Armed and dangerous

Progress has slowed somewhat on this, not a great time of year unfortunately, work gets very busy on the run up to Christmas.

Anyway, got the butt pack painted and finally got the right arm with the M79 mounted, just need to finish off the tiger pattern on the sleeve and I can start work on the trousers.

Tried a different approach on the metal parts of the M79, usually I use Gunze Sanygo Gunmetal which you can buff to a shine when dry. This time I just painted the metal parts with Vallejo Black Grey and used a make-up applicator to apply powdered graphite from a 4B pencil. Looks alright to me.

Get some

I have decided that I'm going to do the UH-1C as a Gunship of HA(L) 3 Seawolves. Having read the book of the same name, the door gunners would have a "free" M60 and pretty much stand out on the skids to fire it, unlike the "slick" gunners who generally had a fixed gun mount.

So messing about with some figure poses I came up with this for the port side guy. Just a mixture of Dragon and Academy upper parts - which will be seriously improved with a little scribing - and some Hobby Fan resin legs.

I think he looks quite the part so far.

Bang Sticks

I'm not sure which weapons configuration I am going to use yet but thought I would have a little fun improving the kit parts.

First up is the M134 Minigun. As you can see below, the RB models turned brass set is a slight improvement over the kit parts !

Buoyed by my success, I had a go at improving the M158 Rocket Launcher pods. Not very much of the kit parts left here now. I used MBT20 brass tube from Albion Alloys and scratch built the rear contacts and attachments.

Just have to repeat all of this work for the other side now !

Does my head look big in this ?

Out of my comfort zone I have decide to build a 1/35th Huey gunship so slowly starting to make progress on some of the bits, first up the figures.

Well it would appear that no-one makes an aftermarket helicopter head so I had a quick go at improving this one from Academy.

Obviously plonking the hollowed out helmet on a Hornet head makes all the difference too !