Zebra's Mil Mi-10

[zebra]

My first build of 2018 is going to be the Amodel 1/72 Mil Mi-10 Harke. Here's the box top and contents:

 

Pretty much standard Amodel fare: Fuselage in multiple parts that will be interesting to align, nice surface detail that I'll do well not to obliterate, no locating pins, and lots of flash. Should be fun!

 

I have all the aftermarket I can find for it - a set of KV masks and some PE intended for an Mi-6. There's still one bit of aftermarket to decide on though - something to sling underneath - building an unloaded Mi-10 would be just plain wrong. There don't seem to be an awful lot of photos of operational Mi-10s out there - lots of photos of prototypes carrying things (particularly one of the prototypes carrying a bus at a Paris air show) but not much more than that. There are a few pointers out there on what some options could be though:

 

A MiG-15: As Thud4444 noted in the chat thread, there's this photo of a Mi-10 which looks like it's just offloaded a MiG-15UTI:

 

A truck or armoured personnel carrier: Seems obvious that the Mi-10 would have carried these sorts of things around and Yefim Gordon's book "Mil's Heavylift Helicopters" refers to crews in East Germany practicing with these kinds of loads.

 

Then there's the Mi-10RVK with the Zil-135V missile launcher (which would have to be scratch-built):

 

Or the Mi-10PP with this big ECM device underneath:

 

Then there's the Mi-10GR which carried a Grebeshok ELINT device underneath, but I can't find any remotely useful photos of it.

 

There's also mention online of a Mi-10 airlifting a woolly mammoth encased in ice - but of course I can't find any photos (there's a video on youtube of a Mi-26 carrying one though).

 

Right now, the MiG-15 is the frontrunner - I like the look of the missile launcher, but don't think I'll have time to scratch build it. So I think I'm going to order an Eduard MiG-15UTI.

 

Can't wait to get cracking tomorrow!

 

 

[Abandoned Project]

really looking forward to seeing this one.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

3 hours ago, dadofthree said:

really looking forward to seeing this one.

⬆️    Ditto     ⬆️

[Hewy]

If that builds up nicely z it'll make a great model, hope it does I'll get one

Glynn 

[Davek72]

That looks very cool.  Good luck.

 

Dave

[zebra]

In true Amodel style the fuselage is broken down into a few more components than most other manufacturers would give you - in this case, 7 major components (left and right front and rear fuselage halves, 2 lower fuselage pieces, top engine cover) - and with no locating pins, careful alignment is crucial. So the first thing to do is to think about the build sequence - in previous Amodel/Modelsvit builds I've concluded that following the instructions isn't the way to go and instead of assembling front and rear fuselage parts separately and then joining them, it's usually best to build two complete left and right halves and then join them as normal. So I started by test-fitting the main components (not including the top engine cover) - here's how it looked:

 

 

It's actually not too bad. The front and rear parts match up quite well. The trickier fit is going to be in the forward half where good alignment is going to be key to getting the engine cover and the various bits of cockpit glazing to fit. So I think for this one the best way to go will be to assemble the front half and back half separately - i.e., following the instructions. I think it's also going to need a few horizontal spreaders to help get the spacing of the forward fuselage halves right and ensure a good fit.

 

More tomorrow.

 

Z

[MarkSH]

Always admired the look of this helicopter, so insect like. looking forward to seeing this come together.

[Thud4444]

I'll be living vicariously on this build. I want one of these badly, but my skills aren't up to the task. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by Thud4444

[CliffB]

As others have said, this should be one impressive model when built

That spindley u/c looks as though it should be 'fun'.

[zebra]

20 hours ago, MarkSH said:

Always admired the look of this helicopter, so insect like.

Like a really, really big insect!

 

10 hours ago, Thud4444 said:

I'll be living vicariously on this build. I want one of these badly, but my skills aren't up to the task.

I never said my skills are up to it... actually I have a feeling it might not be too bad. My experience of Amodel kits so far is that taking things slowly and carefully, thinking everything through and test fitting everything seems to work and they're not half as bad as they're made out to be. Some of their older kits are notorious though, and I suspect the reputation of the newer kits suffers as a result.

 

2 hours ago, CliffB said:

this should be one impressive model when built

I certainly hope so!

 

2 hours ago, CliffB said:

That spindley u/c looks as though it should be 'fun'.

Yes I think the u/c is going to be interesting. That said, I thought that about the undercarriage on the Modelsvit Be-12 - ok it's an order of magnitude less spindly, but builds up from a number of components without an awful lot to help get a positive fit, but it went together ok and it's pretty robust - so I'm hoping it's going to be like that.

 

A good day's modelling today, focusing on all the sub-assemblies that need to be done before I can start getting those 7 fuselage components together, and made some good progress. Here's how it's looking:

 

The cockpit isn't what you'd call detailed, but I'm leaving it as is. Oddly the instructions say there are instrument decals but there are none on the sheet. The parts map in the instructions shows the decal sheet, which includes all the same marking options as the actual sheet, but it's a different shape and doesn't include any of the instrument panels. I'm going to count on not a lot of it being all that visible when it's closed up, and for the main instrument panel I'll use the PE panel from the Mi-6 set.

 

Amodel's approach to detail on the outside contrasts completely with the inside - it's all quite nice. There's lots of fine, subtle surface detail (not raised or engraved panel lines but overlapping panels, and quite nice detail in intakes an exhausts).

 

The intakes include trunking and a fairly good representation of the compressor disk, and the exhausts include turbine disks (which are barely visible) and drive shafts. Despite the lack of locating pins they go together quite nicely - it helps to lightly sand the mating surfaces first. I've assembled them and painted them with Alclad duralumin and jet exhaust, and they're ready to go in the fuselage.

 

So far everything that butt-joins has gone together ok, but a lot of other parts have needed some adjustment to fit. The bit below the fuselage half near the top of the photo will be the mount for the main rotor - I test fitted the rotor shaft as I was building it and, of course, the hole was too small and needed to be filed out. Similarly the holes for the windows are all too small - I enlarged each one with a scalpel, with 22 windows this got a bit repetitive!

 

Not a lot to do before I start on assembling the fuselage. The intake at the back of the top engine cover (in the bottom left of the photo) needs blending in and the rotor mounting needs painting, apart from that it's ready to start assembling. I think this is where it'll start to get interesting - getting everything properly aligned will be tricky. This will be a case of slow and steady wins the race.

 

Thanks for looking

Z

[Max Headroom]

That’s.....different! At the same time it’s rather cool too. 

 

Trevor

[Colin W]

Excellent project. I agree the Mig will look great and give it some idea of scale.

I saw a Mil 6 in the Vietnam air museum and its absolutely enormous. I think this is basically the same engine, Rotor and backbone but without the bulbous fuselage.

I have some pictures of the rotor head if you are interested.

 

Colin

[zebra]

5 hours ago, Colin W said:

Excellent project. I agree the Mig will look great and give it some idea of scale.

I saw a Mil 6 in the Vietnam air museum and its absolutely enormous. I think this is basically the same engine, Rotor and backbone but without the bulbous fuselage.

I have some pictures of the rotor head if you are interested.

 

Colin

I've seen that Mi-6 too - yes it's huge. The Mi-10 and Mi-6 are very closely related - it's basically an Mi-6 that carries its cargo externally rather than internally. 

 

I'd be interested in seeing your photos of the rotor head - I have a really good one in black and white but not much in colour

 

cheers

Z

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Looking forward to the continuing battle with this one Z.

 

I started an AModel An26 some time ago and it had the same engineering issues to contented with. Sitting on the Shelf of doom at the moment.

[zebra]

9 hours ago, Romeo Alpha Yankee said:

Looking forward to the continuing battle with this one Z.

 

I started an AModel An26 some time ago and it had the same engineering issues to contented with. Sitting on the Shelf of doom at the moment.

I built an An-24 and An-30 last year - the fuselage of the An-24 needed a lot of persuasion to go together - the front half in particular really didn't want to line up properly. Got there in the end.

[modelling minion]

Now this is an interesting project, not one that you see built often.

I will tag along and see how you get on, good start so far.

 

Craig.

[zebra]

Public holiday today so an extra day to get some modelling done. A good thing since one of my new year's modelling resolutions (to do a bit of modelling every day during the week) hasn't got off to a great start, thanks to an insane week at work. I've set myself a target - to get the fuselage complete and cleaned up by the end of the weekend.

 

I came at this a little nervously. There are no locating pins and 7 main fuselage components need to be assembled and aligned properly. Poor alignment could throw out the alignment of the undercarriage and make fitting the clear parts difficult. So getting it right will make a big difference to the rest of the build. It also all felt quite flimsy when I dry fitted everything last week, so something might need to be done to improve the rigidity of the model.

 

Frankly, I needn't have worried about all that. I've got most of the fuselage together and it's been relatively straightforward. A cautious, well thought through approach seems to have paid off so far. Here's how it's looking tonight:

 

 

I started from the front and worked back - first lightly glued the front part of the fuselage sides to the underside and checked the fit of the nose transparency. Once I was happy with that I moved to the rear of the front part and used spots of superglue in a couple of places to hold everything together - once I was happy with the alignment I used some zip kicker to set the superglue. Then went round and glued the with Tamiya extra thin, taking care to make sure everything lined up as well as I could. In a couple of places I used superglue to encourage it to stay where I wanted it.

 

After that I needed to bring together the front and rear halves. They match fairly well but the lower part was a little too narrow to match the width of the bottom part. So I did this by taping the floor part on to help hold it in place, then taped the rear half to the floor part and used a few drops of superglue again whilst I lined things up. This time I was focused on getting the front and rear halves to align at the top and sides, and getting panel lines to line up - again, once I was happy with that I used some zip kicker to set the superglue. Then I removed the bottom part and glued bits of sprue across the join on the inside to give it some strength, before going over the join on the outside with Tamiya extra thin.

 

This left the floor part to add - this aligned pretty well in depth (although it needed a couple of small shims) but it was wider than the fuselage parts above it around the point where the front and rear fuselage halves met. So I measured a piece of sprue of the appropriate width and inserted it to spread the fuselage parts out and match the floor part.

 

All reasonably straightforward. There's some cleaning up of joints to do, and some filler will be needed, but nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be. I needn't have worried about rigidity either - it's all pretty solid.

 

Also, it's big! Looks to be about the same size as the 1/72 Tu-134 I built last year. 

 

Next up will be attaching the clear parts, cabin roof, intakes and top engine cover. I think this will need to be done by working back from the nose. I would have done some of this today, but I'd neglected the instrument panel and cockpit coaming which need to be put together and painted first - I've started on that, so should be able to get this done tomorrow.

 

I'm enjoying this one, and pretty happy with progress so far. I've really got a taste for Amodel kits now - need to add some more to the stash (I have 3 more at the moment - an Il-14M, Jetstream 31 and Dove, but I think my An-24 and An-30 need an An-26 and an An-32 to go with them).

 

Thanks for looking

Z

[Valkyrie]

It does look like you are coming on. I didn’t think it would be as big as it looks. Good luck also with the new year resolution of a bit of modelling each day, if only! 

[MarkSH]

It looks quite big. will the legs need any strengthening? looking good.

[zebra]

35 minutes ago, Valkyrie said:

I didn’t think it would be as big as it looks.

Having seen how huge an Mi-6 is up close, I thought this would be big. It's roughly twice the size of a Chinook!

 

41 minutes ago, Valkyrie said:

Good luck also with the new year resolution of a bit of modelling each day, if only!

Thanks - it's not going to happen but I'll give it a go! It's as much about making better use of my time as it is about modelling - there's been too much getting home knackered and collapsing in front of the TV (well, Netflix... not actually watched TV for a while now) lately, I feel the need to try to do something with my evening so if I can get a bit of modelling done, even if it's just 20 minutes, it'll be a step in the right direction.

 

30 minutes ago, MarkSH said:

It looks quite big. will the legs need any strengthening? looking good.

Not sure about the legs - I suppose we'll soon find out. The legs look fairly thick, the plastic is pretty hard, and the supporting structure looks fairly solid. And it's not all that heavy (there's barely any interior after all). So maybe they'll be fine.

[Valkyrie]

I share your philosophy, time wasted just vegging in front of tv, least modelling you have something to show for your time and improve your ability at something like a hobby, and learn a bit about the world along the way.

[zebra]

More progress today. I started by test fitting the clear parts, cockpit roof, intakes and engine cover. There are 4 clear parts - nose piece, windscreen, 2 side panels - the cockpit roof sits on top of that, and the intakes sit on top of that in front of the engine cover. Here's how the test fitting went:

 

 

From the side it looks ok, except that the top of the intake piece is too high up.

 

 

From above, you can see that the upper left fuselage part is pinched in compared to the intakes. It also results in the fuselage being narrower than the engine cover. This was fixed with shims inserted between the intake trunking and the fuselage, which did the job quite well. The cockpit bulkhead also had to be trimmed at the top to get the cockpit roof to sit in the right place.

 

To get this right the intakes and engine cover had to be the last two parts to go on. So I started with the nose piece, then added the clear side panels, then the windscreen and cockpit roof, and then the intake and engine cover. I only applied glue to the cockpit roof once I was happy with the alignment of the intakes, fuselage halves and engine cover. All this went ok. This left me with a complete fuselage, and a load of sanding and filling to do! The sanding and filling are partly done - I've put some filler on and left it overnight - so more sanding to do tomorrow.

 

Here's how it was looking shortly before I added the filler tonight:

 

 

Note how the cockpit is angled upwards slightly - apparently they did this because of the Mi-10's nose-down attitude in flight.

 

Thanks for looking

Z

[Thud4444]

I didn't notice the cockpit until you pointed it out. Now it's all I see. Looking good.

[zebra]

10 hours ago, Thud4444 said:

I didn't notice the cockpit until you pointed it out. Now it's all I see. Looking good.

Thanks Thud. 

 

A stinking hot day today - 38 degrees and humid (that's 100 if you prefer fahrenheit, or 315 if you prefer kelvins) and a good day for staying inside with the air conditioning on. Hence the photos taken at the dining table instead of the workbench, which is in the garage and definitely not air conditioned. It also meant working on the Mi-10 alongside the 8 year old, who was building a lego Star Wars BB8, listening to music. The point where he was nodding his head along to the Wedding Present made me proud. We'll try The Fall next.

 

Today was mostly sanding joints, spraying primer to check them out (which needed a thankfully brief trip out into the heat!), applying more filler where needed, etc. Pretty happy with how all this has turned out - whilst getting to this stage has taken some planning and some careful work, it hasn't been all that difficult - yet again I find myself thinking Amodel's reputation is undeserved.

 

Whilst primer and filler were drying I also started to get on with a few other bits, like the back half of the fin, fuel tanks, elevators etc. The elevators were practically impossible to fit without modification - the attachment point is tiny - so I decided to trim it down so that they butted up against the fuselage, and butt-joined them to the fuselage. I also angled them up a bit, since they seem to be at that angle in most photographs.

 

Here's how it looks tonight:

 

 

Next job is the undercarriage. I could have made a start on that tonight, but decided it wasn't the job to do after the beers you can see in the background! Maybe I'll get to them during the week. Also this week I'm expecting the postie to deliver the MiG-15UTI to go underneath, so I'll be starting on that too.

 

Thanks for looking

Z

[MarkSH]

I should take a leaf out of your book and resist the urge to drink'n'model.