Academy released
this nice kit more than one year ago filling part of the gap regarding
USMC/USN helis in 1/48 scale. The kit has a good plastic quality, but
suffers from recessed panels lines that are too large, lack of interiors details
and lack of exterior rivets. A good quality kit anyway. I started
the job with the rotor heads adding cables, nuts, bolts and devices.
I would have a
detailed kit, so I improved the interior, adding cables, pipes and boxes. I also
added holes on the floor and seat belts. The cockpit was superdetailed
adding the correct instruments made of styrene sheets and the seats were
improved with new armour plates and a suspension system.
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I knew the
details were not visible when the model was finished, but I wanted tp make them
anyway....
All the exhausts
were drilled and the protection nets were added looking more realistic.
Tiny nets are made from old PC monitors.
The external job
consisted of making all the rivets (unfortunately not more visible after the
coats of paint and Futurewere applied...) new armour plates on the tail and
filling some panels not present on the real heli. Landing gears received
some more work, too (add the retention rings!!!!)
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I painted the kit using the Life Colors paints finding them very
nice. I add a non-salts water since there are some rumors that acrylic paints
are suffering of chlorine present in drinking water.
Decals are not very nice since they were not so thin. As usual I
used water + some drops of vinegar in order to soften the decals.
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A particular nice job was made by Xtracolor matt over the Future
coats: I found it very nice!
Many thanks to Mr Menden (ARC member) for the interest he gave to my project, to
Mr. Maurizio Stolfa of
www.tergestemodel.com,
to Mr. Carlo Zivec for the reference pics and some tips and to my friend-job
collegue-webmaster Mr. Roberto Sauro. For some more pics of real helis
please refer to my web site dedicated to Military Aviation and Models:
www.ma-files.it
Maurizio
Italy
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