1/72 Hobby Boss CH-46E/F SeaKnight in a Japanese Scheme

[modelling minion]

Great job on the masking for the exhaust area Nigel, nice to see the punch and die set coming into use again.

I didn't think that the main rotors on the KV-107 had any plumbing as they do not fold, I think that's purely for the CH-46.

Not long now until the decals go on!

Hope you have a good weekend with your parents.

[Nigel Heath]

Quote

I didn't think that the main rotors on the KV-107 had any plumbing as they do not fold, I think that's purely for the CH-46.

Not long now until the decals go on!

 

Sorry for getting the plumbing wrong on the rotor hubs but it does look nice and add interest value.

 

Decaling operations are underway as I write this. I did a bit more last night adding the yellow anti slip marks using rectangles cut from decal film:

 

 

The first one I made was way too small and can be seen in the background.

 

On the lower side door I had given the handle two coats of white primer and then finished it with yellow, I also added some more yellow strips of decal film to the sides:

 

 

Apologies for the poor photo, there's a better one in a minute.

 

The kit provides a decal for the operating instructions, it's more impressionistic than realistic but I felt it was worth using:

 

 

This is of course is what it's supposed to look like:

 

 

Anyway, here it is applied:

 

 

This morning I was delighted when my cocktail swords arrived:

 

 

When marking for the black exhaust area I carelessly got an indelible pen mark on the orange yellow. I tried to dab it off with IPA which got rid of most of it but damaged the paint as well so this morning started with a masking repair operation: 

 

 

Here's how that came out:

 

 

Because of the poor hiding power of the yellow I had to use more paint than I would have liked but hopefully it looks OK.

 

While I had the yellow out I also used it on the lower side door after a tricky masking hob and the reverse. I also applied some interior grey on the upper door:

 

 

I did actually mask for the glazing on both sides but now realise that it should be sold so I will leave the masking in place.

 

While all the paint was drying I started work on the first of the pitot tubes. My starting point was some more brass Strutz:

 

 

My plan was to solder some 0.5 and 0.4mm tube to that like so:

 

 

When I cut off the 0.5mm tube I found that solder has wicked up and filled it solid so it was time for Plan B, this time sleeving some of the 0.5mm tube with 0.3mm aluminium:

 

 

I had a few more frustrations with that and decided to put it to one side for now.

 

With the paint dry I took advantage of the green area of the door to fill a little ding in it (no idea how that got there):

 

 

With the green applied I was ready to apply Alclad Aqua Gloss to all the parts requiring decals so that is the main craft, the undersides of the rotors and the lower side door:

 

 

That stuff dries remarkably quickly and I was soon able to start on the decals. When you cut away the unwanted schemes it's surprising how few are left:

 

 

The decals proved to be rather intractable with Micro Sol:

 

 

So I broke out the Daco Strong:

 

 

That seems to be doing the trick, I report further later on.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[Jabba]

That paint scheme in absolutely stunning. Looking forward to seeing the decals applied.

[modelling minion]

More excellent work Nigel.

Good recovery on the damage to the orange paint, I sometimes wonder where damage and blemishes come from when they appear on my models that have not been touched since they were last looked at and they seemed fine then, must be some kind of modelling gremlin out there!

Great to see your little swords have arrived, I expect to see cheese and pineapple on at least one of them for the next update  .

Your work on the pitot is interesting I really hope that it works out.

The decals, they're not the best are they. Not the worst I've used by a long shot but they could be better, I'm sure your Daco strong will make them behave.

[Nigel Heath]

No the decals are not the best, I also have worked with far worse - Airfix Rotodyne springs to mind - but I would expect better from an aftermarket set, they are that bad combination of intractable and brittle. Take for example this one which broke into two without much provocation:

 

 

The break is between the last character and the rest and will need a little retouch with some white. Cartograph and Extradecal are far superior.

 

These are the last of the Print Scale decals to be applied, this one by the side door needed cutting before application:

 

 

It actually needed cutting twice as part of it sits on the lower side door. Again I had problems with it, the proper piece folded up and although I managed a partial recovery it did look a bit dogeared so I removed it and used the top part remaining applied upside down and secured with some diluted Gator Grip to make up for the lack of backing adhesive: 

 

 

Next I started on the few kit decals applicable. After the anti-slip on the sponsons there was this long strip of anti-slip walkway for the RHS, as it was so long I decided it best to cut it into two where it met the blade aerial to make it more manageable: 

 

 

It still managed to split into two more pieces:

 

 

Looking at it I was not happy as it's nothing like the reference photo and I didn't like its aesthetic appearance so ripped it off before it dried:

 

 

I had already soaked the walkway decal for the LHS but decided to follow the example of @modelling minion and just have a narrow black walkway on the LHS. Once the kit decal had dried out I used it as a template cut a new walkway from some venerable black Microscale decal film that I have had for the last 40 years:

 

 

I also used the decal film to cut out these step indicator markings:

 

 

Next was the window surrounds, the ones on the actual machine appear to be grey but the only kit options are three white and two black, I also had a look in the spares but but the pickings were thin (but not inexistent):

 

 

They proved to be a bit of a nightmare but eventually I got them sorted so now most of the decals are done:

 

 

 

On the underside I moved the hinomaru from the location in the instructions as there were there two strakes in that position - I guess they should have been removed:

 

 

The blob of Blu Tack is my attempt to protect the paint on the blade ariel from handling damage.

 

There are still a few decals to go on, mainly from my spares box with some white stenciling including some on the underside of the rotor blades. I might get a little more done in the morning or more likely get this on the home straight on Monday.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[CedB]

After a while away from the forum a relaxed catch up for me this morning Nigel - great stuff! I must get some of those cocktail sticks…

 

I too am having the image load problem and I'm almost sure it's Photobucket - the images 'pulse' for between 5 and 10 seconds before they appear and my Mac complains that the webpage is using 'significant energy'! Weird.

 

Almost there now - I hope you had a great weekend and congratulations to the parents  

[modelling minion]

Those walkway decals really are quite bad aren't they, were they from the kit decals?

She really is looking smart now and shouldn't be too far from finishing soon.

[spruecutter]

She's really looking the part, Nigel. What an attractive colour scheme! I agree with Craig (MM), the PrintScale decals aren't the best - I personally wouldn't buy them again. I would like to do another early Canadian machine but in the blue, white & red scheme. There is that version on the PrintScale sheet but I would rather use a sheet from Belcher Bits,

[Nigel Heath]

Quote

Those walkway decals really are quite bad aren't they, were they from the kit decals?

Yes they were the ones from the kit. Glad I didn't use them.

 

It was a great family get together over the weekend but after a three and a half hour drive back down south this afternoon I was pretty tired and after domestic chores didn't get much time at the bench but I did make a start on the rotor decals. On the underside of the blades is what looks like two lines of characters, one of which says "BLADE SERIAL NO" and a number with another number / string of characters under that. What it needs are some illegible white stencil decals, now following my Sycamore build I have a nearly complete set of spare decals with three sets of blade decals that can be suitably trimmed to provide the required lines of text:

 

 

Unfortunately the Sycamore was only a three bladed single rotor helicopter so comes up a bit short for a twin tri-rotor. Fortunately when I complained to S & M Models about some of their iffy decals they were kind enough to send me two spare sheets - problem solved! This partially used sheet still contains the required areas of decal:

 

 

Here are those applied just after an application of Micro Sol:

 

 

One of the better images of the stenciling can be found here:

 

 

MIne are a bit busy but never mind.

 

Next the blade identification colour rings. On the rear rotor, from what I can make out, this appears to be the order and colours used:

 

 

See here (click on image to enlarge):

 

 

I was expecting the front to be the same but no, they are a mirror image:

 

 

See here:

 

 

I'm not sure I'll get those applied tonight but I will make a start.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[Nigel Heath]

I cut the red and yellow stripes from this old decal sheet (inherited from an old modeller friend). I have used it many times for such purposes as you can see, it behaves quite predictably with setting solutions although it can be a little bit brittle:

 

 

Green, and indeed a quite dark green proved to be quite a rare colour in my decal collection but I did find this sheet given away for free by Scale Aircraft Modelling in August 1982 for the Zimbabwe Air Force which looked pretty much ideal: 

 

 

It, contrary to expectations, behaved impeccably - flexible and settling down well, by far the best decals used on the whole project. 

 

So here are all the blade colour identification stripes applied:

 

 

I really do like some of the stripes sitting under the plumbing, accentuating it. Now I'm going to have a lie down and a have a well earned forty winks.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[modelling minion]

13 hours ago, Nigel Heath said:

Now I'm going to have a lie down and a have a well earned forty winks.

A well earned forty winks indeed!

Glad that you had a good weekend Nigel.

Your rotors really are very nice indeed and the coloured stripes are very effective, says something that the best decals are the nearly 40 year old free ones!

[Jabba]

Well done with the blade decals. Yes they do seem odd when you look at them separately, but when you place the rotor heads onto the model and them move them in the directions that they are meant to move it makes much more sense, in that when each blade comes around to the front you will get the blades lining up. Roughly this is how we got the synchronisation on Chinooks after taking/replacing/refitting any of the sync shafts out.

[wimbledon99]

Those little touches on the rotors are very eye catching!! Nicely done

[Nigel Heath]

Quote

move them in the directions that they are meant to move it makes much more sense, in that when each blade comes around to the front you will get the blades lining up. Roughly this is how we got the synchronisation on Chinooks after taking/replacing/refitting any of the sync shafts out.

 

That makes a lot of sense to me and I was thinking along those lines for the explanation. I was hoping to get much more done tonight but my laptop has been playing up and only now do I seam to be able to make an upload, I'm sure @azureglo would understand it when I get the message "The DNS server is not responding" and "Your computer is trying to use a DNS server that is incorrect or does not exist" - yes for real - but I do not. Anyway, it all seems to be working now.

 

The main problem encountered tonight was that somehow this had happened:

 

 

I have no idea how, I am always very careful with my parts but there you go, sxxt happens.

 

Of course this is not a very difficult thing to fix, after drilling a 0.5mm pilot hole this was enlarged to 0.6mm:

 

 

With some 0.6mm brass rod glued in place the thing could be assembled:

 

 

With a coat of some matt black the whole thing was pretty much as good as new:

 

 

With that little setback and my computer woes I am basically no further forward, hopefully tomorrow night things will be different.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[Nigel Heath]

Well indeed they were. Tonight I continued with applying more custom made decals to the rotor hubs. I have already applied numerous yellow rectangular labels using the same decal strip from the identification bands. For the next set I wanted a more orange yellow colour and found this previously used decal from an Airfix sheet that looked ideal:

 

 

After they were all done I used this cut down Mike Grant decal to represent this label applied as a slightly wonky angle:

 

 

This is what I was trying to represent:

 

 

 

The rear rotor hub is supposed to be a mirror image of the front one but Hobby Boss have cut corners and made them the same hence the discrepancies observed.

 

Well that is about pretty much of all the decals applied to the rotors:

 

 

The little scraps of backing paper on my computer gives an idea of the number of decals added to the rotors:

 

 

I also added a few more stencils from my spares box to the rear end on the RHS:

 

 

And similarly on the LHS:

 

 

I also added a new strip of black decal film to the walkway as I felt the original was a bit scrappy on the edge:

 

 

With that done I think all the decals are all finished (I have added a few more, please try to spot them in subsequent updates) . I think the next job is to apply a another coat of gloss varnish and then apply a panel line wash. After that a coat of semi gloss (or matt varnish, not sure yet) and then final assembly.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[modelling minion]

Good fix on the rotor Nigel, shame that you had to do it but a good job, not the first time I have heard of the Fujimi rotors snapping.

Looks like you have as many decals on the rotors as there are on the rest of the airframe!

Looks like you should make the new deadline without any difficulty, computer woes not withstanding.

[CedB]

Great detailing Nigel, as usual  

Nearly there…

[spruecutter]

Nice work on the rotor blades, Nigel!

[Nigel Heath]

When I first tried posting all last night's content appeared - what happened to the "clear editor" function button?

 

Tonight after making a tuna and olive pizza for my dinner:

 

I got some more done. I did have plans to get the rotors assembled but on inspecting these hub parts found the yellow orange finish a bit thin on the edges:

 

 

So the first job of the night was to break out the airbrush and get a second coat applied. While that was drying I looked around for other jobs that needed doing. The very last part still attached to the final sprue is this looped aerial part:

 

 

 

I had thought of replacing this with a metal part but the real thing has a flat section rather than circular so I decided to stick with the kit part. For reference here is a good photo of it:

 

 

It has a definite flat bar like appearance, here it is profiled, thinned down a bit and cleaned up and ready to be mounted up ready for some paint:

 

 

Another job I could get on with was applying some chrome finish to the hydraulic part of the U/C legs. This was the first time I had a chance to the use my liquid chrome pen acquired at Telford last year for just this sort of work and I was highly impressed with the results

 

 

I painted the brake lines black a while ago just to give some visual interest.

 

The finishing touch for the legs was to give them a Flory "Dark Dirt" wash:

 

 

After that photo I will give them another round of clean up. I think the rotor hubs should be dry by now so will do a bit more work on them as well.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[Nigel Heath]

The next job I completed was to get some Flory "Black" wash inside the recesses on the rotor hubs:

 

 

I had thought that the vertical rods should be painted with a steel colour, or something, but from what I can make out from the main reference photo they do appear to be the yellow orange colour.

 

The next problem I had was another rotor blade break, this was going to be slightly more difficult to sort with the wire line attachment:

 

 

I drilled out with a 0.5mm and then a 0.6mm drill to get the reattachment sorted, I don't know what you think but there looks to be quite a bit of porosity where the break occurred, it always did seem a bit weak to the touch:

 

 

Anyway, I secured the whole thing with a length of 0.5mm brass rod:

 

 

A bit of matt black retouching was required:

 

 

When that was dry I glued on the base plate, here's how the rotors looked in position:

 

 

I hadn't realised that some of the central pivot pins would be visible so they will have to be painted - presumably black - before the rotor assembly can be completed:

 

 

There isn't any more to do now, so bye for now,

 

Nigel

[azureglo]

12 hours ago, Nigel Heath said:

When I first tried posting all last night's content appeared - what happened to the "clear editor" function button?

 

Tonight after making a tuna and olive pizza for my dinner:

 

I

Dismal, truly dismal:

 

The panel lines are like trenches

You've definitely used the wrong red

Your circle cutter is pants

 

I have no other words beyond saying this attempt at a scratch build looks so bad, it could be a pizza. I assume this is the build, as I refuse to look at any pictures of helicopters due to a health warning-they make my blood run cold...

[modelling minion]

The rotor blades are proving to be a bit of a pain on your build Nigel, another great repair though. I think you are right in saying that the plastic looks porous it certainly doesn't look right. Hopefully there won't be any further issues this close to the end of your build.

Pizza looks nice, even if the olives do look over scale.

[Nigel Heath]

Before I paint the central rotor drive shafts it is a sensible point in the build to complete all the other things which need fabrication and then paint, the list I have in mind is as follows:

Pitot tubes

Wipers

Front T aerials

Rear view mirrors

 

I picked up where I had left off on the pitot tubes, here's how the first one looked after soldering and cutting off the tubes:

 

 

When fully trimmed up here's how it compares to the kit parts:

 

 

This was the main reference picture used:

 

 

I did put some thought into just keeping with the kit parts but I think the above result justifies the effort.

 

A little while later I had the second one finished, after a degrease to remove any lanolin flux residues I mounted them on the tips of cocktail sticks and used liquid masking to mask off the aluminium portion of the main tube, all now ready for some paint:

 

 

Next I made a start on the T aerials. I had already drilled the mountings with a 0.4mm hole but using 0.5mm and then 0.6mm drills opened this up further as I think 0.6mm brass rod looks about right for the job:

 

 

The reference picture on the Print Scale decal instructions is quite difficult to make out so I made a little sketch of what I thought the end arrangement should look like:

 

 

I then shaped the end of some 1.1mm plastic rod and drilled through with a 0.4mm drill for the aerial rods:

 

 

I was parting that off with a sharp scalpel blade when the plastic split in a weird and most unexpected way:

 

 

I have never seen anything like that before. Anyway I glued it back together and with it cut off started on the second one and I was just centre punching with a pin tip ready for drilling and the plastic split again:

 

 

I'm now thinking this length of rod has a flaw running through it and should cut my losses and start over using fresh material. I will have a ponder.

 

Bye for now,

 

Nigel

[CedB]

Nice work Nigel.

That rod is certainly frustrating - bubbles in the extrusion?

[modelling minion]

Those pitots look excellent Nigel and are certainly going to add to the finished look of the model.

It looks like your material woes are continuing though with that plastic rod, hopefully your replacement rod will work a lot better.