1/35 UH-1H Huey By lmagna

[lmagna]

I think the whole thing not only got pretty blurry at the end with all that was going on. Maintaining flight duties, processing out, turning stuff in, and a blur of other things. Not too many drunken parties as I was still on flight status but I do vaguely remember some Rum and Coke episodes in the hooch after dinner. The last couple of weeks were a whirlwind of events and emotions that ended here:

[lmagna]

Well a short update. It feels strange to have any progress to report so soon after the last report. 

I filled in the excess holes in the deck like suggested and then proceeded to make more, that mostly will also probably have to be filled in later. I assembled the rear jump seats and gunner seats. I then placed them into their proper locations. The test fit looked OK as first glance so I went ahead and painted them. Big mistake! They immediately assumed a different shape or something and refused to be usable in the locations that they seemed fine in prior to painting! So after taking the following pictures I went to a different method of installing the seats that is totally different than what I used on the forward jump seat!

 

Today I hope to get some time to alter the seats and install them. I will of course need to make some more repairs to the deck  and then will be pretty much done with the basic cabin area. I will be adding pilot controls and delicate stuff like that at the last  minute so that hopefully they won't be broken.

 

After that, it is back into new territory for me. People painting! Another area that I have never tried in model building, at least not figures that were meant to be looked at from close quarters.

[Old Collingwood]

2 hours ago, lmagna said:

I think the whole thing not only got pretty blurry at the end with all that was going on. Maintaining flight duties, processing out, turning stuff in, and a blur of other things. Not too many drunken parties as I was still on flight status but I do vaguely remember some Rum and Coke episodes in the hooch after dinner. The last couple of weeks were a whirlwind of events and emotions that ended here:

So you have traveled in a Boeing 707?    I have too  when I was a teenager.

 

OC.

[popeye the sailor]

I think it looks good.......should look real good encased in the fuselage   

[lmagna]

2 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

So you have traveled in a Boeing 707?

That flight was one of the longest of my life. That plane was what we called a "Freedom Bird" It was loaded to the brim with Gi's coming home after 11 months in combat. The mood started out high, especially after the guys saw the stewardesses they supplied us with. I think most of the guys considered them more like Goddesses. But in this particular flight we hopped from one location to another all of the way across the Pacific. The only one we were allowed to get off on was Oahu Hawaii, where we got off to change planes. WE arrived in Oakland California sometime in the early dusk boarded a bus and went to the processing center too late to do any processing. The next morning I was a civilian! Possibly the largest cultural shock of my life.  

[lmagna]

2 hours ago, popeye the sailor said:

should look real good encased in the fuselage 

Yes that should hide a lot of the bad stuff! But that won't be for a while yet, still a lot to be installed/painted/and built. Knowing me and my results so far it will be a steady trudge of one step forward and three back at every turn!

[mtaylor]

Ah... being a short time.... "so short, I can dangle my legs off a dime"....  and the ever popular:  "Tell some one who gives a F.....,, I'm outa' here."

 

I think everyone was blurry on the way home, Ken.  Seems like the was a party everynight in the Sargent's Club in 'Nam with someone going home.  

[mtaylor]

Nice pic of the Freedom Bird, Lou.  Yeah, that flight seemed long.  If I recall, we went to Okinawa, re-fueled (had to leave the plane but couldn't go to the bar as there was none at the field.  Then Hawaii, again to refuel and stock up on booze and food.   Landed in LA and then a bus to Camp Pendleton.  Three days later, I was on my way home.... 

 

The interior is shaping up very well.  I always wondered about Huey's.  Just seemed like after two gunners, two guns, ammo, there wouldn't be room for anything else.

 

[Javlin]

13 hours ago, lmagna said:

If nothing else, the people on the flight line were pretty superstitious.

I would be right there in that group. Kevin

[Old Collingwood]

Did that have  an outside  framework  for the  guns on them or just  hand held  inside the cab?

 

OC.

[lmagna]

4 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

Just seemed like after two gunners, two guns, ammo, there wouldn't be room for anything else.

There was really plenty of room. there was a bunch of room under the jump seats that even had tie downs. BUT...... unlike the monster you flew in, weight was always an issue! On some hot days we could not even hover above ground effect with the loads we needed to carry. The pilot would have to get the chopper just high enough to clear the skids and give forward cyclic and we would be able to climb like a conventional fixed wing as our forward speed increased. The D model had a bigger engine and rotor than the B but it also had a bigger fuselage and larger cargo compartment. The H had a bigger engine yet but even they had days of difficulty in Nam. I never flew in the N models but with two engines I suspect they may have at last beaten the power issue. Of course all new helicopters have wheels so they can taxi like real planes and that can help with both takeoff and landings when the bird is heavy.

 

I couldn't remember where we landed on the way home when I wrote the above. But you keyed it a little. I know we landed in Okinawa, I remember now how shocked I was at how small it looked from the air. We also landed at Guam for some reason. we were not allowed off on either location.  Maybe it was Guam that was small?????? Like Ken said it was all a blur and time has not sharpened anything.

[mtaylor]

We had the same problem on hot days.  I've seen some videos of -53's in the middle east and they do that same running take off on hot days.  The engine power wasn't the problem, it was the rotors.  Just hard to get lift with them in thin hot air.  As they add engines to choppers, they've made the rotor blades "bigger" and in the case of the -53, when they added the 3rd engine, the also added a blade along with the "bigger" size.

 

Yeah.. it's a blur... to "Nam was San Fran to Hawaii, then to Okinawa.   Coming back is the blur... I think we even might have had a bigger plane.   The stewardesses said flying the military was voluntary.. they got extra pay and they had (as I recall) a better class of passenger.  We were better mannered and deeply appreciated them.

 

 

[lmagna]

24 minutes ago, Old Collingwood said:

Did that have  an outside  framework  for the  guns on them or just  hand held  inside the cab?

Loach's and some B models had hanging gun lanyards and used a conventional M-60 gun hand held. The D and H series of Hueys I flew in had the M-23 mount.

 

That used the modified M-60D

 

Some ships used other mounts and systems. I think there was a lot of experimentation going on at the time. You have to remember that using helicopters in a combat role was a very new and untried concept at the time.

[Old Collingwood]

Thanks lou.

 

OC.

[lmagna]

24 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

We were better mannered and deeply appreciated them.

That part I remember well. Most of us were enamored by these tall women with different colored hair that actually spoke real English, well American anyway. Outside of a few Donut Dollies and possibly nurses, which after all were also officers, we had been almost a year without "normal" contact with the opposite sex. For the whole trip it was Thank you mam, yes mam, no mam. They returned the favor by being quite kind and attentive to us. No booze was served like in a regular flight, but they made certain we had as much of anything else that was on the plane even if we didn't ask for it.

[mtaylor]

22 minutes ago, lmagna said:

Some ships used other mounts and systems. I think there was a lot of experimentation going on at the time. You have to remember that using helicopters in a combat role was a very new and untried concept at the time.

And therein were issues.  Too much experimentation sometimes.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.   We tried a dual .50 mount on the ramp.  Welds on the mount tubing kept breaking.  One of the first failures was the tail gunner forgot to secure the ammo can (it was  single gun mount) and when the pilot did nice turn at speed, the can flew off the ramp... left the linked ammo hanging down outside.

 

10 minutes ago, lmagna said:

That part I remember well. Most of us were enamored by these tall women with different colored hair that actually spoke real English, well American anyway. Outside of a few Donut Dollies and possibly nurses, which after all were also officers, we had been almost a year without "normal" contact with the opposite sex. For the whole trip it was Thank you mam, yes mam, no mam. They returned the favor by being quite kind and attentive to us. No booze was served like in a regular flight, but they made certain we had as much of anything else that was on the plane even if we didn't ask for it.

Exactly.   One thing I noticed was everyone looked them in the eye... like they had never seen "round-eyes" before.  

[Canute]

Going to Nam was Travis, Hawaii, Wake Island (Semper Fi), Clark (Jungle survival school) and Thailand. Back was Thailand, Clark, Yakota, Anchorage and Travis. Braniff jets both ways in crazy colors. The designers must have been dropping acid? Two cattle cars full of GIs. Me and my buddy Doug snagged two seats by the front door going home. Lots of leg room and we could chat up the stewardesses/flight attendants. Some looked a tad older, but they spoke American and we were going home to the big BX. No ration cards needed.

 

No experimentation with what we carried. All came out via frag orders. The loads varied by where we went and the task we were performing. MiG Cap was wall to wall missiles. Hunter Killer was cluster bombs, since SAM batteries were wide spread and thin skinned. Working down South, we loaded out 500 lb. bombs. Once in a while, we might haul bigger stuff. The F4 wasn't limited by weight, except takeoff rolls got longer. A-7s did have some problems since they were turbo fan engines. Climbing the hill to get on the runway, something got reset in their fuel control and limiting their available thrust. Jeez, that was a deep memory.

[Landlubber Mike]

Lou that's coming out really nicely.  Those figures look amazing, this is going to be a very sweet build.

[Landlubber Mike]

Not to dredge up the evils of PE, but here are some pictures of what I've been dealing with on the 1/700 side.  Might make you feel better

 

[John Allen]

Lou,

 

After sitting on your buns and "I'll get to the Huey"  for months you have now turned into a Whirling Dervish of kinetic energy and activity. I need to borrow some of that.

Coming along nicely its amazing what memories its dredged up for everybody. 

 

John

[lmagna]

7 hours ago, Canute said:

The F4 wasn't limited by weight, except takeoff rolls got longer.

I can believe that! We flew a guy out for emergency leave to Da Nang airbase once and not only was it a different world for us in so many ways it was an experience that has lasted in memory. First off, the airbase was a beehive of activity. Planes and helicopters of all sorts were coming and going from what seemed to be all directions, in what seemed to be total chaos. I remember us coming in at right angles to the runway and getting clearance from the tower to cross over the runway to get to our landing area. We got a rather curt clearance and almost in the same breath could hear the tower guy giving clearance to some airliner on final approach to go ahead and land on the runway we were crossing!  It was a hole different world than what we were used to in our relatively little crop duster type of field. We dropped the guy off and found a place to park because no GI would dare go to an Air Force base without a shopping list. Their BX's were things of legend in our world. So we went out and spent quite some time filling our shopping list but to our surprise found that they also had restaurant type places where you could order American type food. There was even a theater that showed movies. I think the sign said 25 cents! The only problem we ran into was that we were all armed with .45 autos. Daily attire for us and we seldom thought much about it. We were stopped twice by the MPs while walking and questioned, and when we wanted to go into the BX one of us had to stay outside and hold all of the pistols for those who went in looking like some kind of Mexican bandito! Like I said a whole other world.

 

But what Ken's comment made me recall was when we went to leave we were hovering at the edge of the runway waiting for departing traffic so we could cross over it again on our way out. First a C-130 flew by and was probably 30-40 feet off of the runway by the time it crossed in front of us. It was a little like watching an airshow. Then two F-4s went by on full afterburner, at least I assume it was, with their rear wheels still on the runway but noses up with flames almost as long as the plane coming out of the exhaust and bouncing off of the runway! It was getting late in the afternoon and it was pretty spectacular to say the least. Even to this day the memory just says "POWER" to my mind!

3 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

 Might make you feel better

I don't know about feeling better Mike, but I am pretty much convinced that there are not going to be any 1/700 ships in my future any time soon based on what you are showing. I considered it, (Fleetingly) when I was looking at options for building the USS Houston of WWII. Luckily I found one in 1/350. It still has some insanely small PE, but at least it is stuff that goes onto the ship, not PART OF the ship!

 

1 hour ago, John Allen said:

Coming along nicely its amazing what memories its dredged up for everybody. 

Thanks John

 

As for the memories. That is at least half of what this particular build is all about. It is a trip back 50 years to what we were all doing. What were you doing fifty years ago, 1970? (+-)? 

Edited March 7, 2020 by lmagna

[lmagna]

I found a couple of pictures from the trip I described above. They were probably not that good to begin with, (Picture taking is not my forte) and are not getting any better with age but they are all I have. The first picture from the air is the best out of trying half a dozen times to get it to focus right. Normally my wife's camera does a little better than that.

He still had to haul his own bags though.

[Old Collingwood]

Its not the quality that matters lou - its the content and memories.

 

OC.

[lmagna]

37 minutes ago, Old Collingwood said:

Its not the quality that matters

It is when you try and show others. Sometimes when I look at my remaining pictures from that time I wonder why I even took them, even more why I kept them.

Edited March 7, 2020 by lmagna

[mtaylor]

Lou,

DaNang was an awful place to fly into.  I was a few clicks down the road from it and we used to go there too.  Funny we never left base without our thundersticks and never got called on it at air base.  Well... no.   I did get called on it one time for having a bandolier full of ammo.  Thought it a bit strange that someone would go off their base with no extra ammo.   The USO was good place for food.

 

I remember that base well.  The AF had squadron of -53's, less then we had but 2-3 times the support people.  They asked us to come over once a week and cross-train some their guys.   The MP's at the AF area stopped us and questioned the guns.   All we said was, "we're not going back through town unarmed".  Kept the rifle but had to leave the grenade with them until I left.

 

There was an incident around '67 or '68 maybe?  A 707 (empty) headed to DaNang, misread their instruments or were just lost and landed on the strip at Marble Mountian.  Reports were, the pilot realized something was amiss and to late to go around, he did everything in his power to stop it.  Succeeded but ran of the end of the runway by 100 feet.   They had to strip that plane down by gutting the interior, leaving the crew (other than 1 pilot) and draining every tank (water, etc.) and minimal fuel.  They were offered a couple of JATO (the strap on rockets) but declined.   They said came the day to launch it, the whole base was there to see it.   Took off, due south, got over the vill and then started banking so they wouldn't run into the mountain.   The guy who told me had photos...  

[Old Collingwood]

The 707  never was renowned for its power to weight ratio  - quite a heavy beast  for its size and engines  the JT's  were not all that powerful   think they needed at least 5000ft  hot and heavy  min  runway for take off.

 

OC.

[mtaylor]

It wasn't a 707. And it wasn't empty.  <sigh>  I've had it wrong all these years...bad story tellers... bad!   It was DC8 with a load of passengers.  And they didn't have to gut the plane.    Here's a link with a video...

https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/dc8-crew-confused-3200-runway-at-marble-mountain-with-danang-runway/

 

<hangs head> <goes and stands in the corner> <wonders why he listened to his fellow Marines>

[Old Collingwood]

1 minute ago, mtaylor said:

It wasn't a 707. And it wasn't empty.  <sigh>  I've had it wrong all these years...bad story tellers... bad!   It was DC8 with a load of passengers.  And they didn't have to gut the plane.    Here's a link with a video...

https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/dc8-crew-confused-3200-runway-at-marble-mountain-with-danang-runway/

 

<hangs head> <goes and stands in the corner> <wonders why he listened to his fellow Marines>

Very similar 707/DC8   esp  if they were the short body DC8   later on  they  lengthen'd  them to near 180feet,   the 707  was still a heavy-er plane though compared to the shorter DC8.

 

OC.

[mtaylor]

Thanks OC.   I'm still going to stand in the corner... Amazing how things get twisted from mouth to ear to mouth ad innfinitum ad nauseam.

[Old Collingwood]

4 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

Thanks OC.   I'm still going to stand in the corner... Amazing how things get twisted from mouth to ear to mouth ad innfinitum ad nauseam.

Not your fault bro, no need to stand in the corner  - take a seat on the hammock instead,

 

OC.