Egilman

A full platoon at a time... each major variation.... Excellent work my friend... they match my fathers WWII pics perfectly.... he didn't have all the variations but the Basic Cargo, Ambulance and Improved Amphibious Cargo were all ones he actually drove, they look beautiful....

You know, just being a plastic hacker, I'm amazed at the metalwork you guys are able to simulate.... whish we could hear more on how you do it... Amazing work Tim... gonna be another stunner when done....

Thanks Dan, Alan... I tend to agonize over such things, My inner eye is always telling me that more is possible that physical reality will allow sometimes... I guess I'm a perfectionist.... Anyway here's the latest stopping point... the H-13H frame is basically assembled... Today I should be getting my paint... while I paint the H-13H frame... Getting closer to making them purty... The Revell Base Frame... First we mount the tail hoop, lower engine support and skids... Next comes the Battery Box, Avionics Box and Oil Tank.... Frame Assembly complete, next up paint, olive drab of course, sitting next to the complete and painted frame of the H-13D/E frame for comparison... the two kits definately have a different build sequence... You notice no tires, both birds in their environments had little need for wheels and tires so they were usually removed in service usage.. At Ft Wolters if they needed to move on around they had a dolly which they would slip under the skids so they could push them around, and in Korea they didn't go anywhere if it wasn't flying, beside where they operated these there was little to no paving all the time... Onwards....

Thanks my friends... I should probably stop being so critical of myself and just get on with building... Ok Split the upper tubing out, (didn't break it) drilled the new driveshaft locating holes..... and glued it back into place.... It's easy now to see the differences between the two... I was lucky, the third hole closest to the tail split on one side and almost broke but I managed to get it back in without completely breaking it... It wasn't easy.... Anyways, thanks for the support brothers, It's APPRECIATED! You can't really tell the insides of the Revell boom are flat, so I don't know what all the fuss over the years has been with the kit, It's a fairly accurate "H" model of the Bell-47/H-13 with details that are not seen on other brands... (as long as you don't do the totally fictitious "Mash" version) All in all I think it's a nice kit, much better than it's reputation now that I've had a real detailed look at it.... Things should go smoother from here on...

Thanks OC, yeah I'm feeling better now... and I was hoping this was going to be an easy reconstruction... but now I have the Italieri Frame together my heart sunk... Italieri got it WRONG!!! Yep they screwed it up... Here is a pic of the two frames side by side... The Revell Frame has it's top bars just fitted the Italeri Frame is glued... They do look nice what's the difference between the two... The direction of the diagonals on the top framing... the revell goes one way the italieri the other way... both have the locating holes for the driveshaft up as they should be.... So which one is correct and which is wrong... H13-D... The diagonals go from left to right, front to back... H-13H... Left to right front to back... they didn't change the design between models, so the italeri kit has the upper boom diagonals backwards.... Now it's not really a problem I can gently break each connection flip it over and go thru the gluing process once more... then drill new driveshaft positioning holes... One more reminder to always check your sources... It's not a mistake on my part... in some ways I wish it was, it is a mistake on the kit manufacturers part... But the experience with gluing .050 plastic rod is giving me second thoughts about building a new boom for the revell kit... there are other differences between the kits actually present on the real aircraft.... the boom is slightly narrower, the spacings are a bit different, the entire main frame is a different design which doesn't match very well with the "D" model boom... I think with the experience of gluing the Italieri frame together (and now having to do it a second time) I don't think I want to do an entire aircraft airframe one piece at a time in .050 rod.... I'm down for a challenge but that is a bit much of a challenge... (I didn't want to take two months to build these things) so I'm probably going to just do them out of the box... I mean I'm also looking at the pic of the two frames side by side, how much am I going to gain by all that work? Not a whole lot if you ask me... Obvious configuration errors in the kit I'll fix, but rebuilding a whole frame? not so sure.... Any advice or opinions? are you guys seeing what I'm seeing that the difference in presentation really isn't that much?

Once you think it's through it's easy Mike, approach it like a hull half or fuselage half in balsa, keel and frames or bulkheads and it's easy peasy... With brass it would be a tail sitter, but there is a place on both models one could possibly stuff a half ounce of modeling clay into without it being seen, but it would have to be clay stuffed in, it's a very tight space.... The only tricky part would be the initial tapered trapezoidal frame, that would tell the tale on whether it would be straight or not.... once you got that, the rest is but sticking on pieces... Anyway I'm going to finding out... pretty quick.... Once I get the Italieri Boom assembled for the pattern... Gonna be a fun challenge...

I though about it Lou while I was down with the crud, and for the reasons explained elsewhere I'm gonna just duplicate the Italieri tail boom, Strip sanding like you describe would work, eventually... {chuckle} and it is that brittle Revell dark olive plastic... But I think it will be easier and fast to redo it.... I think you right, a #11 or #2 xacto blade to knock down the corners then the strip sanding to round them over.... it's probably what I would do if I didn't have the materials to rebuild it... but it's a darned fine suggestion to make a tedious job less tedious.... WE gotsa talk to someone over this inflation crap, that 1 cent is now down .9 cent in just the time it took to write this... Now we all know us old peoples opinions aren't really worth anything to anyone anymore, but docking us a tenth of a cent a day just for still being around, THAT's going too far...

I hate wasting things too Dan, I have boxes and boxes of sprue saved, occasionally I have to throw some away to make room for other savings.... Soldering group nodes can't be anymore difficult that gluing the same, it's just a matter of choosing a course of one step at a time and following it one part at a time.... like building any framework the outer frame carries the load and the inner parts steady and stiffen/strengthen the outer frame... there is that one point where 9 tubes all come together at the same point on the model, on the real thing it is four tubes on one side and five on the other with the connection joint in between them.... much easier to do... in this case I'm only replacing the rear half with the five tubes... Whirlybirds was a favorite of a lot of people I'm finding out all over the world.... Don't worry brother chime right in with anything you might think of, I'm no expert by any means and need all the help I can get...

Well Sorry for the interruption brothers, somewhere in the last two days I picked up a dose of the creeping crud and have been down for a bit, all is now well... don't know what it was but it laid me out for a couple of days... Anyways I haven't left anyone behind... {chuckle} Yeah Ken, it is a tough decision, brass is out for me as soldering is not my forte especially the thinner the wire is... also .025 plastic is just not going to work, at best it is like working with string you can tie it in knots it's so flexible... I also considered piano wire, it has the requisite stiffness, but have you ever tried to glue the stuff? So I've resolved to doing this in .050 plastic... it's still flexible but has enough stiffness to hold it's shape against a little pressure so it won't collapse the moment I hang another part on it... Construction will be simple... the only part really needing replacing is the boom itself the most visible part.... Circled in red, the forward part of the frame is going to have so many other parts grabbing attention the inner flatness will not be as noticeable.... Essentially it is a flat top surface, trapezoidal in shape with triangular frames pointing downward to a single straight keel... a simple flat tapered box structure with cross bars and diagonal braces... Side bars vertically matching each cross bar down to a single bar keel with diagonal bracing as well... fairly easy as long as the initial frame is square... so I'll approach it building it upside down starting with the top frame first then while flat install the cross bars and diagonals, just like a balsa airplane keel... An interesting thing to note, only three bolts hold the boom onto the frame with this machine. Roughly 3/8th of an inch in diameter and an inch long.... two on the top and one on the bottom... But they are made of aircraft grade steel rated at 140,000 pounds tensile strength... The boom itself will break before the bolts do...

EXCELLENT! My Father had a pic of one just like that at Buna...

Excellent find!!!

The tail booms on these two aircraft models... Of course the white plastic one in the foreground in four pieces is the MRC/Italieri one and is the Boom for the H-13D/E... In the background in olive drab plastic is the Revell tail boom essentially a single molded piece... that is an issue with the kit... Essentially the boom is made of round steel tube on the aircraft to save weight this is easily seen in the MPC/Italeri kit and it appears the same on the Revell kit but it really isn't... They are really triangular shaped with a pretty substantial flat inside the boom, and it is readily noticeable on the assembled model... Looking thru the online repository of build reports there are three ways to fix this... First, sand them all round with a needle file.......... right .... Second, buy a second italieri kit and replace them.... yeah ok for that one as well... Third, build your own replacement tail boom out of round stock.... Most of the boom was built with 1" welded steel tube, .028" in scale.... Yes, they do make solid round stock styrene that small... Problem is building it in scale would make for a very delicate fragile boom out of 1/32" stock... Looking at the Italieri kit they molded it in .050 size give or take a few thous. Scaling up would make a two inch tube size on the real thing... I have .020, .025, .050 & .062 so I can do either true scale in .020 & .025 or Italieri scale at .050 & .062.... There is one last option, build the Revell out of the box... My common sense tells me to build it OOTB, the easiest way... (which I really didn't intend to do when I started this) Purchasing another is not applicable here... So the choice would have to be rebuild it either in common with the italieri scale for strength or in true scale for realism.... To be honest I haven't decided yet... I would have to strip off all the specialized parts off the Revell frame and adapt them to any new frame I construct, and figure a way to do it without gluing it all down to the bench... lots of cutting and fitting... I guess I could make the attempt in real scale, just to see if I can do it in that size plastic, and if it doesn't work do it in the larger sized plastic using what I learned from the first... I would still have the complete untouched Revell frame to fall back on as OOTB if neither of those works out well..... Gonna think about this for a bit.... Anyways I'll be doing the MRC/Italieri H-13D bird first so that will prepare me a bit for working long hair skinny thin plastic that needs to be kept straight... Wish me luck...

Ok I've decided to put the cockpits aside for now until paint and supplies arrive... This is where they stand at the moment... Notice one of the things captured in the different models? The shape of the cockpit... Lower and squatter in the "H", model (on the right) than the "D"/"E" model on the left... And quarter panel door cutouts for the "H"... A lot of design advancement in just a few years represented here... And accurate model design as well... Next up is the tail booms, first the "D" model then a huge decision on the "H" model boom, do I correct the biggest deficiency of the Revell model or build it as is... (the overscale triangular shaped booms) A ton of work... Onwards my friends...

The H-13 H cockpit almost finished.... Seatbelts, a few touchups and waiting for some international orange to paint the outside with.... Onwards..

The start of the H-13H cockpit... This is my exemplar... I know this a Ft Wolters bird on the main apron.. That is the main field control tower in the background with a whole bunch of TH-55's hanging around. I'm not going to put the gap in the middle of the seat like in the pic cause I wouldn't have a way to mount the seat back if I did that so it will be a full red back... but other than that, this is my color pattern... And this is my start.... Rough painting.... But we will get there eventually... Onwards My Friends...

Thanks Mike, still a bit rusty but they did need something to hang over those bare seats... Perfect? I could only wish, I'll leave the perfection to you guys, still just a plastic hacker... {chuckle} Thanks for following... and the words of encouragement...

Thanks Gary, it was time to get back with building, will keep plugging along... {chuckle} Thank you very much for the support.... (coming from you wow, much appreciated)

You can get the trailer (the Budwieser trailer is the 40' Fruehof) on EvilBay for less the KW 925 is a conventional, it will work but the Bud decal setup uses a Peterbuilt SWB Cabover. Trucks and trailers are interchangeable (there are exceptions)

That is a beautiful rendition of a working engine.... Very well done...

Haven't been able to get a lot done the last day or so... but the H-13D Cockpit is almost done...

Well, you know it's not complete till it has a gun camera.... How else will we know what it's been flying around with?

Part way through the H-13D/E cockpit assembly.... A little more detail painting some touch ups and some shoulder belts.... It's pretty plain jane... But that's what they were in the early Korean war.... Essentially they were considered as nothing more than air jeep's, many had only single controls, they would send one out to some coordinates on a map, pick up your passenger, (if you could find them) and come back to base... Radios were quickly added to them as they made the job a lot easier... But for the first ones out there in the first few months of the war, it took a lot of courage to do air evac missions... If you went down, you were on your own...

Thanks Dan.... (although I'm a bit rusty with the paint) probably should have used a marker...

Neither have I Alan, I suspect they didn't mark them for some reason probably cause they weren't used in mass formation so they really didn't need it... (most military vehicle markings were for unit identification on the battlefield.... Using the kit supplied markings would be a non-sequitur for an SDF vehicle....

Ok Instrument columns.... I added the battery box to the H-13D column, it was missing from the kit.... Next up, the cockpit floors/cabin interiors....