Shark 10 - RAN Sea King 1/144

[bianfuxia]

Another Sweet Sea King flies off the Shelf of Doom. In the end it only needed about 15 minutes to do the last steps - how many models do we all have on the SOD with just a night or two's work left in them? 😆

 

 

This helicopter served with the Royal Australian Navy from 1975 to 2011. In its earlier years it flew off the carrier HMAS Melbourne, and later in life from HMAS Tobruk (which was a big landing ship). 

 

 

My main memory of RAN Sea Kings is watching one carry an enormous Australian flag over Sydney Harbour in either or both of 1986 (a big Tall Ships event) or 1988 (which was the year Australia celebrated what was then called the Bicentennial, 200 years since the first white settlers arrived in NSW). 

 

 

These Sweet kits are precisely that - sweet. There's no cockpit detail, which it could probably use, and there are a few other simplifications (like the winch mount). For that, though, at least if you buy from Japan, you get a very cheap and cheerful kit. The decals are great.

 

 

I have five kits in total, with now three completed. LOTR above is the Belgian Westland Sea King, a Japanese Sikorsky Sea King, and the RAN Westland Sea King. The remaining two are another Japanese one and the USN "66" from the moon missions.

 

 

It was a busy day at my 1/144 helicopter fly-in today!

[Ryan Hothersall]

My memory of the sea king was watching the same one you’ve modeled, putting on a display at Port Adelaide in 2006.