taxtp
Hi John
That is an excellent series of Helos. For some reason, seeing a series of aircraft like this really rings my bells. I'd be fascinated to know what started you off on this series.
Cheers
Tony
Hi Tony;
In regards to my obseesion with the H-34 helicopter ,for many years we all saw the standard Italeri UH-34D Choctaw kit No.066 in the LHS ...
I think it was around 2007 when Italeri released the UH-34J kit No.1066 ...
I bought two of these kits and was suprised to find that Italeri were now offering the V-style landing gear on the sprue frame . I then found out about Len Lundh's awesome book on the History of theSikorsky H-34 and bought a copy ;
The book covers all the countries that used the Sikorsky H-34 with lot's of reference photo's (B&W) as well . With a nice colour photo section in the last chapter .
There's not a lot of aftermarket decals to suit U.S H-34 versions but I managed to scrounge around and find a lot of suitable markings from other decal sheets from other kits in my stash and I also bought quite a few alphabet numbers and letters decal sheets in 1/72 and 1/48 , black and white to help with the different schemes I wanted to do . As I mentioned earlier , unfortunatly it wasn't long before italeri deleted the V-style landing gear pieces and went back to offering the bent gear legs only ; So there is no way of telling if the kit contains which type of landing gear but 99% of the time it's the early bent gear legs .
I was lucky recently and won some Revell boxings (H-34G) off ebay which have the V-style gear , I now have six kits in the stash to suit .
There are plenty of aftermarket decals to suit the Westland wessex HAS-1/3 HAR/HC-2 and HU-5 versions and I picked up quite a few sheets on-line from Hannants in the UK .
There will be about 21 Sikorsky/Westland builds I'm currently doing now for series two , with about 18 more for series three .
Back on my HU-5 Falklands Wessex , I gave her a few light coats of H-30 Gloss Clear and she is now ready for decaling . However I just discovered I have made two small errors .
Firstly , I don't have the correct size RAF letters "XP" in black to suit , I thought I did but those ones are all white
I just checked Hannats web site and there are plenty of RAF Black letters in 1/72 and 1/48 in the size I need so I ordered a whole bunch of them . In the mean time I can still place the rest of the markings into position and it usually only takes a week for decals to arrive from England and I can add the two large code letters then ;
The second error I made was glueing the landing struts in place . I forgot about the small section around the boarding steps which is usually 'non slip' flat black . It will just be a little more difficult masking with the landing gear strut right next to the section I will want to paint black .......'stupid me' .
Anyway I'll start the decalling next and then add all the smaller bits and pieces .
Bish , there is a small difference with the Whirlwind and the Wessex HAR-10 and 2 ....
Whirlwind HAR-10
Wessex HAR-2
You will also notice the square fuselage cabin window on the starboard side of the wessex just behind the cabin door as I mentioned earlier .
I also plan on building a fleet of Whirlwind Helicopters sometime in the future and I picked up some nice RAF Whirlwind decals called RAFDec Westland Whirlwind RF7211 . I have 6 italeri H-19 kits in the stash and another 6 on order along with Rotor Craft and Airwaves resin nose and tail boom conversion sets .
Anyway I'll start some decalling on the HU-5 .
John .