Little bit more Denison

Ok I know, it's been a while since I looked at this guy but I was at a bit of a loose end at the weekend and watched "A Bridge Too Far". Got me in the mood to get this guy back at the bench.

As you can see, not much progress but it is progress !!

Huey Cabin nearly done...

Hi guys, cabin nearly finished now and I can add the remaining door gunners at a later stage.

The real pain with this kit is that it doesn't include a decal for the instrument panels, I had to hand paint the raised details - nerve wracking stuff !. Personally I think it looks better anyway and although Eduard do an etch set for this, it was to be an out of the box build.
To be honest, there isn't that much visible when the fuselage halves are together anyway.

For the base colour of the cabin I used Tamiya XF-20 Medium Grey, several neutral grey washes add a little life to it along with some post-shading with a darker grey to add some relief.

Full steam ahead to the engine bay now then, stay tuned for more.... :-)

Huey Crew #2 - Co-Pilot

Pretty much more of the same for the Co-Pilot. Again, still work in progress here as I still have to finish up the legs and boots on this guy.

I'll take some better pictures when the crew are finished.

Huey Crew #1 - Pilot

Well after much deliberation I have finally decided on the colour palette for the crew.

I wanted to try and portray the "nylon" look of the Nomex flight suit so chose a very olive/yellow green for this. I tried many different colours before I settled on Panzer Aces 328 Japanese Tank Crew as a base colour. highlighting was done with Modelcolour 978 Dark Yellow, with 888 Olive Grey as a shadow tone.

For the Chickenplate armour vest I started with a basecoat of 893 US Dark Green, added 815 Basic Skintone to highlight and added 950 Black to shade.

This is the pilot figure nearly finished, just need to finish the flesh part of the arms and sort out the boots and we will be about there.

Sorry about the blurry pics - smartphone special !

Star spangled banner

James asked if it would be possible to add a little artwork to the helmets of the Pilot and Co-pilot, whilst not completely accurate for this project I do think it adds a little splash of colour that will look great.

With the exception of the stars (which are decals by Mehusla) the rest was painted using vallejo acrylics;

The Pilot head is done, Co-pilot still WIP. Boom mikes were added from plastic rod bent to shape.

These are the pictures I was working from:

Following on from my men with Green Faces post, this picture was posted on facebook and really does show the face camouflage to advantage. Great shot of the ERDL cammo too;

UH-1C Huey 189th AHC "Crystal Ship"

I've put my own Huey build on hold whilst I build this kit as a commission for James Richardson. James wanted the kit built pretty much out of the box and requested that it be built as if in flight, using the Dragon helicopter crew.

As is my way, I couldn't resist enhancing the figures a little by scribing some detail and sharpening some of the undercuts. Other than that they are pretty much as-is with the exception of the standing door gunner. The Dragon set has this guy posed with the fixed mount M60 which wasn't fitted to the short-body Huey gunships. These gunners usually had a "free" M60 hanging from the cabin roof via a bunjee cord.

This shot show my first mock up with the figures just blu-tacked together:

And after cleaning and priming, we get to this:

Major components of the Huey are coming together but obviously I need to fully finish the interior before I can glue the fuselage halves together, this means finishing the pilot and co-pilot figures and installing all of that first. This is by far the most time-consuming part of the build but is slowly taking shape.

I must admit it is very refreshing for me to build something out of the box (more or less) and I am really enjoying this.

Hope you like it so far James !

This is the real thing :