French a/c group build 2012-13

Something else I discovered last night while searching the net was the inside colour of the French H-34 cockpit and cabin area

The walls appear to be interior green , similar to Gunze H-58 . As well as the cockpit .

The cabin floor is probably a metalic grey finish and I'll go with that .

Yeah Vance ;

There's lot's of things I would do differently with the next Alouette II build . My tail boom was a 'just glue it and hope for the best affair' , the landing skids have slight kinks in their length but I guess it's just experiance . Build one and work out the issue's so the next one will be a lot easier .

While searching the net last night I saw an artist profile image of an Alouette III that appears to have been used late in the Algerian War 1961-62

The French seemed to use those AS-11 and SS-11 missile's but I don't remember seeing any in 1/72 scale , in any case , I'm now thinking it might be a bit more of an enjoyable build if I went with a 1/72 Heller Alouette III helicopter

Painted olive green for the French Army it should accompany the Alouette II nicely .

Those Airwaves rocket tubes for the H-34A Pirate arrived late yesterday , so I'll try and make a start on the H-34 as well and give those commando's a base coat of Gunze H-81 khaki .

John .

Ahhh - there is always something that can be done differently "next time" John, you're making good progress though.  You'll soon be on to your commandos.

That's really great work there Vance , nice going on scratch building the extra cockpit detail ...

I have most of the Mach 2 Alouette II put together along with the M8 Greyhound and WC-51 truck

The Alouette has been quite a difficult build with more super glue than hobby glue used through out .

The cockpit tub kept falling off the frame assembly , mostly because it sits precariously on one lower cross member frame piece . Looking at the instructions I think next time it would be better to fit the lower cockpit bottom section to the frame section first and then add the cockpit interior pieces along with the rear frame/tail boom section .

I built my cockpit tub as a seperate assembly but as I mentioned getting it to stay in place was extremely frustrating . I just need to touch up the tail rotor , I thought it was red and white stripes but after looking at other finished Alouette II models on the net , it should be yellow and red stripes . I'm thinking of building a second Alouette II this time for the French Navy with the four wheels fitted and I should replace the cockpit seats or at least file the down a little , their too big and almost hit the rear seat .

Anyway hopfully finished pic's of these three builds in the next few day's .

John .

Sprue-ce Goose

Vance:

Nice scratch building details.

Hans von Hammer would be proud of you.

lol, thanks Goose. The details are not completely accurate of course, but they are better than nothing!

Vance:

Nice scratch building details.

Hans von Hammer would be proud of you.

Alright, dove into my first contribution here: Heller's 1/72 MS.406...

Small kit, low parts count, good exterior details, but...

ZERO internal detail. Just stubs for the pilot's generic seat to sit on. (I shaved the stubs off to make way for scratch-built interior details)

The seat? I assume this seat makes an appearance in all sorts of kits from that year? And no, I have no idea why my fingers are so red-pink here.

The shape of the upper portion of that seat is fine, started with this as a base fr the interior work.

Instrument panel work

Paused here for pics, more to come.

There seems to be a few different types of hats worn by French soldiers/commando's ; I found these pic's on the net , which appear to be from the Algerian conflict

I ordered a book from Amazon , 'Algerian War 1954-1962' , Men at Arms series ; I hoping there will be some colour artwork pic's or perhaps photo's of the camo unifroms worn by the French .

John .

Sacre bleu, I see berets!! John, they'd be convincing to me so long as the colours are correct. What about the rifles? (I'm no French Commando Expert by any means...)  I got some work done on the MS.406 this weekend, will have some pictures tomorrow.

Not much progress to show on my Mirage, I have just been filling and sanding to get the seams around the air intakes neat and re-scribing the lost detail.

Theuns

Bonjour everyone ;

I was looking through the spares boxes today to see if I had some soldiers to use around the Noratlas and helicopter builds . I have plenty of WWII figures and some more modern ones but I wanted something that would suit the French Algerian War theme I'm going with and I found these guy's

I can't find the original box they came in but do you guy's think they look like French cammando's

John .

Helo H-34

Budd , I could go for a week talking non stop about the H-34 and it's variants . What I posted is just a small sample of the venerable Sikorsky S-58 !

VanceCrozier

John - can't right-click? You could do the old "print screen" trick, then paste the resulting image into a photo-editing program & crop it from there (ideally), or paste it into a doc file.  Let me know if you have trouble with it.

 

Well Vance , I was able to learn something new tonight . I showed my younger brother your post about using the "print screen" trick and he knew straight away what you were talking about and then showed me exactly how to go about saving those awesome H-34A Pirate pic's . I had to write down step by step procedures on what to click and so forth and after a few go's on copying each pic , I soon got the hang of it ...

A big thank you to my brother Tim and a 'merci to you grand leader Vance "

 

au revoir .

 

John (jean)

pas de problème, Jean!

Budd , I could go for a week talking non stop about the H-34 and it's variants . What I posted is just a small sample of the venerable Sikorsky S-58 !

VanceCrozier

John - can't right-click? You could do the old "print screen" trick, then paste the resulting image into a photo-editing program & crop it from there (ideally), or paste it into a doc file.  Let me know if you have trouble with it.

Well Vance , I was able to learn something new tonight . I showed my younger brother your post about using the "print screen" trick and he knew straight away what you were talking about and then showed me exactly how to go about saving those awesome H-34A Pirate pic's . I had to write down step by step procedures on what to click and so forth and after a few go's on copying each pic , I soon got the hang of it ...

Wow, I did not realize there were so many variants of that helicopter!

Thanks, Budd

No worries Scorp

I went and looked at the finished builds on page one as I had forgotten what the other GB members were building . I also notice a reference to page two where the F4U-7 Corsair is acceptable as a participant as Vought were building them exclusivly for the French .

I was doing some more research on the French wings over Algeria and saw some additional info on the T-28 Fennec (Trojan) .

According to the info above Sud Aviation were doing extensive modifications to the T-28 for use by the French Air Force to use in Algeria , so I was hopping that this might apply as a "technicality" and WIP pic's of the build would be allowed ???

John .

Now thats a history lesson. Thanks for that.

The helicopter in the movie 'Full Metal Jacket' is definitely a Wessex and a bit off an odd duck in that as well .

This pic allbeit not all that clear shows the four versions of the Wessex used by Royal Navy and Royal Airforce

The Helo on the left in the top pic is a civilian version with an unusual intake on the very front of the nose section ; Which is similar to the 'Full Metal Jacket' helicopter .

The main difference between the British Wessex and American H-34 versions are the different nose sections .

France used the early H-34 with the piston engine and the single exhaust pipe positioned low down on the port side nose section

Early American HSS-1 (Navy) and H-34A/C (Army) were similar

Later American version , particulary the USMC had a higher 3 exhaust pipe system

Westland designed their Wessex to use the Napier Gazelle gas turbine in their HAS 1/3 Wessex with two exhaust pipes either side of the nose/ engine section

Wessex HU-5's had the Rolls Royce / Bristol Siddeley Gnome Turbines with a larger single style exhaust cones angled slighty back on both sides of the nose section

The HU-5 in the pic above is really the same type of Wessex from the movie only the engine intake at the very front is different

Wessex nose profiles , HAS-1/3 at the top and centre right of page ; Australian HAS-31B Wessex centre left and the HU-5 at the bottom of the page

America did use a turbine engine version of the H-34 called the S-58T

The CIA operated some from Laos during the Vietnam War

Some U.S. Law enforcement Agencies also used the Turbine powered S-58T

S-58T nose/engine section

The last picture in Len Lundh's Sikorsky H-34 book is of these three abondoned Sud Est built H-34A's

So was it a wessex or a seahorse in the movie? (i cant really spot too many differences, im not really a chopper guy)

Yes Scorp ,

A wessex dressed up to pass as a USMC Sea Horse

John .

Watched a few scenes from Full Metal Jacket today. The scene with the psycho door gunner in it, theyre flying in a wessex. " Any person that runs is a VC anyone that stands still is a well disciplined VC"

John- Cool photos! Makes me want to do one...

Vance- I don't know about "quick progress." Just low parts count, lots of glue, and decent fit since I spent so much time sanding everything down to shape.

My first time doing a complex canopy like this. What a pain! They aren't perfect, but given the size of the masks, I won't complain.

Thanks, Budd

I saw these rocket tubes over at Hannants

They look similar to the ones positioned high on both sides of the H-34A Pirate

The lower armament is some type of SNEB and LRAC swival rocket pod/tube ; The only SNEB pods I have are from the 1/72 Hasegawa AV-8A Harrier kit but I'm not sure if they would be suitable . I ordered some of those Airwaves rocket launchers anyway , so that will be a start on my H-34A Pirate .

Another interesting pic I came across on the net was this French H-34 , with what seems to be a troop cabin door on the port side of the helicopter or has the image been modified ?

I have lot's of pic's on file of the H-34/Wessex but I have never seen one with a port side door before !

John .

WOW Budd , that's some wicked masking you've done there ....

Vance , for some reason I don't have a printer icon at the top of my computer page . I've only ever right clicked and the small box appears for 'save it now' or print . I even tried the click and hold the left mouse button to highlite the section I was looking at but the same warning comes up .

I took a few pic's with my digital camera of the screen with some of the images I wanted but the quality isn't all that great . Here's a pic , not quite as zoomed in as the other pic's I took

I'm a bit of a dunce when it comes to computers and different programes , so I'm not sure what to do about getting the images uploaded .

On another note , I won a Hobbycraft French Skyraider on ebay the other day , I'll have to sneek that one past the family when it arrives in a couple of weeks and I spied a couple of Italeri F4U-7 Corsair in my stash last night which is marked as a French bird . Looks like I'll have plenty of background aircraft to park behind the H-34A , Alouette II and Noratlas .

John .

John - can't right-click? You could do the old "print screen" trick, then paste the resulting image into a photo-editing program & crop it from there (ideally), or paste it into a doc file.  Let me know if you have trouble with it.

Budd - wow, look at all that glass! making quick progress now.

John- That Alouette is really cool! That's going to be awesome when it's finished.

Time for me to finally post something here:

Cockpit all done up.

I tried Doog's method of painting it black, then going over with the interior color. I'm not sure it worked for me as well as it does for him, but oh well. Other than that I just added some highlights and worn spots with light grey and silver, as well as adding belts.

Couple shots showing the pit inside the fuselage:

 And here it is all buttoned up. For as much sanding down as I did, I'm surprised it went together so well. Probably because I used an insane amount of glue!

 Still needs some touching up in a couple spots, then I should be ready to start painting! Hopefully the worst part of this build is behind me, though the decals look kind of scary. Also, I have only done a camo job once, and it turned out ok at best. Oh well, here goes...

Thanks, Budd

Not much of an update but an update none the less .

I airbrushed a few coats of Gunze H-78 Olive drab on the WC-51 and M8 Greyhound tonight

I shortened the two cross members on the Alouette II so the overall width is now 25mm and I masked the canopy/cockpit tub . Tomorrow I'll airbrush a few coats of flat black to the canopy frame lines first and while there is black in the airbrush I'll do the tyres for both vehicles . Then finish off the Alouette canopy with the olive drab .

I was looking through the Lennart Lundh Sikorsky H-34 book , (my favourite of all my reference books) , there's a chapter on the French 'Sud Est' H-34's with a front on pic of the H-34A Pirate in Algeria

It's a great pic as it shows how far out from the fuselage the weapons racks stick out . I went looking on the net for additional info on the H-34A Gunships and found this site with some awesome close up pic's of the weapons set-up

http://www.aha-helico-air.asso.fr/pirate.htm

Unfortunatly it seems that I can't right click and copy some of the images into the computer . Is there a way around this , as some of those H-34A Pirate photo's are just incredible and I would really like to have them in my H-34 reference library . Anyone know how to copy those images from the link above ?

On a slightly different note and not quite related to French built helicopters but I was reading more in my H-21 reference book about the H-21 "Flying Banana" in French service in Algeria and came across this little bit of info relating to helicopter operations

It's interesting how the troop seats were often removed  and item #6 is a bit of an eye opener .....

John .,

John... look at all those fiddlybits!!!

Tonight I did a little glueing and pre-assembly on the two Noratlas support vehicles ,

WC-51

The axle and suspension parts on the WC-51 fitted in place without too many issue's . I'll airbrush the chassie frame , cab and rear tray as seperate pieces and then glue them together after painting .

The M8 Greyhound axles and suspension were a little more difficult to get glued in place , especially the front axle ; It's quite fiddly to get all three parts lined up correctly when glueing

I managed to eventually get my undercarriage in place and the main turret with the cannon fitted as well

 I'll let the glue set over night on the greyhound axles and suspension and tomorrow I glue the top cover in place with the turret .

Interestingly , there are more parts to the WC-51 truck than the Greyhound but I found the M8 to be a more difficult build .

More WIP's tomorrow

John .

Interesting subjects, as always John. He doesn't look too much like Charlie at the moment, but I'm sure you can weave some magic on it.

Cheers

Tony

Poor update about the nieuport:

Refined the engine cover with milliput and put on the engine conduct on the back of cilynders

After primed whit grey

At the next