After B6-35073 Heli Pilots, BRAVO-6 will release Heli Door Gunners soon.rnrn

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Thanks!

Absolutely great poses. Well done Vladi!

Mario

Beautiful figures!

Hisham

These look great. I will definitely get a set for one of my Hueys.

Excellent....!

Very Nice! Sure would be great to have a new tool 'D' model Huey to go with them. Al

Hi, Al and Everyone else! WOW!!! Just what the doctor ORDERED!!!

Al- I'm curious... How about using DRAGON's UH-1D? Or is it not accurate/good enough.. I've never gotten that kit, so I don't know how good, or bad it is This new BRAVO*6 set of Door Gunners would be a GREAT addition to any 1/35 Huey, no matter how good, or bad any Huey kit may be!

I've got a number of 1/35 BRAVO*6 "Vietnam" figure sets on order, including one of BRAVO's Tanker sets, and also a set of the latest "Vietnam" Tankers from ALPINE, mainly to go with my DRAGON M48A3, which will be a US Marine Machine... I've also got BRAVO's "M60 Machine Gun Crew, plus a few others to get me started on a "Tet Offensive/Khe Sanh/Hue" vignette that I've got rolling around inside of my head- I guess that any one of the three titles would apply...

I wish one of the plastic kit manufacturers would release a 1/35 MARINES UH-34D "Choctaw", which saw extensive use during the Vietnam War... GALLERY or ACADEMY or even KITTY HAWK would be good candidates for producing a good UH-34 kit. What do you think, guys?

The Dragon UH-1 kits are not horribly, but they are not great either. They are upscaled from 1/48 kits and the rivets are oversized, with oversized panel lines as well. The interiors are sparse on details too. They are pretty much right on dimensionally though. Cobra Company and CMK make some great update sets that help them out. Also, some good old modeling elbow grease and TLC can make them look very nice.

Unfortunately modelers are getting spoiled with the latest shake-and-bake kits and don't want to apply some old school modeling to make kits look good. They just want them to fall together out of the box.

I have done a few of the Dragon UH-1s and I think they came out well. You can be the judge though.

UH-1H Vietnam DustOff


UH-1H White Sands Missile Range SAR


UH-1N / Bell 212 IAF Anafa

Now for someone to make a decent D-model.
no the DML kits are not that great, about the only thing out there, but not that great. Wrong blades, mish mash of 'features' not really D models at all.

Over in the rotary wing DG for Aeroscale and in the Aircraft Resource Center helo DG there are quite a few 'tweeks lists' for this bird.

The main rotor blade is incorrect in the Vietnam UH-1D/H version. The issue is the spine running the full length of the blade. It is actually a Bell 212 (UH-1N) blade. The D/H blade doesn't have this feature. It is easy to fix though, as below:



The top one has been corrected. The middle is how it comes in the kit. The bottom one has the area to be removed in red.

Unfortunately modelers are getting spoiled with the latest shake-and-bake kits and don't want to apply some old school modeling to make kits look good. They just want them to fall together out of the box. [Quoted text]

I'm not beyond adding detail or modifying a kit. I'm currently scratch-building some interior details for Takom's WW1 Mark IV kit.
But, as the stash continues to grow, time has become my enemy. So, I do like it when a kit requires less effort and I don't have to try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Al

I think Vladimir did an excellent job when he sculpted these figures. I especially like the pose of the right door gunner. I can think of several diorama and vignette possibilities with these figures and conversions of them as well.

I can't wait to start building and painting these figures. Only problem will be in making the Huey as I haven't built any aircraft kits before. I have them, just haven't built any. But then again, up until last year I hadn't built any armor models either, and those turned out decent.

Outstanding work, Vladi!

Cheers,
James

Those are great poses. Somebody needs to make a kit of just the gunner's station for those of us without space for a 1/35 helicopter.

I've actually been trying to figure out how to make a "wedgie" of just that for upcoming figure shows so I can showcase the figures and provide context that they are in a Huey, but without taking up the space a full helicopter would. I'm glad I am not the only person thinking about that.

Something like this...

McFarland H-60 Gunner


You could just cut out the gunner's opening leaving a section of the roof, the support pole, floor, back and inner wall, gunner's seat, and a section of the rear door opening.

Cut it down to about what these pictures show:

Thanks, Gino.

I'll give it a try.

Cheers,
James

The only drawback I see with using these figures is having to build the chopper in flight.. it's not easy suspending it in a way that looks convincing... But I still have to get them

Hisham

my wife lets me hang them in the bedroom. My only problem is now she is slowing my stash expansion down until I get building again once she gets my work space sorted out. I have been sick for a while now and they think I may be in the early stages of parkinsons so have to get building before the shaking takes over completely

Hi Hisham, and Everyone Else! Here's a thought- Quite a few years ago, (probably close to 40) I remember reading an article in one of the long-since out of publication "SCALE MODELLER" Magazines...

The article showed, I believe done by Shep Paine, an old MONOGRAM 1/32 or 1/24(?) UH-1 Huey, which displayed some REALLY GREAT scratch-built "Air Cav" figures dismounting onto a base of VERY HIGH "Elephant Grass" as would have been present in the "Arizona" of South-Central Vietnam. The helicopter was mounted via a wire coat hanger, which extended from the base, and into the belly of the Huey. The wire was completely obscured by the "Elephant Grass", which just barely brushed up against the Huey's Belly Pan, thereby creating the illusion that the Helo was hovering just above ground.

I've been thinking of doing something very similar. If one isn't very timid, then the Door Gunner which is posed with his Machine Gun pointing down, could be extensively modified into a more "horizontally-oriented" figure. I've done this kind of extreme re-positioning with figures before, as I'm an avid figure modeller, among my many other interests. It wouldn't be that hard for an experienced figure modeller to accomplish this kind of thing...

Anyway, as I've stated previously, I wish SOMEONE would release a 1/35 US Marines UH-34D "Choctaw". These were the "REAL" WORKHORSE helicopters of the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. I think that it's a real shame that NO manufacturers have as yet released this important and famous Helo. I can remember watching the daily 6 o'clock news coverage of the Vietnam War on TV EVERY evening with the rest of my family, all through that very trying conflict.

This was the United States' FIRST Television War, and it seemed like we witnessed the Marines' UH-34s performing VITAL tasks on TV on a daily basis. We didn't see armor nearly as much, even though we knew that the Army and Marine Corps had heavily committed the use of armor in Vietnam.

What sticks most in my memories of TV-Vietnam were the very vivid images of US Army soldiers and Marines during the TET Offensive... Hue, Khe Sanh, Da Nang, Saigon, Quang Tri and a MYRIAD of other places with strange names. Unforgettable were the images and sounds of American War Correspondents' voices trying to make themselves heard over the constant din of battle and the distinctive, staccato beating of Army and Marine helo's rotor blades... I was just a boy back then, and for me, it was like looking into Hell, itself...

Hi, Al and Gino! Fully concur with both of you guys and your statements that many of today's modellers DEMAND PERFECTION in their "SHAKE AND BAKE" model kits, without having to put any "elbow grease" INTO ANYTHING!

I haven't built ANYTHING "straight-out-of-the-box" since I was about 8 years old, in 1961... Yeah, that's right, I was a "fuss-pot" even at that tender age... Not that I was doing any major conversions, or the like...

Bonjour,

Honestly, it sh!ts me about people saying that models who want a "shake and bake" kit aren't willing to put time and effort into a kit and do some scratch building. I would rather model companies get it right the first time, and give us something that is advertised on the box, and not something that "looks about right". That would be a good start, as you have something that looks pretty good, then all you "master modellers" can go ape and super detail the hell out of it if you want.

I don't think it is too hard to ask for what is supposed to be an accurate kit out of the box.

encore un superbe jeux de figurines je possede un UH-1D dragon + les pieces resine CMK j'ai en commande les deux U.S.helicopter crew & la M23 j'espere que les U.S. heli door gunners seront dispo tres rapidement vladi un ou deux jeux de figurines U.S G.I.s embarquer dans le UH serait le bienvenue esperant que cela se fasse

bonsoir vladi depuis avril 2015 j'ai vue que 2 nouvelles figurines allais sortir( U.S heli door gunners ) et a se jour 17 juillet elle ne sont pas encore en vente que se passe t'il
cdt alain

Likewise, when will the Huey Pilot figures be available as well?