Another of those
quick, easy, out-of-the-box builds to help me get through a bad case of
modeller's block. That was my intention when I started this thing two years ago
anyway. It didn't quite work out that way of course; it rarely does.
I'm on a bit of a quest to clear some space on the workbench at the moment so
I'm not allowing myself to start anything new until I've finished some of the
projects that have sat around for far too long, this being one of them. It
remains to be seen how long my willpower holds. So many kits, so little time....
The Italeri kit is
very good and goes together well though there are some bizarre anomalies and
inaccuracies. Two of the braces on the screening under the windshield are
missing on the right side for instance, a fact I didn't notice until the model
was almost complete and had to carefully add from plastic strip to avoid
damaging the paintwork. Also, while they include the step on the left and have
moulded holes to glue it in, they neglected to represent this on the right side.
The step was a bit thick anyway so I made both from brass rod as well as the
large one under the sliding door which was also missing from the kit. There were
some round lumps moulded on the spine of the fuselage which I could not see in
any photos of these machines so I removed them along with the beacon directly
behind the rotor head. This should be located on the spine in line with the
navigation lights on the fuselage sides. I added this from a small piece of
clear red stretched sprue. The antenna fit was nothing like that on late RCN
aircraft so these were made from .005" plastic with the taller forward one
coming from the scrap box.
The hoist that
Italeri include represents the early version fitted to HO4S-2s and possibly some
early -3s. I intended scratchbuilding the later version until I discovered a
picture of this particular machine which shows it didn't have a hoist fitted at
all - problem solved! Of course I didn't find this picture until I had already
drilled holes for the new hoist so had to improvise and fit tiny mounting
brackets made from scraps of photo etch frame to cover the holes. The one in the
window (the top mounting goes through the rear window on the right side) I had
to leave as is.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Paint is Xtracolour
Medium Sea Grey and Extra Dark Sea Grey with Humbrol yellow
& flat black on the rotor blades. The main rotor head was done in
Testors Metalizer Steel with a wash of dark grey and a dry brush of Humbrol
Metalcote Aluminium.
I used decals from
the Belcher Bits Canadian helicopter
sheet, a decision I was to regret when it came time to apply them. There are
several problems with these decals, the biggest being that no concessions were
made to the extreme compound curves of the beast when designing the sheet. The
large '3' on the nose was the worst offender, when first applied it was so
distorted it very nearly became an '8'! I had to do some serious cutting and
patching to get it to even remotely resemble a '3'. The numbers on the side also
required a bit of slicing and dicing though were nowhere near as bad. There was
a similar issue with the Royal Canadian Navy markings however. Though they were
printed at the regulation height of 10 (scale) inches, when applied over the
large strengthening strake on the tailboom they became almost illegible.
Fortunately Italeri took this into consideration and printed theirs quite a bit
taller so I used the markings from the kit sheet, though they were spaced too
closely together and had to be cut into three separate words and spaced apart
properly when applied.
Despite the Belcher
Bits instructions saying that the tail rotor warnings had red arrows with black
lettering these markings were printed entirely in red. I had to steal the
lettering from one of the Sea King options from the same sheet to correct this.
As a final ignominy, the maple leafs on the roundels were out of register so I
used some from an old IPMS Canada RCN sheet. On the plus side, the decals are
nice and opaque and settle down very nicely with applications of Microsol.
Nonetheless, it was a lot of work to get them to look halfway decent and with
the nasty patch job on the nose being quite noticeable up close I was rather
disappointed with the Belcher Bits decals.
Most of the Canadian
HO4S-3s had a small triangular red flag on the lower antenna wire, which I
imagine was there to stop people tripping over the wire on the ground and
breaking their necks. I made this from a small triangle of cigarette paper (very
useful stuff despite being a non-smoker!) soaked in diluted white glue
and painted flat red when dry. The wire itself was stretched sprue. Actuating
rods on the main and tail rotors were far too thick and were replaced with
.015" plastic rod.
Only another dozen
or so old projects to clear off the workbench and I can start something new...
Andy
Click on
images below to see larger images
|