AH-1G Cobra ; 1/72 Special Hobby

[Basuroy]

Hello folks , I will be participating with the 72nd scale Special hobby kit of the Cobra finishing it as a machine based out of Germany , 1973 as per the decal sheet  . I received this kit a couple of weeks back and to my surprise , the sharkmouth option* proved eligible for the GB .  That was all it took to promote the kit right to the top of my to-do stack

*The description reads as - "..... 8th cavalry , 3rd squadron , D troop , US Army , based at Mainz-Finthen , Germany , 1973 . " 

The kit looks excellent out of the box , the panel lines are finer than the current gen special hobby kit and it is sufficiently detailed for this scale - part count is around 120 .  I will be finishing it as the boxart heli . 



I have so far finished assembling the various rocket and gun pods and the cockpit ; of course , not all of those pods will be mounted - as per instruction , this airplane carried the vulcan minigun and a single gun pod under the inner pylons and a pair of those 7-rocket-each pods on the outer pylon ( I don't know what they are called ) .

The detail on the rocket pods are just superb - the individual rocket heads are beautifully moulded as well as fuse on the rear .



Thanks for the going through my log and hopefully , this will be done over the next fortnight .
 

[Col.]

Tasty choice of subject and off to a good start. Looks to have a good selection of death included as well.

[RMP2]

One of very few helis that take my fancy and off to a nice and fast start too.

[Basuroy]

Progress report - assembled the fuselage and while it did require token amount of putty ( not to fill any gap but smooth out the seams ) , the overall fit is very good . In fact once the cockpit is completed , it goes together quickly . 

 

Now I have a doubt guys , the instruction sheet says the skids and the gun hub under the nose should be painted black but every contemporary photo I found show these parts painted olive drab , same as rest of he fuselage . What do you think I should do ? Olive green or black ? The former eases painting ....

 

 

[Mountain goat]

I love Cobras. Nice work!

 

Jay

[Basuroy]

Thanks guys for the encouragement

Progress report  - Canopy attached , it was in 5 parts ( can be posed open ) and fit was very good .  Painted the tailplanes red and masked the canopy using my homemade liquid mask ; that is white glue tinted with red paint and slightly diluted . I apply it against the frames using a pin , if the frames are sharp , it results in crisp masking and not that time consuming either (took me 20 minutes to mask this ).

ps: Also assembled the airfix 72nd gnat as a side project . 

[modelling minion]

That's some great work, and very fast too.

Well done.

[Col.]

Tidy work there, it certainly looks a well detailed kit so far, good tip about your masking method as well.

If all the photos you've found show olive green skids and gun hub I'd say go with that. Not the first time kit instructions have been wrong and you can always repaint later if you find a photo which proves them correct.

[Basuroy]

Done  

Edited April 29, 2017 by Basuroy

[Hewy]

I love your weathering on this , beautifully built,  72nd  scale takes it up another level

[IanHx]

Great looking cobra. How did you do the weathering on it ? Looks like it's been well used and left out in the elements for years !

[Basuroy]

10 hours ago, IanHx said:

Great looking cobra. How did you do the weathering on it ? Looks like it's been well used and left out in the elements for years !

Thanks   , I will mention the steps I took to weather the model -
1. Airbrushed primer green -  mig chipping medium - olive drab . I then chipped away the paint along certain panel lines to reveal the primer underneath . Weathering at later stages reduced the contrast .
2. Using an airbrush , I post shaded lighter shade of olive drab along some panel lines (observed this to be the case in photos ) , and diluted RAF dark green inside the panels to impart a greenish hue to the model .  I also shade some panel lines with a 1:1 mix of nato black and hull red .
3. Panel line oil wash using sepia tone . 
4. I used a very fine brush and sponge to replicate paint chipping . 
5. Chalk pastel for simulating dust . 
6. The black rotor blades were weathered by the oil dot method - in this case , using white oil paint . 

My reference photos were Vietnam war machines even though this particular model is located at Germany ; without knowing the history of this helicopter , I took some license to finish it as a model that had served in Vietnam and rotated back to home .

The photographs were taken using an iphone in indoor condition and really don't do justice to the effort that went in - mobile phone cameras are not good enough to capture the subtle paint variation as apparent to the naked eye . 

[Nigel Heath]

Quick work and a very nice looking model at the end of it.

[SoftScience]

Superb! I like the heavy weathering.

[Cookenbacher]

I'm becoming a fan of the 'Basuroy finish', that looks great.