1/72 Hobbyboss Mi-24V Hind-E

Gallery Article by Marcos Lucena on Oct 28 2010

Czech National Day 2010

 

This the excellent Hobbyboss 1/72 Hind kit, currently the best one in the market. It is crisply moulded, has plenty of detail right out of the box and lots of weapon options. The box decals are wrong as they depict other versions of this helo. Choosing a paint scheme can be difficult, as there are lots of aftermarket decal options available. In my case seeing the mpd decal set in a website made this decision easy. Eduard has masks and two photo etched sets available. I used them to improve this model even further. 

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Other improvements include cutting the canopy (supplied in one piece) and pilot door detailing. Be careful if you do so, because the canopy plastic is very brittle and cracks easily (ask me how I know). I also used Mike Grant's rivet decals around the exhaust, with great results. Electrical wires were added to the rotor head to represent the anti-freeze power supply cables. I used ModelMaster acrylics for the base color and enamels for the rotor blades (dark green, light gray, black and chrome), and Tamiya smoke to represent the exhaust stains. Reference photos were found on the net and I also used the Excellent Wings and Wheels Publications book about he MI-24.

Building this Hind was very fun, as the kit parts fit great, the decal are beautifully printed and go on well in spite of the complex curves it has to adapt to.

Marcos Lucena

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Photos and text © by Marcos Lucena