1/35 UH-1H Huey By lmagna

[Landlubber Mike]

You're doing a really nice job on it.  Great work!  

 

I'm with you on the PE.  My introduction has been working on a 1/700 destroyer with a full PE detail set.  Stupid me, but for some reason I thought that 1/700 would be better introduction since the kit and PE set were cheaper than a a similar 1/350 kit, but I didn't realize the pieces would be that small.  Optivisor is a must as the parts are practically microscopic, and you better not sneeze!  I think I'm getting the hang of it though.  When I start with 1/350, the PE might look much bigger (though they probably have similarly sized extreme detail pieces).

[lmagna]

My heart goes out to you Mike.

 

I doubt I would even attempt working in 1/700 anymore, let alone with PE! I think the developers of PE do not care about the practicality of applying their product. At least with the Eduard stuff I am currently using. As an example they make the seat belts into a dozen parts for each belt! even the buckles have four or five parts to make up the complete buckle! And that is just one side! With a microscope and a pair of micro manipulators I could probably make working buckles from the parts supplied. In fact I know I could.

 

I have 1/350 PE for my USS Houston and was shocked when I saw the size of the barrels for the 1.1" AA guns! Ants have bigger legs than these barrels! The same holds for the PE for my Titanic build for my wife!

 

I found a pair of +4 reading glasses and bought them. They came yesterday so now I will possibly be able to see if I can do better when I can actually see what the stuff looks like. 

 

Thanks for the support. My personal thought is that compared to several others here on this forum My build is average at best. but it still sounds nice to hear.

Edited March 3, 2020 by lmagna

[mtaylor]

Best let the dolls stay where they are, Lou.  Don't get them riled up.

[lmagna]

1 hour ago, mtaylor said:

Don't get them riled up.

True

In all truth, the dolls have been part of our house from the beginning of time and both our kids and the grand kids that we are raising presently think a couple of them are haunted.

 

[mtaylor]

2 minutes ago, lmagna said:

True

In all truth, the dolls have been part of our house from the beginning of time and both our kids and the grand kids that we are raising presently think a couple of them are haunted.

 

That works.  They'll leave them alone.   

[popeye the sailor]

remember Annabelle?  you wouldn't want an ugly faced doll chasing you .........huh?!?!?!  didn't I send you a couple of 'pick n place' tools?  I thought I did  they have an adhesive tip on them that allows you to hold small parts.........I never used them on wood for obvious reasons.  to clean them simply roll them over the sticky side of tape.

https://www.billingboatsusa.com/tweezers-pick-up-tools/447-ptw1131-pick-place-tool-small.html

 

there are three sizes

[Old Collingwood]

15 minutes ago, popeye the sailor said:

remember Annabelle?  you wouldn't want an ugly faced doll chasing you .........huh?!?!?!  didn't I send you a couple of 'pick n place' tools?  I thought I did  they have an adhesive tip on them that allows you to hold small parts.........I never used them on wood for obvious reasons.  to clean them simply roll them over the sticky side of tape.

https://www.billingboatsusa.com/tweezers-pick-up-tools/447-ptw1131-pick-place-tool-small.html

 

there are three sizes

Just checked  - Ebay are doing them  - what an excellent tool.

 

OC.

[lmagna]

21 minutes ago, popeye the sailor said:

you wouldn't want an ugly faced doll chasing you

We actually had one upstairs for years. It was some kind of display doll that had fallen on hard times and had a cracked face. If you plugged it in the head would move back and forth and the arm in some direction. My wife was going to repair the face and sew cloths for it but of course never did. At some point my middle son put an old child's hoody on it and a plastic Halloween knife knife in the hand of the moving arm. With the wig that was all askew already and the cracked face, she looked pretty fearsome even to me. 

29 minutes ago, popeye the sailor said:

didn't I send you a couple of 'pick n place' tools?

I don't think so. If you did I put them in a place where they could be found when needed. Meaning I don't know where! I wish I did. They look like they would have a smaller tip than the pencil types I stole from Laurie. The one I stole has been working pretty well except it also seems to be missing on the table every time I need it. Luckily I am done with PE for a little while At least as far as I'm concerned. I should get a few progress pictures tonight after diner and post them. There has actually been a few things done believe it or not. 

[Old Collingwood]

Are you spraying the fuselage  or hand painting Lou?

 

OC.

[lmagna]

32 minutes ago, Old Collingwood said:

Are you spraying the fuselage  or hand painting

It is my hope to airbrush it. My time spent in the cockpit has been extensive and I have not even started painting the fuselage yet. I was LOOKING at it today though, and I think I have come upon a method of spraying that will be unique to the Huey. I do want to get in a little more practice on the small interior stuff and see if I can whip my tip clogging issues with paint drying in the tip of the airbrush. I have discovered one thing about airbrushing Acrylics though. If you mess it up, (As I almost always do so far) just spray it down with Windex and wash it off with water and start all over again! Great feature for a bum dumble like me.

[Old Collingwood]

3 minutes ago, lmagna said:

It is my hope to airbrush it. My time spent in the cockpit has been extensive and I have not even started painting the fuselage yet. I was LOOKING at it today though, and I think I have come upon a method of spraying that will be unique to the Huey. I do want to get in a little more practice on the small interior stuff and see if I can whip my tip clogging issues with paint drying in the tip of the airbrush. I have discovered one thing about airbrushing Acrylics though. If you mess it up, (As I almost always do so far) just spray it down with Windex and wash it off with water and start all over again! Great feature for a bum dumble like me.

Like me Lou  we learn more about the art in making a kit look half decent  as we go along,   when I was masking and spraying yesterday  it  struck me that it was the first time I have ever done anything like this  - all my painting of models  has always been with hairy sticks.

 

OC.

[lmagna]

Just now, Old Collingwood said:

all my painting of models  has always been with hairy sticks.

Same here, along with some rattle can stuff. In addition it has been something like twenty or thirty + years since my last model outside of a very few 1/24th Sports Prototype racing cars and a 1/24th copy of my real R-50 Mini Cooper.

[lmagna]

Well, as i said earlier, I think I have made a little progress since I last posted an update. Not finished like Mark but certainly further along than I was. 

 

In my last update I was still having formal combat with the pilot seats and assorted small and ill fitting/designed photo etch parts. I finally pretty much got all that worked out and ended up with seats that seem to cover the look properly. At least for how I will display this model. I then had to build and install the center jump seat that had to be set up to allow proper seating of the pilots. So I had to make a side trip and set up the pilots in their seats. This of course made me have to cut and file pilot butts to fit in said seats. They probably would have fit in the stock kit seats but of course I had to use the after market seats with the kit floor in my build. So far the pilot has gone through a buttectomy and is sitting pretty much where he should. I may have to so some more for a more custom fit. At some point I was careless and broke off his helmet mike and will have to replace it at some point. Hopefully I don't do the same with the co-pilot when he gets his buttectomy. At any rate it was becoming clear that possibly I have been wasting my time these last couple of weeks making the seats from all those tiny PE parts and re-learning all those cuss words from my shaded past. Everything is becoming so crowded that you can't see much of it at all!  By the time I add the cabin overhead and roof none of it will be visible at all!

Everything you see in the pictures is just sitting there, not glued into the cockpit. The only thing actually "In place" is the middle jump seat. I had to drill new locating holes in the deck to obtain the proper location. Then I got it wrong as there was not enough room for the pilots and seats forward and I had to re-drill holes about one and a half mm further aft. I rechecked the fit and clearances and took the following pictures:

 

This was the first location. It cramped the cockpit too much so I knew I would have to move it. The holes in the deck are the kit holes that would have been used if I had used the kit seats, which by the way are total garbage in every way.

The next view is from the front, showing how little can be seen even before the pilots are seated.

 

After you seat the pilots virtually everything I have done over the last couple of weeks has disappeared!  the co-pilot on the right still needs to be altered to get him to fit the seat properly.

So all in all I am happy to have made some progress at last and that even though the deck is beginning to look a little like Swiss Cheese from all the unused kit holes, and mis-drilled location holes I am also happy with the results. The holes can and will be filled in and the "Look" looks like I remember it. There are of course a few exceptions but they are small and I can live with them I think. I am also getting a bettter idea of what will be possible to see and what won't and will probably stress out a little less about those kinds of things in the future. At least I will try.

 

Next is the altering, locating, and assembly of the remaining jump seats and their painting, along with filling and repainting the poor abused deck.

 

Thanks everyone for looking in and helping.

 

 

[Canute]

Your build is coming along nicely, Lou.

 

Evergreen Scale Models styrene rod into those pesky holes, Lou. Let the glue dry (overnight for plastic to plastic if you can. Less time if superglued). Shave the excess off, sand if necessary and paint to match.

[CDW]

I like what you've done with the cockpit, Lou. You're doing great!

The pilot figures look awesome, very detailed.

[lmagna]

1 hour ago, CDW said:

The pilot figures look awesome, very detailed.

Thanks Craig, they were quite the find. I almost didn't buy them as they came from somewhere in the back side of France from a company I had never bought from before. I also bought some after market gunners that look promising from another company but have been afraid to look at them closely. One struggle at a time.  I am glad I went the extra effort as to me this trip back is the people. The Huey, while important is after all just the vehicle that gave us the ability to do the job, and more importantly got us back.

 

They are 3D printed and like you say are SUPER detailed. I like them because their visors are down so I am hoping that it will make their faces easier to paint in a realistic manner. (Another thing I have never done before that this build is full of, people) Their short coming, at lest for the pilot is that his hands are formed in a closed position and it may make it hard to place the collective in his left hand. The cyclic handle is already in his right hand and will need to alter the cyclic column to fit. Just more tiny nit fiddle stuff that is getting to be common on this build. Nothing has been a install and move on to the next part. EVERYTHING has been a custom alteration/fit.

1 hour ago, Canute said:

Evergreen Scale Models styrene rod into those pesky holes

DOH! What a duffus! I have a ton of gray sprue. For that matter I have the legs of the original jump seats that I can use to fill the holes! I have of course read about doing it that way for years but I have never had to deal with this much modification before and therefore the idea has never been used by me personally! Thanks for kicking my soft skull and jolting my even softer brain, or whatever is in there! Whatever is visibly left will just look like the cargo tie down rings that were there anyway!

Edited March 5, 2020 by lmagna

[John Allen]

looking good

[popeye the sailor]

cockpit is shaping up nicely

[Old Collingwood]

Coming on  nicely Lou,  I agree  with all  - those figures do look good.

 

OC.

[lmagna]

2 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

I agree  with all  - those figures do look good.

Now we just need to see if they survive my efforts at adding color to them!

[Canute]

Helmet visors were dark green Lexan (pretty glossy and dark), so a very dark green like Brunswick green as a base with a Tamiya clear green over it. I seem to remember it dried with a gloss to it, but I could be out to lunch on that.  The visors should be glossy either way. ( I just checked my old helmet, guys)

[lmagna]

I believe there were at least a couple of models. The Cobra pilots wore a helmet that had two pull down visors. One smoked like ours and the other clear for nighttime use. I liked theirs better but never found a way to get my hands on one. I was not authorized. There were at least two model shapes one with the lumpy ear pieces and the other with a more smooth rounded shape. Mine was a Gentex SPH-4, (I remember because my rank was SP-4. So what else would a SP-4 wear but a SPH-4, H for Helmet?) At any rate looking out from the inside was like looking out from a very dark set of sunglasses, kind of a smokey green. But looking at another person wearing a helmet with the visor down they looked black. You could not see through to their face even at close quarters. The gloss was because they were highly polished. In some circumstances like lower light, cloudy or overcast days we would leave the visor up and just wear our issue sunglasses.

Edited March 6, 2020 by lmagna

[mtaylor]

Keep doing what you're doing,  Lou.   Looking great and if details get lost, you (and us) will still know they are there.  I can't see squat in my -53 cockpit or in the cargo area but I did the best I could.

 

Oy.... the helmets.  I always hoped for a bit "color" but they wouldn't let us paint anything on them.  And the sunglass part was dark.  I usually just had the clear as I was watching the ground.  With the sunscreen part down, if took a step back from the gun and turned, I'd trip over something as it was too dark to see.  We gunners also (for awhile) had "bullet bouncers"  which was a hard steel/fiberglass" laminate breast plate and back plate.  At some point, they told us gunners to feel free to wear our flak vests (like the infantry had).   A lot lighter and you could actually bend over easier and a lot cooler temp wise than the bouncers.

[lmagna]

54 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

"bullet bouncers"  which was a hard steel/fiberglass" laminate breast plate and back plate.

That was what we called "Chicken Plates". Like you said, it was heavy, Hot, and awkward. We too switched over to the lighter armor. The only problem with all of the figures I have for this build is that they are all wearing Chicken Plate armor. There is no way I consider myself skilled enough to change that to a flack vest, so Chicken Plates it will be. I suppose that with the helmets it does serve to distinguish the crew from the troops a little.

 

Some of the guys had some pretty creative helmet work. It was a pretty much do-it-yourself thing. The only regs we had was that it could not be offensive to the military. When our crew chief, (The left gunner) was getting short he painted a relatively small blue and red chevron on the back of his helmet and instead of white letters saying "RE-UP", he wrote "FED-UP." It lasted a few weeks and then it was seen by the wrong person and he was told he had to take it off.

 

My helmet was kind of simple. When I first reported for door gun duty I told the AC my name and kind of where I was from. He said that there was no way he was going to try and pronounce "Magnabosco," especially over the radio. I thought that like many other times I was going to become Magna or Bosco again whether I liked it or not. As the town in California, Capitola, was almost unknown further than five miles away I had gotten in the habit of saying I was from "a town close to San Francisco." So the AC took the fact that I was "a traveling gun for hire" and from San Francisco and I became "Paladin." As "Have Gun, Will Travel" was one of my childhood favorites I was glad for the name and ended up painting my visor cover black and had a small white chess knight on the right side. I kept the rest of the helmet OD but I did get some gloss OD that was also a little darker and painted that too. I plan to try and duplicate the helmet on the right gunner. Later I also painted a little flight helmet with combat boots under the bottom and "SHORT" under that on the back, but there is no way I could carry it off at this scale. 

 

At one point someone suggested it would be cool to put a white chess knight on my black 45 auto holster that I wore almost daily. But I couldn't figure out a way to do it and not have it fall off, and thought it was possibly over the top anyway.

Edited March 6, 2020 by lmagna

[mtaylor]

We had some "custom" work done on a few things.   One CC had a "target" painted on his bullet bouncer because he figured the VC would aim for it and miss the target.   Some painted names and art on their helmets, some didn't.    The crews were basically all on a first name basis until you stepped off the bird, then it was military decorum.   I saw the helmet/boots and "short" back then.  One could even buy t-shirts with it on them.

[lmagna]

I had a small patch with the normal helmet/boots that I had sewn onto a rain coat that a Papa-San on base made for us using an issue waterproof laundry bag. Almost everyone had them, He was doing a booming business.  We had rank, shoulder patches and stuff sewn on them just like our uniforms but it was not an official uniform item. I still had it a few years ago but somehow it has disappeared along with so much other stuff.  

[Canute]

We had those helmet/boots patches, too. Some guys had countdown calendars for their return to the States date. I felt you were tempting fate, as an aviator, to post a real date. Too many variables on every flight. A REMF might be able to hold to a date, not grunts or aviators.

 

And you might remember the expression FIGMO. Since this is a family friendly site, I won't spell it out.

[Jack12477]

10 minutes ago, Canute said:

And you might remember the expression FIGMO. Since this is a family friendly site, I won't spell it out.

And the expression OMGIF when you got to your next station.  Ditto not spelling it out.

[lmagna]

Never heard of OMGIF. Had to look it up. But a few guys got a FIGMO attitude, not very many. The last thing you wanted was getting your tour extended for some unknown reason.  We did have an expression even when we first cam in country. "What are they going to do? Send me to Vietnam?" it was only half a joke.

 

I never made a countdown calendar, but the last week or so it was not easy not to brag that you were single digit, (Number of days) and a wakeup. By that time you were normally taken off of known combat flight status anyway and assigned to milk runs. Too many things happened to people when they got real short and it was considered bad luck to push it if you didn't have to. If nothing else, the people on the flight line were pretty superstitious.

Edited March 6, 2020 by lmagna

[Canute]

I'm with you, Lou. Except I flew my last mission with another short timer about 3 days before we went home. Big to do for us, much imbibing of adult beverages and munching Thai "spring rolls". Got a Thai version of a lei, too (I think. It got pretty blurry there at the end).