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I have never seen the movie and now I think I know why. That stuff is strange even for Hollywood! I don't remember the name of the helicopter used for the dust off, (I'm sure Mark knows) but I do know the Marines thought highly of them. Another version of what I think is the same helicopter, has to be, (In my humble opinion) one, if not the most UGLY helicopter ever designed! They for some reason extended the nose and put some kind of intake on the end of that and the result is just plain UGLY!😝

Hi OC When I cut out the original door even with the very thin tool I used it of course left a gap all of the way around where the new door was going to have to fit. This was not only unavoidable but expected. I figured that I would locate the new door and install it with gap filling super glue and then fill in the remaining area with putty or something like Mr Color 500 or 1000. What happened is that while the cut was thin and matched the original door profile exactly, and it looked like the aftermarket door was an exact match for the original door, the window frame portion of the replacement door is off just enough that it cannot be used as a replacement when in the closed position. I am dealing with a gap of less than 1mm at the widest point but still off enough that it would be very difficult to deal with using the aftermarket door. It is just another case of poor fit that I have run into on every case of using the aftermarket resin parts that are supposed to be designed for this model. It is VERY frustrating to say the least. I will take some pictures of the problems with the door and then re-glue the original door today and hopefully I will be skilled enough to hide the fact that it ever happened. Then I will alter the after market door to work on the inside of the kit door like it should have been designed in the first place and will hopefully have the final look of a 3D door that I was looking for in the beginning.

So do I! It was clearly a case of blindly following the instructions, such as they are, rather than thinking for myself! SO STUPID! Well today will tell. If I can get the original door reinstalled and looking like it should then all will be OK and I can march forward a little wiser. If not, it will be a MAJOR mistake and I suppose I will have little option other than change the manner I was going to do the display. It will have to go from a flying display to a on-the-ground with the door open display.

Yes, it is a triple kind of thing. You have your choice these days. You can do the "Future of Flight" tour, that I have never taken. It is primarily a tour of the factory here in Everett with a few displays and such. My kids took it last year when they came up and seemed to like it. As far as I know it is strictly a guided group type thing but I could be wrong. https://www.boeingfutureofflight.com/gallery-exhibits Then there is the "Restoration and Reserve Collection" ( https://museumofflight.org/Explore-The-Museum/Aircraft-Restoration ) also here in Everett. It is technically not a museum in the normal sense but in many ways I like it better than the much more formal Seattle displays. As the name implies, it is where they restore the aircraft for display or flight status. They also store overflow aircraft there that they don't have room for down in the Seattle location. As a result, what you will get to see is subject to change at any given time. What I like the best about it is that, at least a number of years ago when I took my father-in-law there it was completely informal. While you had to be escorted around the facility it was in our case a one-on-one event. It was only us and our guide. He took us pretty much wherever we wanted to go and in most cases we were able to get up close or even into the aircraft we were interested in. I would bets describe it as he was more interested in keeping us safe from things going on in a working hanger than he was interested in protecting the aircraft from us like they do down in Seattle. A MUCH more hands on experience. Of course travel and parking was MUCH easier up here as well. Can't tell you for certain what you would see up here as it is always changing but if you are going down to Seattle anyway, or going to Flying Heritage, then it is well worth the extra stop just a few blocks away in my opinion.

OK................. This time I may have blown it. Yesterday on good advice I stripped off all of the Acrylic paint I had been using on the interior and started all over. I had a can of Model master gray primer. Honest that is what it said on the can! I hit all of the pieces I had assembled and would need painting. The deck and overhead. The engine bulkhead/padding. The pilot seats and instrument console, everything. I then went to bed. This morning even though I thought I had only slightly covered the parts by using short little blasts, (I wanted puffs but the can would only blast) the paint still felt a little tacky. So I waited until after diner. I had a scheduled visit to the doctor about some pain issues and I needed to locate and gather some tax stuff and automobile info foe upcoming taxes and insurance anyway so did not go and check all day. So after diner on moved on into my corner and start gluing a few more parts. I still didn't like the feel of the primer but it seemed to be doing what it was supposed to do so I continued on. I did some center console last fitting and locating and glued it into place. I also made a piece to allow the two rear bulkhead pieces to fit in place properly while waiting for the glue of installing them to dry, and glued them in place. All this time I was becoming more upset about the lack of finish to the interior of the pilots doors! I know, most of the missing structure would be invisible after all the body closed it in but it still bugged me. So I looked at the aftermarket doors and sure enough the bottom of the door did have the missing detail. All would need to do would be to cut out the kit molded door. I checked the sizing of the resin door by placing it against the inside of the kit door and even tough there are no lines on the inside of the door it seemed to be a perfect match. I should have been more wary, This is the FIRST time that a resin part has matched up to a kit part or the kit its self. SO.......long story short I spent quite some time carefully cutting out the co-pilots door. Well over an hour and by the time I was done was admittedly a little more tense than normal. The door that had fit so well on the inside, was really quite sad looking sitting on the deck sitting in the opening so carefully made by removing the old door. Now when placed in the actual opening it became all too clear that it was another part for this kit that would not fit or work! I was VERY upset as it looked like I had wrecked a major part of my model! So after walking away for a few I gave it a good thought and started trying a few things. This time without cutting or hacking at anything., If I wanted to build this kit with the one door open I would be OK. After all this was what the door had been designed for. But I pretty much had mi mind set on building with the doors closed and in flight, so that was not really an option at this time. I thought of cutting the door and window frames of both doors and gluing one to the other., but the more I thought about it the more nervous I became abut this solution. Luckily, before I did any more cutting feeble little depressed brain stumbled onto what should have been the building method right from the beginning! All that is wrong with the kit door if you do not want to build the kit with open doors is the lower door panel is missing. So why not just replace the lower panel from the inside after reshaping the resin part to fit onside the lower door! It was almost a perfect fit anyway! SO tomorrow I will try and repair the original door into place and fit the lower panel. It's late and I'm tired so no pictures tonight. Hopefully tomorrow will be different and it will not all be in the scrap heap! either way I promise pictures.

Thanks OC I have seen their site before. They are fairly close to where I live. Only about 500-600 miles or so, as the crow flies. It is another organization where your money doesn't go far. For $150,000 dollars you even get a plaque with your name on it

That was the word/title I was looking for. I feel most comfortable wearing the title Basher! Fits most of my skill level to a T.

Are you going to build my favorite RR Jack? "Because of the boat errands, I had Miss Agnes parked nearby, my electric blue Rolls pickup truck, an amateur conversion accomplished by some desperate idiot during her checkered past. She is not yet old enough to vote. But almost. She started with a touch, and I went along the beach to where…" In case you don't recognize the quote, it is from one of the Travis McGee books and is describing his iconic Rolls Royce pickup. Miss Agnes and his houseboat, The Busted Flush" were main parts of all of his books. I loved reading them when I was young. He and Mike Hammer were my heroes.

Correction The Museum Of Flight H model is now down in Seattle at the main museum.

To my knowledge their B model is flyable, but I have never seen them fly it. I am a little more aware of what they fly as almost always they fly over my house when ever they are up and about. Even if I didn't see it, I would hear it and I NEVER make a mistake on hearing a Huey. The schedule says that Saturday they are having a "Walk and Talk" on the war in China WWII. Down the street at the Boeing Museum Of Flight they have an H model that I am almost certain is also flyable. But I also don't know if they fly it. It is located in the Great Gallery. If you have some time give me a ring and I can meet you for coffee or something. (PM follows)

No luck in having a marketable skill that even the Army had a use for! I'm certain you worked for it. I was not able to go to college until I got the use of the GI bill and even then it was pretty much a evening event four nights a week for years.

Thanks for the insight Jack. You certainly remember more about the guys you served with than I do. I remember about four guys in detail and a few more as people I was with a lot, but outside of that things get a little blurry. Maybe I was drinking as much as Mark says! I would have to dig out old pay records to see what I was making. I don't remember it as being very much. I know that I got a little more as I was married and my wife received what they called a Class E allotment. Things added up a little better when I went overseas as well. I received base pay, (E4 by that time), flight pay that was I think about $65 a month, and combat pay that was $55 a month. Then we must not forget the all important Over seas duty pay of something like $1.57. That one always made me laugh! Of course all of that money was tax free. I sent most of it home as my wife's class E was not really enough to live on. She could have lived with her parents and saved money but she preferred not to. I also thought it was strange that flight pay was more than combat pay. I wondered if the Government knew something that it was not telling me! I think your unit had a lot more degrees than we had. Most of our pilots, especially Warrants were college grads who signed up for OCS/flight school when their college deferment ran out. Several of our enlisted were also grads but in their case they had waited until they were drafted after their deferment ran out. They were a pretty small minority in our unit. Interesting that your unit is still present and active. Not only as far as I can tell, is my unit gone but so is the base, heck, come to think of it so is the country! My Basic training base is gone, (Same base I was born in) my advanced infantry training base is still there but the unit is gone. It seems like there can be a few changes in 50 years.

WOW Craig! That interior is beyond nice! I can't believe it is OOB! I had no idea that the interior of the Avenger was even this complex! I am STILL jealous of your skills though.

I can see why. In my case I keep running into stuff that I know is not right, or is not there at all! Right now it is stuff located by the pilots feet and the instrument panel. Not all that big of a deal as these things will be hard to see when the cockpit is fully assembled and only I will probably know. On the other hand my kit has NO detail of the inside of the pilot doors, both on the kit and on the aftermarket parts! The same is true for the armor of the pilots chairs, both sets are not accurate. Even the PE stuff has some issues. And in my case, my model is supposed to be one of the better modern kits! Your model has been around in one box or another since 1981. I have no idea which camp I belong in Ken. My skill set probably says i should hang out with the OOB guys. But my minds eye cannot help but see the inaccuracies and omissions of the kit and want to rectify them.

I would gladly act as your reporter OC. All you need to do is find me the $1600+ to get to Cape Town and the other paltry $300-400 to make the 15 minute flight! I may be Dinky Dau but even I think $3500-$4000 is a little beyond what most people would consider to be logical. I would probably be better served if I was to contact the Museum Of Flight here in my home town and see if the flyable Huey they have could be chartered for a vet flight, and make a LARGE donation. That would possibly be doable, but somehow I doubt the American FAA would allow them to fly in that manner anywhere around here. It would scare all of the tree huggers or startle the occasional deer! Hueys are loud when you push them!

Those guns in the #2 picture look pretty nice Mark. If the ships I flew in had .50s, (Some did) I would gladly use them. Too bad on the crewmen. I saw some fairly nice standing figures in flight suits in 1/35th that would have looked good standing outside in pre-flight conference., but went for the inside seated instead. At least that way some of them will be enclosed and a little harder to make out the details on. At least I hope so. There is a lot of window on Hueys and even bigger open doors!

That would have been quite the PT run! Would not have worked on me all that well. Early on, I was one of those who had been too young to drink before the service and the first few times I tried it, too stupid to stop. One night me and a couple of guys got SOOOOO drunk on beer that one of them passed out! I only WISHED I had passed out! We had been outside and all was pretty good and we managed to get the one guy back in before curfew. But when the warmer air and laying down hit for me I was no longer drunk I was SICK! I put everything that had gone down my throat over the last week and put into a toilet. Then I spent the next hour trying to find more down there from possibly when I was a child in diapers and make more deposits. I even heaved up stuff that I was going to eat the next day! All the while I was making primeval dinosaur mating calls, (At least that was what it sounded like to me) to someone I kept calling RALPH! To say the least I was NOT a happy camper. I have never been able to tolerate the taste of beer since! Even the smell is mildly upsetting to me even now 50+ years later. I'm strictly a hard liquor guy.

How true, except for drinking heavily the night before, showing up for a flight drunk, or even heavily hung over were pretty big NoNos as well.

I think your situation was not all that uncommon among "Older" guys. I believe that the military looked at you as more mature and stable than many of the kids Just out of high school. In retrospect I think many of the younger guys felt the same even though they may not have known it, so you made rank fast unless you were all screwed up in some other way. I suspect you had very little problems with many lower ranked guys unless they were also a guy who was returning from Vietnam and a combat assignment. Some times guys like that who after 11 months in combat but still at a lower rank, were somewhat poor at taking orders form what they probably tended to call a R.E.M.F. I was lucky and never had to deal with it. Within 48 hours of my last combat flight I was a civilian walking down the streets of Oakland looking for the bus depot, and dealing with a completely different set of issues. I like to think I would not have been that type if I had stayed in but I do know that there was also a somewhat unwritten rule that combat experience outranked the stripes on your sleeves, or for that matter. sometimes the bars on your collar, SIR! I suspect I would have made E5 if I had stayed in. After all they took the time and expense to ship me out for six weeks of NCO Academy shortly before my DEROS/ETS. I was locked into E4 as long as I was operating as a door gunner. That was the highest rank allowed for that position. I would have had to go to school and changed my primary MOS to have gone further up the ranks and stayed flying.

Yes, you would definitely been considered an "Old man", especially as you were an E5. E5 and above were allowed and even expected to be a little older.

Yeah sometimes people forget that almost all of us were less than legal age for voting and in some states for drinking. In fact anyone over 21 was "older".

Looking good Mark. You may not be using an airbrush but it is clear you are no slouch with a paint brush! Too bad that after waiting all of this time for your .50s that you are not going to use them. Did you ever consider crew?

Congratulations You made it all of the way. You should be an expert by now with the next ones!

Looks like I just jumped the gun a little. Again, nice build.

Glad you were able to hang out the"Finished" sign OC. It has been an interesting trip on a unique build, and one I have been happy to follow. Congratulations. Are you going to show some overall finished photos?