FIrst Huey–the story continues

Spent two more hours on Huey ‘pilot project’ and the results are not too shabby. Not too shabby at all! The construction itself is pretty straightforward, although the fit of individual comopnents is ‘basic’ to say the least.

Also, as I suspected, the construction of rotor sub-assembly contained a hidden trap for the unweary. Rotor blades are installed on the shaft one at the time, with the lower one being mounted through a small square-shaped frame. Well. if one is not careful. the actual removal if this component can potentially weaken the plastic square to a point where it snaps off, either during removal process or at later time. As every plastic model kit modeller will tell you, when components are cut out of their sprue, there is a tension, which often can snap ‘the weakest link’. Whic, in this case, are the sides of little frame supposed to be used when mounting the blade in place. In my case, the frame held during removal process, but snapped as soon as I touched it later on. Once again, Tamiya’s Extra Thin Cement came to the rescue and salvaged a potentially critical situation.

The rest of construction process is quite uneventful. I am still not conviced that a mixed medium (pewter, plastics and resin) approach had to be used here, but once the kit is put together, certainly it certainly looks the part!

Paint it black

Blaim it in on TV show ‘Tour of duty’ - whenever I see a Huey, I hear ‘Paint it black’.

Anyway, this post isn’t about flashbacks from my teens, but a flashback from about six or seven years ago, when Battlefront decided for some unexplainable reason to transplant their ‘Flames of War’ ruleset into Vietnam conflict. I guess things didn’t work out too well with that idea, but since Battlefront never does anything half-hearted, we’ve got a shedload of minis out of that misadventure… Perhaps the most valuable addition, if one’s to draw the conclusions of the fact how hard they’re to find these days, are helicopters that are symptomatic with Vietnam conflict – Bell UH-1 Iroquois, better known as ‘Huey’.

Since I’ve started to think about getting into Vietnam conflict, I’ve managed to acquire couple of those models. But, as so often, once acquired, they landed in a box and have been resting there ever since. That is until today, when I’ve dug them out of the stash and cracked open one of the boxes.

What I found in it was a bit of a surprise – a strange mix of resin, metal and plastic components which took aback even a moderately experienced model builder like myself. Body of the helicopter consists of three resin components, which aren’t exactly best moulds I’ve seen. They do seem however to fit together resonably well. Main rotor assembly seems fiddly and metal parts are covered in flash. I do however like the fact that both the rotor and the stand are attached to the fuselage with rare earth magnets, making them removable for storage and transport purposes. Somebody at Battlefront did use their nuggets!

So… initial impression is overall cautiously positive – with a little TLC, this could turn out to be a pretty decent ‘Huey’. Will report again, once I get started with the construction.