I know it is not armor but I saw another guy post a PBR patrol boat. Think of this as a truck with a rotor blade! My subject is a very late war UH-1H, I've had to re-do most the crude Dragon kit, plus added a bunch of parts from Cobra Company and scratch built many others. I'm 90% done at this point. Any suggestions or comments are greatly appreciated.

The last picture shows what happens when you use after market resin rotor blades. I'll be replacing these with the kit blades but figured I would include this picture since it came out pretty nice and I am still having some issues taking decent close ups with my camera.

Regards,

John

Other than the dropping rotor blades, very cool.

i like it very very nice, even the glass table top looks like water, good job.

yikes! what happened to the rotors?

very nice..did you sand the rivets? just a guess..it's a reboxed panda. mine has oversized rivets. very nice color and weathring..hope to see it done in no time. thanks for sharing.

As I mentioned above, the rotors in the picture are resin ones from Cobra Company (UH-1H Drivetrain Upgrade). This was one of the more expensive kits that Cobra offers for the Huey. After spending a bunch of time painting and assembly the Cobra rotors, I find out that the resin rotor blades cannot maintain their normal shape and sag after approx 5 minutes. A complete waste of money (for the record, please note that the other Cobra products are very well done and are worth every penny).

I'll be painting and installing the kit rotors in the near future. It's a shame because the Cobra ones have much improved detail over the stock blades.

John

Good Guess I spent quite a while sanding down all of those gigantic rivets. Also replaced all the supports for the seats with styrene tube. The original parts would scale out to be the size of 4" water pipes. The pilot and crew seats probably took the most time out of the entire project.

The kit needs a bunch of work but at least it is the proper shape and is a good starting point. The only other choice is the ancient 1/32 scale Revel kit. Of course as soon as I complete this, I'm sure that Dragon / Tamiya or Tristar will release a high tech, super detailed UH-1!!

Regards,

John

Absolutely Beautiful, I've been meaning to get around to my recently released Huey kit and Huey Gunship by Dragon. Very nice job though, Kudos

In case anyone is interested, here is the actual Huey that my kit is based on. This picture came from the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association website. It is one of very, very few US Army Hueys that had the anti SAM "toilet bowl" exhaust diverter installed.

This website is an absolutely fantastic resouce for anyone interested in Vietnam helicopters. http://www.vhpamuseum.org/16thcav/ctroop/ctroop.shtml

Like I said at ARC, looks great John. Good job on it. Be sure to post over at the Aeroscale Rotary Wing Forum too. I am surprised w/the CC rotor blades. My guess is that they didn't cure well or something. I have not had properly cured resin sag like that. I bet Chris will replace them for you once he is better.

Thanks Gino,

I'l post these pic over on the (correct) forum as well later on today! It sounds strange but I've always considered helicopters like the Huey to be more appropriate on an armor forum than on an aircraft site.

Hopefully you are right about the CC rotor blades, however, have had other problems with long, unsupported resin parts sagging over time. I just don't think resin has the strength. I had doubts about the CC rotor blades from the begging. It really is a shame, Chris did a great job casting them, the detail is much better than what you get out of the Dragon kit.

John

Came out very nice John, it's a shame about the rotor fiasco. Not so sure about the amount of rotor blade "droop", but the Huey's and Cobra's I've been around have some "droop", as well as the Seahawks 4 blades "droop". (Not as much as what you see there, but hey, artistic license right!) LIke how you've finished and weathered the top area around the non-skid walkways, looks like the Mech's have been hard at it...

Thanks for sharing! Cheers -

Tim