HELICOPTERS - Mi-24 Hind Group build

QUOTE: Originally posted by Avus Damn' it! I gotta hurry if I wanto to catch up with you guys. Today I'll give it a coat of primer and tomorrow I'll paint it (at least I hope). Larry_Dunn we never set any dates, except maybe an end date to join wich was june 1st. But I might be wrong. It's all a little confused so I'm sorry I can't help.

Ok, let me know. I'd like to build a little Revell Mi-24 as a break from my armour builds. I've always loved the Hind's sinister shape. It looks like something from Star Wars.

Larry, I say go for it! After all, I'm almost finished so someone will have to replace me!

I wanted to post my progress so far. I've gotten the main rotors built now. I also got them painted, although it doesn't show in this pic. It was taken before I painted it.



I also completed the underwing stores for my Hind. I won't install them till after the decals have been applied and the dullcoat sprayed on.



Here she is masked and waiting for clearcoat:



I finally found my Libyan decals, but they weren't what I remembered. I don't know whether to hold out for something better, or go ahead and apply these. I know I need to buy a sheet of numbers since I don't have two matching sets of '2027'. I'll keep you posted on what happens. Until I find out what I'm going to do, I'm stuck where I am...

Hello?? ........It's gone very quiet...........Where is everybody?.........
My Trumpeter Hind is coming on well. Doing all the painting, weathering, decalling and varnish BEFORE fixing the two halves together. Looks weird having a kit with its eventual finish sitting in the box lid, an interior virtually finished in a protective bag and all the stores mounted on cocktail sticks. Really strange...... but it does save a whole load of masking!
The finish is the Tiger one from the kit - Hind no. 0705 - and the tiger stripes look amazing. I'll try and have a friend with a digital camera take a few shots when its finished.

Yep, there hasn't been a post for a long time!
As for myself, I'm busy writing my thesis so I left the helo behind. Now let's hear your excuses !
The status of my model is: the Hind is painted. As soon as I can I'll post pics.
All I need to do is draw the panel lines, coat it gloss, apply the decals, coat it matt, fit the last parts and then it's done!
Sounds like a piece of cake!

Well I never joined this group build and I just started on a Trumpeter Hind about a week ago with a completion date set for end of August. I started on all the weapons first, get the most tedious steps done first. There is nearly 200 pieces to the weapons!
Next up, the engines.

i leave for a few weeks and the hind gb falls apart...................... june first was the cut off date to join, there were no other dates. i canceled my plans for a hind dio because i don't have enough space and my hind sucks. still needs to be finished.

Larry_Dunn: i believe the hind was used long before star wars came out.

Colin Russell: this topic does go quiet alot.

t3488g,
I know what you mean! Mine is awaiting a matt coat before I join up the fuselage halves. Been busy adding all the ducting round the pilot's screen, scratchbuilding a second fan and shaping the padding behind the CPG's seat. Constant test fitting necessary here to make sure the bits do not prevent the final fitting of the glasswork.
I don't know about the rest of you, but the transparencies on my kit are not good. A plastic that is not quite crystal clear and is of different thicknesses. Spent ages removing the mould line from the pilot's canopy and have dipped the whole thing in Future before painting and adding bits.
I think that the amount of work going into these kits is the reason for the l -o- n- g silences from the group. Anyone else having problems and finding solutions?

a tumble weed blows by.................



<cricket chirp>

Before the tumble weed gets from Canada to Italy let me post some pics to cheer up the audience. I wanted to post pics of the finished painting but since there has been no pic-post for a long time ...

I need to finish painting the underside in light gray.

I've started redrawing the panel lines on the wing

BTW I won't be home next week (some extensive R&R on the sea after getting my doctorate) so I won't make any progress on the Hind!

Just in case anyone is looking for a new colour scheme for the 1/35 scale Hind, Jaroslav Spacek says there is a new Tiger scheme being painted onto a Hind in Czech. Air Force ready for the 2004 display season. www.mil24.com or the HelikitNews sites have the links.
Just when you have applied a scheme and got the decals on, along comes another....

You must have a look at the HelikitNews site and see a preview of the 'new' Tiger for the Hind 24V - 0705. It's awesome! If the design continues to a nice stripey tail, it will be the 'must have' scheme for the display tables!

wonder where that tumble weed is now..............

got some pics of the almost finished hind, just need decaling. i hate decaling.......... the glass didn't go on well, had to do alot of trimming


don't know why the pcis came out so bad, my other ones i tokk at the same them worked fine

Nice work t3488g. What happened to the rotor in the second pic?
I'm busy drawing the panel lines and weathering my Hind. As soon as I get the Digi-Cam back I'll post some pics.

not sure what happened to the rotor. i'll have to fix that later

(dodges a tumbleweed that rolls on by...)

The Duke here checking in.

(throws a shoe at the chirping cricket. Silence reigns)

Well, I regret now being able to post here for awhile, but I have been delayed trying to find better decals for my Hind. Nothing better presented itself after a long and fruitless search. I finally decided to go with what I had. I applied a coat of Decal Film to the ones I had to protect againist the possibility of shattering, (the decals incidently, came from an Eastern European kit of an Su 21 Fitter C attack plane) and proceeded to apply them to the model. I had no '2021' numbers, but I did have '5334' in the same style as the '2021' in my reference pics so I used them instead. Also, in my reference pics it shows trhe 'danger' warning on the tail as still written in Russian, so I used that decal from the original decal sheet. I was not pleased with these decals, since, despite using Future and a setting solution, the old Eastern European decals silvered. It seemed that no matter what I did to eliminate the silvering, it would not go away. Otherwise, they settled in fine over the details on the kit.

After applying the decals, I mounted the underwing stores beneath the wings, installed the 12.7mm gun in the nose, replaced all the small parts that had broken off while applying the decals, and painted some finishing touches.

My Libyan Mi-24 Hind A is now complete and ready for deployment alongside the rest of my considerable forces.

His maiden flight was to my IPMS club meeting where he was admired, but didn't win in the contest. That's okay, he still will be a potent addition to my Forces.

I didn't have time to get pics before leaving for my meeting last night, but I will try to get some taken today and get them posted soon.

Long Live the Glorious Hind Group Build Comrades!

Hey, fellas! A friend of mine dug this awesome paint job up, and since you're all building Hinds, i figured you'd be interested! Enjoy!

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/877805/posts

Thanks shrikes.
I don't remember where but somewhere I saw a gallery showing how they painted the hind that way.

WOW, that's what I would call a paintjob. Although I'm not in this groupbuild, I regularely visit, and now I'm wondering who'll have the guts and patience to try something like that

It's an awesome paint job, but our guys (U.S.) didn't do it. If you look closely at the vertical fin, you can see a subdued Hungarian fin flash. This is a show bird for PR and showing the flag done by the rotor heads in Hungary. They get a big "attaboy" from
this old throttle jockey. Somewhere, someone, started the erroneous story that it was done by US troops in Afghanistan.

Hello ... Is there anybody?!
Just in case somebody is listening, here is an update.



I've finished drawing panellines and rivets ... on the body I still have to make the tail!!
Man that's a hell of a work!
How far are you guys?

I have a question: it is customary to give the model a coat of gloss paint before decaling, apply the decals and then give it a finish coat (matt, semi-gloss or gloss); what if you leave out the gloss coat before decaling?

Hi Avus,
Great to see you are getting on. My Hind is finished in the '0705' scheme and looks great. It's going into a model club event tomorrow and I hope to have some photos to publish.
Yes to the gloss surface before the decals. You will have big problems if you do not have a gloss surface for the decals to stick to. After the decals are on, seal them in with another gloss coat and then finish off with matt or satin varnish.
Hope this helps.

great work on the rivets Avus! i can t believe how good that looks. i just need to touch up the paint on mine and i am done, finished decaling a while ago, all went well exept for the warning markes near the rotor. the ski (i think, the part under the tail) made it hard for the decal to stay flat. i'll post some pics when i get it done.

lets do a role call here, who is in this gb, and what is your progress?

Thanks for the compliments and the hint Colin.
Can't wait to see your tiger scheme; must look very impressive.
I suppose your "paint-before-glue-method" worked.

Thanks t3488g!
I've been told to use Microscale's MicroSol to apply the decals. Thia liquid should soften the decals up so that they can adapt better to the surface. I never used it before so it will be my first try on the Hind.

Sure did, Avus. Model entered in our Society's quarterly competition last night and it won first place. Some photos were taken and they will appear on our website - www.aberdeenmodeller.plus.com - in due course. Not having a digital camera myself, I am at a loss as to how to post them here!
A word of warning to Hind builders on the decals - watch out for any area where a decal crosses a line of the Trumpeter 'recessed' rivets. It is possible, even using microsol, to find an air gap under the decal resulting in silvering. Prick offending areas with a needle and re-apply sol/set to remove the problem.
So, mine's done. Lots of work on every area of the kit, but I am pleased with my final results.

Congratulations for your first place Colin!
As I said: can't wait to see some pictures.

Thanks for the hint on the decals. I haven't started applying them, yet, but I was afraid something like that would happen. I was thinking of airbrushing the larger decals, i.e. the red star, the "04" and the danger arrow, instead of using the decals. Haven't made up my mind, yet.

Avus, I may be a little late with this but the purpose of using the Gloss coat, decal, gloss coat, dull coat method is it goes a great way to reduce silvering and hide the transparncy (sp) of the carrier film of the decal. This link should show a pic of a
KC-135 I did long before I knew about using gloss coats.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/awood23/detail?.dir=dc31&.dnm=dee7.jpg
If you look at the
U.S. AIRFORCE decal you can clearly see the carrier film between the letters because I didnt use any kind of gloss coat or sealer. Hope that gives you an idea of what Im talking about. Im still experimenting with using gloss coats and right now Im trying to airbrush Future with pretty good results. But even in the experimenting stages the results are much better than what I was getting before

Got your point Awood23. Thanks for the help; it didn't come too late, since I'll start spraying tomorrow. I'm afraid that using so many coats of paint will reduce the crispness of the detail. But maye it's just me.
I heard many of you guys talk about this Future, do you have an idea where to find it in Europe? I'd like to give it a try.

BTW I had a look at the other pics and ... you have some impressive planes there! Nice work!

Avus,

I cant find any reference for Italy but this site has alot of info including how to use and such and where to find in other parts of Europe. including Germany.
http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html That should help some. If all else fails and you really want to try this stuff let me know and I'll see what it takes to mail you some from here. From Belgium to Italy it shouldn't be too much
Thanks for the great words on my builds The photo builder on yahoo Ive since stopped using and now use the free web site
http://forum.alanger.us/index.php

This link has better pics that arent reduced in size if your intrested
http://forum.alanger.us/album_personal.php?user_id=30

Avus,
Future is sold in the UK under the brand name 'Johnstons Klear' . It is basically an acryllic floor sealant and is water soluable. You should find it in the household cleaners section of your local supermarket. Hope this helps in your search.

Thanks guys! I'll have a look at the supermarkets around here.

Awood23 your kitbash looks great; I could recognise a Star Wars fighter, but that's it.