1/72 Zvezda Kamov Ka-28

Gallery Article by Ratish on Dec 4 2014

  India Navy Day 

 

      

Kamov Ka-28 Helix-A Indian Navy

With the Navy day looming I decided to detour from my current builds for this exotic helicopter Indian Navy flies. I chanced upon this Kamov at the hobby store along with some stablemates and couldn't resist getting it. Little did I know I should have researched a bit before getting the kit. India was one of the first customer for the then new Ka-28 (Export version of Soviet Navy's Ka-27PL) ASW helicopter to supplant it's small fleet of Ka-25s. The first batch of thirteen helicopters including three trainers became operational circa 1985. 

 

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The kit was a Zvezda Ka-27PS, the SAR variant of this well known naval helicopter and what IN flies is the Ka-28, an export variant of the Ka-27PL ASW variant. This minor detail set me up for multiple inaccuracies in my rendition, only some of which I could overcome. The most obvious is the big bubble window on the starboard side which I scratch built with some plastic and a balsa mould.

There are small external tanks under the landing gear struts that I built using some Su-7 bombs from the spares bin. There's a ton of stuff you need not add from the kit. I also masked out couple of small windows and a small door on the starboard rear fuselage. Decals are from Begemot - I used only about half of their technical stencilling before I felt it was getting out of hand.

Hope you guys like it as much as I enjoyed building it. 

Ratish Nair

      

Photos and text © by Ratish Nair