1/72 Westland Lynx HAS.3

[wadeocu]

Here is my Black Cats Lynx. It is the 1/72 HobbyBoss kit with Pavla BERP rotors and undercarriage set which supplies replacement sponsons, wheels and scissor links. The decals are from the kit with the exception of the roundels as the kit decals were not the proper color. There are other issues with the colors of the kit decals that I left alone (some stenciling that should be pink instead of red and some of the shades in the lynx are wrong). I added seatbelts from tape, FOD covers made from lead foil from a wine bottle and some rigging with 5x monofilament tippet from my fly fishing kit. It is finished as XZ250 during the 2009 season. This allowed me to accurately leave off the torpedo rack as the kit offers a poor facsimile, but required sanding off the semispherical bumps (ECM equipment?) at various locations on the fuselage as XZ250 appears to have undergone some 'demilitarizing' for this season. It was, however, renumbered 631 instead of 635 which I did not change.

I built this model for my wife. She is employed by Rhodes College here in Memphis TN (USA). When the Black Cats were looking for a logo, some team members looked around on the web for something suitable. The Rhodes mascot is a lynx and they came across the Rhodes website and took a liking to the school logo. They asked for permission to use it which was duly granted. The lynx head on this helicopter is the Rhodes College mascot and logo so I thought she would enjoy having a model with this scheme for her office.

Comments or criticism are welcome. - Jack

Edited May 12, 2010 by wadeocu

[Shar2]

That is lovely. You should be very proud of a very well built Lynx..

[Royster]

Very nice work. I think I'd like to do this scheme at some point

[Spitfire31]

Excellent build! Those markings really look painted on.

A photo tip: use the manual white balance of the camera against a white paper. The automatic white balance (AWB) is prone to give you those different bluegreen and yellow tints when you change angle.

Best,

Joachim

[carlstavros]

Very nice, great detail for 1/72.....looking forward to seeing the larger Airfix ones in this livery.

[ChancerUK]

Lovely model, Decalling is very nicely done. Bulit the same kit last year and realy enjoyed it,

[OzH]

Wow, that is nice!

Really nice clean build, great work on the decals, can't have been easy!

[wadeocu]

Thanks for the kind words folks!

A photo tip: use the manual white balance of the camera against a white paper. The automatic white balance (AWB) is prone to give you those different bluegreen and yellow tints when you change angle.

Thanks very much for this tip Joachim! The varying hues were a puzzle to me. I will play with this option next time as I would much like to improve the quality of my model photos.

....great work on the decals, can't have been easy!

Thanks - it wasn't too bad really. Aside from some poor colors, the decals were a high point of the kit. They were very tough and easy to move around and cut. The film was thin enough to disappear suitably well. I used Mr. Mark Softer and, when the decals were somewhat dry and sunken into the detail, I used a fresh #11 blade and cut along the panel lines. The rivet detail was poked with the tip of the blade. I went over it with Mr. Mark Softer a few times until everything settled down nicely.

Cheers - Jack

[Paul A H]

Lovely stuff! I've got one of these half finished. I want to pick it up again now.

[merlin101]

Nice job! One comment is that the main rotor blades should be medium grey not black!!

Dave

[AnonymousDFB1]

What a beaut

[Tizzy]

Superb.

[wadeocu]

One comment is that the main rotor blades should be medium grey not black!!

They are actually very dark green but do appear very black in the photos; they are much more green than the photos here reveal. They should be med grey eh; oh well not many over this side of the ocean would likely know the difference, including my wife who will have it on her shelf! Next time - thanks for the feedback. - Jack

[Martian]

That's seriously cool! Well Done!

Martin

[Andrew]

Very nice finish, Jack.

Congratulations on a fine result and thanks for the pics.

Cheers,

Andrew.

[trickydicky210]

Looks great, just made this kit myself and really enjoyed it, and really imprtessed wityh hobby boss kits, so lining up a few nore in the stash. Looks like you sorted out some of the issues with the kit, hopefully Airfix will do a Black cats when they realese the 1/48 version later this year.

Rich

[F-32]

Love it, very nice indeed................must be quite a small kit to work on?

[Metallicus]

awesome scheme, love that bird!! great job