1/72 Italeri MH-53E Sea Dragon |
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Gallery Article by Rahman Ramadya
on Aug 17 2003 |
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Indonesia Independence Day
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Love at the
first sight. Maybe that was my first impression when I saw some Sea Stallions at
Juanda Naval Air Base in Surabaya City in East Java, Indonesia. These chopers
visited Surabaya for a joint exercise with the Indonesian Navy or TNI-AL.
Although I could only saw them from a distance, these huge helicopters looked
awesome.
Frankly, I have
only two helicopter kits (one of them was Italeri 1/72 MH-53E Sea Dragon)
because I didn’t really like to built a kit with those space consuming rotors.
I made this kit for the Helicopter Challenge 2003 event (thank you guys, for
forcing me to make this kit).
Click on
images below to see larger images
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I almost
didn’t have any difficulties in building this kit. Filing and sanding are
required at the top of the vertical tail, horizontal tail joint, upper front
fuselage and lower part of sponsons. The cockpit clear part has almost crystal
clear quality, and I didn’t have to submerged it into Future. This cockpit
part didn’t fit well to the body and the gap had to be filled with plastic
sheets.
Since I already
made quite a lot of Italeri kits, I just didn’t believe that the MH-53 should
be painted Gunship Gray as instructed. I painted my MH-53 with FS 36231 Dark
Gull Gray from Model Master instead.
Italeri
provided two decals, US Navy and Japan maritime Self Defence Force. The decal
fit well and I applied the walkway decal at the upper fuselage before installing
the engines. Otherwise it will difficult to trim the decal from tail to front
fuselage.
Overall, an
enjoyable build.
Regards,
Rahman Ramadya
Jakarta,
Indonesia
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