John: Yeah the tracks are finally on the M40. I figured I'd have to convert some infantry figures for the crew so this set coming out now makes me no end of happy! Converting the boots is a little annoying but no where near cutting and filing off all the webbing from infantry figures though!

Nice work there! I don't know much about choppers except that Mil-2 is going to look pretty badass with rocket pods! Shame they don't fit any better though. And the Chinook, love the camo scheme there though it looks like a bear to paint.

I have a couple of reference books on russian rotors

The book above has some pic's of the Mi-2 under construction which show the cockpit console not covering the lower chin wndows

wikipedia suggest the KPAF would have some 57mm rocket pods fitted . Another pic from the book above shows some similar pods as to what is in the Sky-High kit

There are two external fuel tanks in the kit but I would have to make my own support brackets if I wanted to use them . Another reference book has some colour photo's of Polish and Czech civillian Mi-2's

At this stage I think I'll go with the rocket pods .

Another minor issue is with the Sky-High Mi-2 . Dry fitting the cockpit/cabin floor in place shows that its about 3mm too wide . I had to get out the Hobbyboss Mi-2 Gunship kit to compare with the Sky-High version as there is some issue's with the console panel as well

I'll see if I can make a new console like the grey coloured one on the left below

The white one is way too big anyway .

Just a couple of small issue's that shouldn't be too difficult to fix ...... hopefully .

I really should do a little more research on things before I fly off into "panic mode"

A quick search around google lead me to Luck Model's web site which has the 1/72 Wolfpack resin larger sponsons available to update a standard Airfix/Italeri CH-47 Chinook kit .

http://www.luckymodel.com/scale.aspx?item_no=WP-72057

So it appears that my current build is okay .

 I've managed to calm down now !

You have been waiting a while for those figures to become available Cliff . Have you finished putting all those links together for the tracks on the M40 ?

I discovered a couple of "minor" issue's with the Mi-24 and  Chinook builds . I was thinking of adding a little bit of weight in between the rear cockpit and cabin area , even though Italeri make no mention of needing any , I thought perhaps I still should add some

Where I suddenly thought I made a mistake was with the exhaust placement . italeri's instructions show the exhaust fitting with the ends facing the rear

I glued mine with the ends facing forward towards the intakes . At first I thought I stuffed-up but I had been looking at Hasegawa's and Zvezda's Mi-24 instruction sheets during the past couple of day's and both those kits show the exhaust ends facing forward , so happily I got mine correct , quite by mistake . Of course once the fuselage top section gets glued on along with the intakes you won't see any of this !

Another issue which is a little embarrassing  is the Academy ROK Chinook just arrived and when I opened the kit to look at the instructions and painting guide , I discovered that Academy make no mention of using the larger sponsons that are included in thier kit

In my usual frantic haste to start another build did I presume wrongly about using the larger sponsons ???

Also , Academy's paint instructions don't mention which colours are used

Only the front page has the paint colours listed

The Gunze H-317 is the only grey coloured listed but this would be too dark when looking at the box art photo . The grey looks closer to H-308 (FS36375)

I guess I'll make a start on the Academy ROK Chinook !

Well, Dragon's website has now announced that the gun crew I've been waiting for the M40 is available, Funny they list them as Vietnam era but they look like early to mid Second World War footwear to me! I'd have to modify the boots for Korean War vintage I'd think...

Didn't know the ROK used Soviet/Russian hardware either!

John: Nice job there, those are some nice looking models- looking forward to seeing you work your magic on them.

A ROK Helix?! Most interesting...

They've got quite a few of them for mountain rescue and fire fighting.  I used to see them practicing at the mountains around Uijeongbu.  The ones I saw were a red and white scheme.

I stumbled onto this pic over at ARC website

here's a link to the page

http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=142300

Very interesting !

Here's some WIP pic's from today at the bench

Mi-24D cockpit tub and cabin glued in place ;

The fuselage halves glued together okay except for the nose section which I had to use super glue and squeeze and hold with my fingers for several minutes untill the super glue set ;

Ohter than the nose section everything else linned up nicely .

While looking at wikipedia , 'Korea people's Air Force' , I saw mentioned about the North Koreans using the Mi-2 , Mi-4 and the MD-500 helicopters . So I decided to add those to the bench as well

I started with the Mi-4 and Mi-2 first and got the fuselage halves and interior pieces ready for some Gunze H-57 Grey

The KP Mi-4 has some bulkhead pieces which were a little tricky to try and sit correctly during some dry test fitting . So I decided to glue those pieces in place just before I did any interior painting

Here's a pic of the Mi-4 interior pieces glued in place and I'm about ready to close up the fuselage

There were no issue's when glueing everything together , I'll have to add some fishing sinkers to the nose section before glueing the front underside panel in place

Well that's about all for today , it's just gone midnight here , so I'll catch a few winks and continue on first thing in the morning .

Thanks Helo. I am really looking forward to seeing your Hind built up. You obviously have quite  bit of natural ability with models yourself. ;-)

stikpusher

Gamera

Wow that's a nice looking kit John, I wish they'd do a 1/48th kit. Guess I could buy the Monogram kit but it's not that detailed.

The Monogram Hind is a pretty nice kit. yes it can use upgrading, but straight OOB (20+ some odd years ago) it built up quite nice for me.

Gamera

And yeah I think the Hind competes very strongly with the A-10 Warthog as the most butt-ugly thing that's ever flown.

Them's fightin' words... I think they are some of the scariest looking aircraft ever to fly. They look positively deadly!

Pretty darn good Stik , especially when you built it so long ago .

 A modeller with natural abilities for sure  

I painted all the cockpit and cabin pieces today and their now ready for glueing into the fuselage

Once I get everything glued in place I'll take another pic and then close up the fuselage . I'm happy how this build is going so far .

Yeah, the Monogram Hind, came out around the late 80s, at the end of the Cold War, when we were finally starting to get a better look at modern Soviet stuff. Their MiG-29 and Su-25 came out around then too. I would neer call an A-10 pretty, but what they can do to the bad guys is definitely beautiful, When they finally do retire those beasts it will be a sad day. There will be no more fixed wing CAS that can survive at low altitude in the US arsenal. 10,000' AGL at 500 kts...

SP: I won't argue with scary either. And I'd assume that to an infantryman looking for air support an A-10 is a beautiful thing!

Nice looking Hind there, I may have to pick one up. The kit came out back in the '80s didn't it doing the Cold War when we didn't know much about Soviet/Russian hardware?

Draken Andy: Ouch, hope that rib heals fast! I know what you mean about putting off stuff you don't feel like doing, seems my problem is it's my modeling that gets put off. And the book on 'comfort women' sounds interesting, not sure I'd want to know too much though. I read Iris Chang's 'The Rape of Nanking' a few years ago- interesting stuff but stomach churning.

I had to take a bit of a break from things for a few weeks.  Between classes starting up, getting back into doing assignments, and taking some exercise/phys. ed. classes I was just about to get back to the beast.  Then I slipped in the locker room after swimming, crashed onto one of the benches and broke a rib.

Yeah, srsly not fun!

The ribs all but healed completely and I'm working on that conglomeration.  I've got some really interesting pictures of the interior from a website, I'm putting the upper deck in the 'down' position so that it hides the upper interior.  The lower deck is going to be BEAUTIFUL!  And I happened across some Evergreen plastic sheet "HO Metal Roof" that has .040 plastic with lines cut into it and little threads of plastic.  The .040" part is my upper deck and bulkheads, the strings are going to be my interior bracing for the cargo bay and doors.  I might spend this weekend working on the beastie; I need to make the elevator platform and the cockpit before I can start worrying about putting anything together as far as the fuselage go

Gamera

Wow that's a nice looking kit John, I wish they'd do a 1/48th kit. Guess I could buy the Monogram kit but it's not that detailed.

The Monogram Hind is a pretty nice kit. yes it can use upgrading, but straight OOB (20+ some odd years ago) it built up quite nice for me.

Gamera

And yeah I think the Hind competes very strongly with the A-10 Warthog as the most butt-ugly thing that's ever flown.

Them's fightin' words... I think they are some of the scariest looking aircraft ever to fly. They look positively deadly!

Hi Andy ;

I wish you good luck with your Master's Degree and I've been wondering how your Globemaster build was progressing . A few times lately , I've been looking at my Anigrand resin C-124 and have thought about scratch building an interior . It sure does look like a lot of work to do if I wanted to cut the nose clamshell doors open . I'm looking forward to seeing what you have done on your vacu-form build .

John .

I'm back in college (Master's in Education) and had a paper due today.  Did it last night, but Wednesday night was spent working on the Globmaster II.  Got a LOT done with the wings, interior, bulkheads, and more.  Amazing what you can get done when you're procrastinating.

Wow that's a nice looking kit John, I wish they'd do a 1/48th kit. Guess I could buy the Monogram kit but it's not that detailed.

And yeah I think the Hind competes very strongly with the A-10 Warthog as the most butt-ugly thing that's ever flown.

I'm happy with the cockpit colour as well . next time I have some items in the shopping basket at the local on-line hobby store , I'll pick up some of the testors acrylic blue-green . I was just too impaitent to order any paint and wait untill after the weekend for it to arrive .

From what I have in my russian rotors stash the Zvezda Mil Mi-24 kit has all the bells and whistles

This kit comes with a nicely detailed engine and intakes

You can pose the access panels open to show off all that detail as well

I'm thinking of buying a second one and perhaps Zvezda's Mil Mi-24A Hind as well . I could then take the rotors from the Airfix/heller kit for my Italeri build .

I do agree with Stik about the Mi-24 being one of the meanest helicopter gunships around along with the Mi-28 Havoc , two very cool looking attack helo's .

John .

It looks fairly close to the blue-green I've seen. 

I know that it is too late for your Hind build, but Testors also makes an acrylic in their square bottles, Jade or Turquoise I think, that is an excellent match for the Soviet cockpit color. I picked it up in one of their acrylic paint sets and used it for the cockpit of a MiG-21. I am loving this Hind so far! One of the meanest looking gunships out there! Simply wicked winged death!

I was going to spray the fuselage interior grey first but I was more curious about the cockpit green/blue mix so I decided to test spray with that first

The camera flash tends to make everything look more on the blue side

There is a green appearance to the paint mix . Overall  I'm happy .

Gull grey on the cabin area first thing in the morning .

Thank's for the help guy's  

There's a review over at modellingmadness on the Italeri Mi-24 Hind D . Apparently there are some accuracy issue with the overall kit but the most glaring is the main rotors are molded going in the wrong direction

I'll have to think about how to try and fix this error , russian rotors rotate in a clockwise direction when viewed from above . I may swap the rotors from an ancient Airfix/Heller Mi-24 kit if I can't fix the italeri ones .

I also spent a huge amount of time on the net trying to find out what Tamiya or Gunze acrylic paints to mix together for the USSR interior cockpit green . I know Model Master have an exact match in their enamel range but I was hoping to find someone who might of mixed their own from the acrylics like I use .

Well after several hours of searching I finally stumbled across a site where a modeller suggested mixing equal parts of Gunze H-25 Sky Blue with H-46 Emerald Green

This looks pretty close to me and I'll go with that combination and some H-325 Gull Gray for the cabin/troop compartment .

John .

The DPRK Hinds are in a variety of colours.  The most common having already been stated; a medium/dark green over a medium/dark yellow.  They've also shown propaganda posters with the Czech style dark brown/dark green.  Strangely enough, the DPRK is incredibly consistent and honest in their propaganda!  There's a book titled, "The Cleanest Race" where a sociologist examines DPRK policy statements and actions in reference to propaganda and it's straight forward truth.  They say what they mean, they mean what they say. 

Which really ought to tell the diplomatic folks following the lead of Bruce Cummings (the pre-eminent talking head researcher on the DPRK) that he's WRONG!  Okay, off the soap box...

As part of my return to school I'm taking a course in military history and have been offered the chance to review a text on the comfort women of WWII.  It'll be interesting, for sure!

Yes, a sand yellow/forest green camo job over a blue or blue gray lower. But I think that profile is an Afgahn Hind from durning the Soviet era. The roundel has a green/black/red border as opposed to the red/blue of North Korea

John: Nice work on the Chinook, and that is a cool looking Hind.

I found one artwork side profile in my reference book of what appears to be a North Korean Hind D

Green and yellow/brown over sky blue I think ?

John .

stikpusher

How about the Apache paired up with a Hind. North Korea is supposed to have about 20 Mi-24D gunships.

I like that idea Stik ...

I went through the Russian helicopter stash and I have a few different Hind Gunships and I think this italeri Hind D should work okay

I'll leave off the exhaust extensions and sand filters and see if I can find a pic of what the colours might be .

I got all the Mi-8 pieces ready for re-painting

Busy week ahead on the bench .

John .