glazing. I also built and installed the FLIR unit that hangs on the front. There are loads of lights on the ship which I install with canopy glue on a surface prepared with Molotow Chrome Paint.

This phos-bronze is firmly holding this protrubing antenna.

There are two lifting eyes that were broken on the sprue. There are two "E" sprues and the part was broken on both.

I formed new ones out of wire and installed them with CA. They're a little thick, but that's the best size I had. Everything else was too thin or even thicker.

Here are some of the lights. That ugly seam is actually closed with CA. When painted it will disappear... thankfully!

There are sensors that go on the four corners of the cabin. Not sure what they are, but they have lights on the front ones also which I pre-treated with the Molotow. The FLIR goes on an optional bracket on the nose. It even includes some nice connecting leads. 

The forward half of the FLIR ball is transparent so I pre-masked the optical windows before attaching to the airframe.

It's captivated by the two halves of the lower frame. The ball articulates vertically, but does not rotate.

Can someone tell me what that rectangular array is? IFF?

I re-designed the scissors print. Instead of printing them all directly on the build plate, i drew a plank below them and supported each print sufficiently so no part of the link would attempt to print in free space. My reasons for this change are due to the nature of starting layers. The first 8 layers printed are exposed for 60 seconds per layer (as compared to 10 secs/layer on the rest) to ensure that they are well hardened and adhered to the build plate. If not, when the plate lifts to allow fresh resin to backfill for the next layer, the previous layer could adhere to the teflon barrier at the resin vat bottom, and not lift with the build plate thus creating a failed print job. This long exposure has a negative side effect. It causes the first layers to spread out beyond the part's boundaries creating what's know as an "elephant foot". For large parts, the elephant foot's no big deal, but on small parts it can distort the shape pretty badly as it did on my first attempt. 

By elevating the parts off the plate and supporting them, the elephant foot is on the plank, not the parts, and the parts come out true size. Notice that the print was actually starting to faill on the right side of the image with the plank lifting off the build plate, but enough of the plank was still attached to produce a bunch of good parts. That's why I ALWAYS print a lot more parts than I actually need. The resin is cheap for tiny parts, and the print time is the same since it's the number of vertical layers that determines print time (along with exposure times and print layer thickness).

I post-hardened the bars before drilling the holes and separating them from the bar.

I tried to drill one and did have success. THEY WILL WORK! Notice the one in the background has a broken leg. Again, that's why I print so many. They're fragile and drilling is a bit abusive to tiny parts.

Work continued adding fuselage details. There were three antenna that went onto the tail boom. I had pre-opened holes for two of them, but had missed opening the square hole for the middle one. Rather than just drillng anywhere, I came up with a scheme to shine my iPhone light down the boom and lo and behold, the thinner plastic where the location was on the inside glowed just enough so I could poke the hole from the outside and produce the square hole in its correct location.

The crew door is supposed to be installed now, but I want it in the open position to pose a mechanic sitting on the sill. That means the fuselage must be painted before the door goes on since you can see the fuze wall through the glazing. I also drilled and pinned the delicate door handle. I have the Eduard transparent parts mask set for this model. I use the Testor's Canopy Glue for all the transparent parts.

Up next was the torpedo rack on the strb. side. It's a 3-piece affair where you have to sandwich a part inside before gluing the two halves together. It was confusing to me just how this part was to be installed so I spent a lot of time studying it and ultimately got it right.

Onto it when four, very tiny sway braces. These suckers were really, really tiny. I used a 'parts catcher' apron (a la watchmakers) stapled to the underside of my work bench that catches about 80% of the crap that I drop (as long as I remember to clothes pin it to my shirt). One of these parts dropped into it. Here's what it looks like. Imagine seaching the floor for that!

In case you think I'm being hyperbolic, he's a cropped closeup showing it's actually a molded part.

And here they are glued in position on the underside of the torpedo rack.

Last thing I did was assemble the co-pilot's door. Again, I have to hold off on the full assembly since the inside of the door is black, like the interior, but there's a inner frame that goes on over the glazing, making painting and masking more complicated. I'm going to mask the glazing inside and out, paint the inner wall, then assemble and paint the outer frame. I looked to see if it was possible to open the door, but it's not going to be very straight forward since half of the hinge is molded into the fuze wall. I it could be cut out and glued to the door part it might work. I think about it.

\

Until next time...

Really been enjoying this build thread.  Now that is one tiny part!

So glad you are enjoying it. It's been fun for me too.

Started masking the various glazing needed to do the early painting. Then I found that the Eduard masks for the MH Blackhawk don't actually fit this version, as seen here.

If I'm going to have to add more mask to fill out the spaces, I might as well mask from scratch, which is exactly what I did. This was the exterior of the glazing.

 And I masked the interior too. The sliding door interior will not be seen, but the cockpit doors are viewable and will be painted black.

I also replaced the plastic door pull and the missing door handle with metal parts.

Lastly I spent a lot of time... to darn much time on making the scissors links. Here's me cross-drilling the link. My drawing was a little off making the legs too thick. In attempting to open up the gap I kept breaking the legs. I also broke a ton of these drills for various reasons including putting side pressure on the drill and actually bummping something when I put it down on the bench.

I ended the session without finishing this. At least I can print more. I'm post-curing one batch for the second time to maybe toughen it up a bit more. Not too much production for an afternoon's work.

Finally got a reasonable scissors link installed. I don't really like it, but I've spent WAAAAYYY to many hours screwing around with it. 

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Everyone have a wonderful one!

 Happy Monday after Christmas.

Odds and ends day. Finished masking the cockpit doors, hung the personnel hoist, prepared and installed the corner cockpit windows and the nose skin, and installed the outer wall that covers the sonar rack.

Again, I masked the interior and exterior of the cockpit left door, sealed all the edges with clear gloss to prevent color leakage. And again, made the hand pull out of phos-bronze wire. Since the metal stuck through the other side a bit, I drilled holes in the inner frame so the wires wouldn't keep the frame from seating properly. The plastic door handle is again wired in place.

I airbrushed the interior parts with NATO black and then pulled the tape. Came out okay. Before gluing on the inner frame I picked out some details with my "steel" metallic mix. I AM going to put one of the doors (co-pilot's) in the open position reinforcing it with wire. It will require reshaping the hinge details so the door can be properly opened.

I masked and installed the outer left skin that covers the sonar rack. I had to carefully position the left side of this panel since it wanted to fall into the craft to deeply. Needs a tad of filler on the lower lip.

Assembled the personnel hoist and then glued it to the fuselage. it was trickier to position than I would have thought and I had to remove some of the locating pin on the stem so it would settle down on the fuze properly.

It was time to install the nose cone and the lower corner windows. After putting on the nose cone, I had to paint the edges and touch up the interior before the glazing could go on.

I masked these windows off the model and then glued them in place, again with canopy cement. Again I sealed the edges with clear. I'm re-thinking installing the main glass to avoid having to mask the delicate interior.

It's too bad that you can no longer see any of the avionics which I so painstakingly painted...

Looking great.  The details are really making it pop.

Builder2010

I’m re-thinking installing the main glass to avoid having to mask the delicate interior.

I always install the canopy/windscreen first and then mask off the clear areas before painting, just like you did on the side windows.  I find it way easier than covering up all of the interior.

Thanks Gino! I did do just that. I did all the masking off the craft and then glued it in place. I did NOT use canopy cement. It's not secure enough. I DID use solvent cement and think I was careful enough to not wick it onto the clear portions. The Eduard decal set almost worked perfectly for these windows. I say almost because the Seahwak version does have some slight variations even on the front windscreen starting with the overhead control panel that is a painted portion of the glazing and has a curved portion on the left top that gets left unmasked. I'm adept at using a #11 to trim windshield masks even without them being pre-cut. None of the side windows masks worked at all.

That 1/32" cap on the roof keeps rearing its ugly head. In this instance it made an objectionable gap on the left side door, both on top and at the windshield joint. The windshield ended that gap's thickness too soon and didn't reach the door.

I again used shaped styrene to fill the gaps. There was also another gap at the right-top-rear edge of the windshield, also filled neatly with styrene. Filling with styrene reduces (not necessarily elimates) using paste fillers that often need multiple coats to fill a stubborn gap.

Before snapping the door in place (no glue needed), I painted the inside of the shim with interior black using a brush with a long handle from the opposite side of the cockpit. That's in case the rivet counters peer through the open door and see white styrene on the other side. I know, I know AMS!

With the door in place the gaps are now closed and the door fits tight enough to not need internal masking.

The right side fit was too tight and I had to trim the inner door frame so it would close enough to seal the paint out. The other shim is pointed out here. I had to use some canopy cement on the door's upper edge to keep it shut before painting. As I said, it's not that strong and the door is removable. This door will be open.

I added the left side weapons sponson. it too had four of those tiny sway braces. Little spot needing some filler.

We're not making out annual trip back East for New Years. Too many unknowns with the pandemic. I'm telling y'all this to say, building will not be interrupted.

More fuselage work...

Before I forget, let me make a proclamation. DO NOT PUT ON ALL THE LITTLE ANTENNA AND OTHER THINGYS THAT STICK OUT FROM THE FUSELAGE (technical term) WHEN THEY TELL YOU TO IN THE INSTRUCTIONS. PUT THEM ON AS CLOSE TO PAINTING AS POSSIBLE. Otherwise you will break them! And repairing them is neither fun nor optimal. I'm really annoyed that I didn't follow this advice and have been repairing things that stick out continously as I handle the model to do other important things.

I built and installed the mount for (I am assuming) is the MAD (magnetic anomaly detector) towed device. This one had a signal line in styrene and a sway brace that flush mounts to the fusselage.

I'm preparing the model for painting. That requires mixing up the instructions. In my case it meant putting on the hydraulics fairing that wasn't called out unti near the very end. It will also include the bottom radome that goes on tomorrow.

The fairing fit poorly, again due to that fuselage gap. As I mentioned yesterday, this gap keeps rearing its ugly head forcing parts to no longer fit by the amount of the gaps dimension. I don't know what I'm going to do with this mess. I may build out and smooth the flank to erase this discrepency. Might as well since I've been doing it all along.

In my handling I doinked the rear antenna mast. These protrusions are the reason I made the proclamation at the start of this post. I didn't even know that I broke it until I found it as you see it here.

I was just thick enough that I could actually drill and pin it. Not a pefect solution! Further smooting will help a bit.

To prevent more of this, I chose to fabricate the remaining two of this array out of metal. They are standoffs for a wire antenna that I'm going to assume is a low frequency communications link, but Gino will correct me.

I formed the phos-bronze and cut some PE fret for the bases. I will further finish them by bulking out the airfoil shape of the mast with some CA or Bondic. I solder these embedded into a ceramic soldering pad that is fantastic for soldering small assemblies. I will do this again when I fabricate the metal tripod that's going to support the rear-view mirrors. I'm going to replace the styrene struts without giving it a second thought.

Here are the two supports ready for further finishing.

The rear EMS pods went on port and strbd without problem.

I also forgot to color the floor of the engine compartment so protected the engine and airbrushed some dark iron into the space. I also did this on the inside of the engine cover which will be displayed open. I first shot this with the Tamiay silver laquer. Paint was scrtched off when I was fitting it.

For initial engine protection during painting, I covered it with some wet Bounty towel.

And then stuck the engine cover on as best I could.

We're getting close to painting time. I have to install the main landing gear and then work on the tail boom including the ResKit swing joint and tail rotor, so there will be some resin building fun. I have to decide whether to paint the exhaust ducting before and masking it and the shoot the gray, or after and and mask the gray. Any thoughts? I'm also thinking about how to actually hinge the copilot's door.

Looking great.  The antenna along the fuselage is a low frequency one.  As for the inside of the engine compartment access cover, it is actually zinc chromate yellow, has a flat plate for a floor and black anti-slip tape as it is used as a work platform, as on the UH-60s below.

You can see the flat floor plate well here.

Wow!

Thank you! Gino, I will do the engine cover like that.

Hope everyone had a decent and safe New Years. We stayed put and had a nice FaceTime with our friends back East. We're all getting older and several folks from our group were having health issues.

Put the metallic antenna loops onto the Fuze after making a 3rd one. I was trying to add some bulk with various kinds of media including epoxy putty and Bondic. Putty didn't stick. Bondic did sort of. When attempting to shape it with the Dremel I thinned the phos-bronze too much and it bent in half. Ergo, making another.

I put them onto the fuze with gel CA with a bit of medium CA to smooth the edges a bit. These should be more rugged than the frail styrene ones I was replacing.

The movable part of the tail boom gets glued together now, but before you do you have to captivate a actuating cylinder in two slots on either side. I didn't like the depth of the plastic lugs so I added some 1/32" phos-bronze. 

I got started on the ResKit tail boom hinge replacment. It's a pretty complex little project including faux pulleys with wire simulating the cables that control the tail pitch. You have to remove material on both the fixed and movable parts to create proper space for the more detailed resin parts. And here are the results. I used a combination of #11 blade, micro-razor saw and an Xacto #11-sized saw to remove the plastic.

The hinge area had to be surgically removed to give space for the more detailed hinges on the resin parts.

Here's the fixed boom with it surgery completed.

Lastly, here's the first resin part that I'm preparing. You have to open up some slots in the part as well as cut it out of the sprue block. The resin is tough, but not that tough and you can screw it up pretty good if you're not careful. You can see the highly detailed hinge parts that will fit into the newly cut holes.

Spent most of a long work session fixing a mess! You see I misread the instructions on "what to remove" on the tail booms. The plans showed the colored area and I read that as it needed to be removed... which I did yesterday. When I trimmed out the resin hinge bulkheads and fit them, this is what I saw.

That humongus gap was the material I erroneously cut away. You weren't supposed to "remove" that colored area, you were supposed to "thin" it by .3mm from the inside. I neglected to see the decimel point and my ADD brain jumped to the wrong conclusion. The resin pieces were still supposed to sit between the fuselage styrene. They were just a little thicker, so the styrene needed to be re-shaped.

This meant I had to add back the missing material and dress it so it wouldn't be noticeable to the novice viewer. Show judges would probably pick it up. I used some styrene strip held with both solvent cement and CA. I replaced rivet holes in the new parts.

I then shaved the new material on the movable boom so the piece would sit between the packing. On the fixed portion I have the hinge butting up against the fuselage.

With the both sides fit to their remade ends I was able to actually start building the hinge assembly. As usual ResKit is asking you to assemble and fabricate stuff that just about at the edge of my skill set. Lots of butt joints held by CA. The pulleys are almost microscopic and they expect you to thread some .2mm wire around them to simulate control cabling. I'm thinking about it, but may not do it. I actually hinged the parts with 0.022" wire and they work, but...and it's a big but... the next parts you add prevent the hinge from working.

I glued the part to the movable boom and that's where I had to stop. The folded boom would block painting of the fuselage and the closed side of the boom. I will have to glue it all in after the painting.

There were more gaps that need filling. I used a combination of a thin styrene and Bondic. I traced the shape of the open onto a piece of paper and cut the piece. It need more adjusting and then further filling.

Here is the gap filled.

Last thing up today was the tail strike bumper. This little assembly was one of those royal pains in the butt. If you've had the fun of watching "Rocco Sciavoni" on PBS streaming, you'd know that this was probably a "9th level pain in the ass." He ranks them with the 10th level being a murder. This  little job took 15 minutes or more.

You have to captivate the movable strut in the two holes and then glue it together. The triangualar shape made gripping difficult and the part kept rotating and coming out of the holes. I tried all sorts of things including taping one half to the bench so it wouldn't be moving around. I finally got to a big sigh.

Once I got it together, putting it on the plane was not a problem. It could have been engineered differently since the part is not actually movable in the final install. It could have been slipped into a slot and glued.

As much as I'm champing at the bit to get painting this job, all these bits and pieces must be installed properly. And, BTW: That pointy antenna sticking out of the bottom broke off AGAIN! As I said, IGNORE THE INSTRUCTIONS AND GLUE ALL THE TINY ANTENNAS ON AT THE LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT BEFORE PAINTING. Otherwise, you be re-gluing them, and fixing them for the rest of the build. There are so many that it's hard to grab the beast to do any heavy lifting (like adding filler pieces at the tail to fix big mistakes).

I've made mistakes like that before and it usually meant the kit went back in the box and onto the shelf for a few years before I had the courage to pull it back out.  Nice job with the repairs!

Builder 2010

 

 

There are sensors that go on the four corners of the cabin. Not sure what they are, but they have lights on the front ones also which I pre-treated with the Molotow. The FLIR goes on an optional bracket on the nose. It even includes some nice connecting leads. 

The forward half of the FLIR ball is transparent so I pre-masked the optical windows before attaching to the airframe.

 

Can someone tell me what that rectangular array is? IFF?

 

As you can see I screw up with regularity, but I also have great recovery skills and lots and lots of persistence. I had a short session and kept working on the tail boom and the main landing gear.

The tail boom has a small vertical stabilzer that went on nicely. Needed a little filing here and there to get a close fit.

I then needed to back up and build the main landing gear. The instructions on its assembly are a bit sparse. The main gear housing (minus the strut) consists of a 3-piece sandwich. I built the first one after figuring that the two pieces I removed from the sprue didn't quite make the whole assembly. Then I went to cut the parts for the other side and only found two of the three on the sprue. I didn't remember cutting off one of those pieces, and after a thorough search of the work bench area and parts racks, was unable to find it. It was quite desparate becasuse this was not an easy part to scratch-build. I did a complete search of the immediate floor around the workspace, but nada. Then I spotted a beige piece of plastic across the room under my 3D printing bench. And it was the missing piece! I don't know how this happened, but I was very happy that I didn't need to fabricate a new one. And with Kitty Hawk out of business, I don't know of any way to get a new part from them.

The strut is captured by fingers in the housing and, if the shock strut actually moved, could articulate. But... since the strut is solid the gear is fixed. I also glued the wheels together in preparation for painting. BTW: a large part of the filled underbody in the front will be covered by the large, round radome.

And we had our first snow of the season here in Da Ville. Winter has finally arrived.

Wonderful! I love forums. There are always followers who have actual, real-world experience on what I'm building.

What color are the gear struts themselves. Normally they're white, but in this case they're always exposed.

I still haven't decided on exactly what color scheme I'm going to use. There are soooo many choices.

35237 blue on top

36320 grey on the sides

36495 light grey on the bottom.

Not sure those colors correspond with as far as model paints.

There was also a LOT of variation in how those colors were applied.  But typically the struts were solid 320 grey.  Sometimes they might have 495 light grey on the bottoms of the struts.  The tail strut can be either 495 grey or 320 grey.

MIL-STD-2161B(AS) is the 2008 copy of Navy paint schemes.  The SH60 series is page 166 and it can be downloaded. The NATOPS manual can also be downloaded and it shows a ton of information useful for modeling.  A1-H60BB-NFM-000.  But you may want to skip that one because it will show you just how much is wrong with the kit and you are too far along to fix some of it.

I've been waiting on La Quinta Studios to come out with their 3d decals for the cockpit and SO station.  I'm also trying to learn how to vacuum form so I can make the clear shield for the sono launcher.

One problem with the KH kit is the main struts are wrong.

If you look down near the axle there is a small bump on the top and bottom of the drag beam.  That is a jacking point and should only be on the bottom of the strut.  The top side would be a nut.

Also if you look near the hinge you will see a small arm sticking out between the two plates  That is the Weight on Wheels switch and is on the top of the port strut only.  The stbd strut does not have it.

The wheels can be gloss white or 320 grey.  Either is correct and can be mixed and matched.  The brakes calipers are gloss white.  There is also a brake line that runs along the strut to the hinge area where it comes to a large orange QD.

Also your tail pylon trailing edge fairing is missing the two MWS sensors.  Not sure if they are in the kit as an option or not.

I was an AT (Aviation Electronics Technician) Pretty much all the electronics and weapon systems were mine to maintain.  We were also required to be a plane captain which means you must know the entire aircraft from rotor tip to tail to ensure it's flight worthiness.

I downloaded the file you suggested. Thank you! Always great to have a follower with actual real world experience on this equipment. I've been studying a lot of pictues and some look to be the medium gray throughout. Some of the images show the vast variations in weathering that can be applied from sparkling clean to worn in various spots especially the underbelly.

This one is pristine! And appears to be monochromatic.

Here's some underbelly soiling that could be added. It also shows the lighter bottom color and it looks like I'll have to add that. Good view of the missile detection sensor on the EMS at the front corner. And here I thought it was another search light... The cargo hook in the belly looks like it's painted light blue.

And another bird... Again, very clean... a little soiling on the tail boom. Also, panel lines are very tight and not very noticeable. Amazing extension on the tail wheel shock strut.

Here'sa  close up showing just how clean these things can be. What is that red panel with the handle on it? Notice the Maverick missile loadout.

Another bottom shot. This one again shows the soiling esepcially in the low pressure area behind the radome. This one looks like the bottom is NOT painted in the lighter color.

What a great resource.  The last bottom pic looks lighter to me - you can see the demarcation along the boom.  And the super clean pic has 000 - CAG bird? 

The first bird 456 is from one of my old squadrons.  I actually worked on 456 but not the one shown in the picture.  That one most likely replaced the one I worked on.

The cargo hook is probably a new one and in a pristine 320 grey.  All the dark spots you see on the bottom of the aircraft are actually drain holes.  A LOT of hydraulic fluid leaks from them.  Also towards the rear there are two square holes which are gang drains for the engines and hydraulics and can get very nasty.

The HSM-40 bird is a training squadron in Florida.  000 is their "show" bird.  Each squadron is allowed one "show" bird which get brightly painted.  Those birds typically do not deploy. HSM-40 never deploys overseas.  The missiles are AGM-114 HELLFIREs.  The aircraft itself is actually an SH-60R.  The red cover with the handle is an avionics fan cover  If you look just below that cover you can see the brake line for the main landing gear.

The bottom picture of 712 does indeed have the 495 grey on the bottom.  It's just very very dirty.

Great reference pics.  One point though...

Svt40

The HSM-40 bird is a training squadron in Florida.  000 is their "show" bird...The aircraft itself is actually an SH-60R.  

The HSM-40 helo is actually an MH-60R, they are no longer SH-60s.  With the S and R models they are considered MH or Multi-mission Helicopters since they are used for many different purposes.  The MH-60S is a navalized version of the Army UH-60M Black Hawk, while the MH-60R is the latest naval version.  They can both be used for ASW, SEAL support and insersion/extraction, VertRep, SAR, etc., etc....

MH-60S info: https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/MH-60S-Seahawk

MH-60R info: https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/MH-60R-Seahawk

My mistake.  I got out just before the HSL squadrons turned into HSM and changed from Bravos to Romeos.

No issue, times they are a changin'.

Here are good diagrams that show the 3-tone color scheme. 

Great diagram and good info of the updated models. 

Today's post combines yesterday and today's work. Got the tail rotor built and wrestled the horizontal tail plane into submission. 

The ResKit tail rotor has great detail, but in my case, the lifting rods (that control the pitch horn) just seemed way too short so I substituted them with 0.022" wire. Drilling the small rod ends was painstaking, but went ahead without difficulty.

Here are the four blades with the three parts attached: Blades, hubs and angled horns.

The arrow denotes on of the tiny counterbalance arms that broke off during cleaning. Another broke during assembly so two are not metal. Nothing attaches to these protrusions.

The four lift rods go between the spide and the horns. The arrow points to the kit part that just is way too short. I doubled checked what I was doing and couldn't find a mistake.

The instructions called out exchanging the kit supplied prop shaft with another that was significantly shorter. Unfortunately (for me) I had already fully assembled the tail boom and that required this part to already be installed.

The solution was simply to drill the resin hub deeper to accept the kit's pin.

Here's the rotor in place without glue.

Next was finishing the boom with the horizontal wing. I glued it up according to the instructions. The actual gluing points between the side pieces and the center were ridiculously small and fragile.

After it cured for about an hour I tried to snap it into place with the two small pins protruding from the center piece that engaged into two holes in the tail boom mount. It was quite flimsy, and when I put it into the folded position the wing was completely in the way. How the heck did this thing fold?

As I studied the tail plane I realized that those delicated attachment points were actually hinges. The darn thing folds! This was not called out at all in the instructions, nor did I study the folded tail intensely enough to pick this out. So broke the previous delicated joints and realized their surface area could not support the tail pieces in the upright folded position. Instead I faked it and made some phos-bronze wire supports. They're not scale nor prototypical, but they'll support the tail pieces in the display position. While the main rotor is folded hydraulically, all the tail boom folding appears to be manual.

That finished yesterday's work. Today I 'hinged' the opposite side and did some more work on the center section. I drilled it out 0.022" and then opened to 1/32" and used wire to make a much stronger assembly.

And here's the end result with the tail planes in their folded position (unglued) that will allow the boom to fold next to the fuselage as it should.

Now y'all are up to date.