bianfuxia

Excellent build, well done!

Such a mad chopper. I love the RAAF scheme you built - every helicopter immediately looks 100 times cooler in that Aussie colour scheme. Same with F-111s, the old cammo scheme was insane. Living in DC I see a lot of helicopters at very low altitude, including the VIP Sea Kings and Sea Hawks but I haven't seen this one. I ride my bike at a place called Hains Point along the Potomac and there is often a Blackhawk (sometimes the VIP one) banging past super low (I guess because Reagan airport is across the river, it's pretty congested air space).

Well, this is basically done. I need to glue on the window, and do the last touch-up paint. Also, I saw on the instructions that nose weight of 4g is recommended. HAHAHAHA. This thing has about 4 Kg up front and even then if you exhale it falls back on its tail. I mean, a butterfly lands on a leaf in China and this plane rocks back. An alien sneezes on Jupiter? Boom, this thing falls over. Hahaha. Last night I discovered a pretty nasty gap at the very front, where the part for the engine front (like, the grille, if it was a car) joins the fuselage. Of course I'd already painted and decalled everything. Anyway I very carefully wedged some putty into there, and scraped all the excess away, and I think with a little discrete sanding I should be able to touch it up nicely without wrecking the yellow decals. Let's hope so. Next time I post this one, it'll be finished! On reflection, the decals really are pretty thin and I guess it would have made sense to paint white or something behind them. But it would have been a royal hassle, too, especially for the orange markings because you'd then have white showing between each of the small squares. I also forgot to install the rear bulkhead in the cabin, and because the canopy is unusually clear for an old Airfix kit, you can actually see all the way back down the inside of the fuselage. OH WELL! Life's too short at the moment, and honestly I am pretty happy with this little thing. It's going to look cool sitting next to my Zlin 42M (Hobby Boss) that I made some years ago.

This chopper is sitting on its wheels now, and I started on the decals. I dropped it and knocked a wheel off, so I realized I was better off going to bed and continuing later. So I've only done the two decals so far. I want to do one more coat of the orange, and then it's just the rotors and touch up paint and this one's done. I realized I have quite the collection (for me) of 1/144 choppers now - this puppy, five Sea Kings, two Sea Hawks and a Merlin. They're going to look cool one day all lined up together - and undoubtedly inspire me to GET MORE!

I've done all the decals - amazingly for such an old kit they worked really well. They're pretty thin though, and you can see a little bit through them.

Oops posted in the wrong thread sorry.

So it turns out there are plenty of Soyuz to be had on Shapeways, but none of them looked like they'd be any better than a resin kit and would still need a decent amount of work anyway. So I bit the bullet and today ordered the kit from Real Space. If I ever build it I will post it here!

thanks - i think i will order some but wait until I've finished moving house. I'm going to lose some decals that are stuck in Mexico for weeks...

wow! Great build of an awesome plane. I have this kit and you've inspired me to give it a go (just after I bought the Amodel kit in 1/144 too, haha). I saw one of these at the Beijing aircraft museum, they really are cool. great model, well done!

These are great! I've been wanting to get these kits myself and until I found your post I hadn't seen much "real world" description of them. Thanks for posting and you built them very well! Did you order direct from Red Iron or get them some other way?

Getting closer to the end for this little guy. I think one more coat, maybe two, of the orange will do the job. Then I really just need to add the wheels and rotors (mostly already painted) and the windows will take some care. The decals will need maybe an hour tops, as there aren't many. I do need to touch up the paint on those engines (I nearly forgot to instal them until I found them sitting around on the bench under some other stuff. Such a great little kit this one - I recommend it to you even if you're not that into helicopters (which totally explains why you're in this GB, hahaha). I got mine new for only 8 bucks too. Anyway: the door yes i know. I can still pop it out and fix.

Seems that way, hey? I really can't find anything else. Have to say it surprises me a bit.

Golly - even without the PE this kit is significantly more advanced than the 1/72 one I am doing.

With Ajax? Are you thinning it because you're going to airbrush it?