The kits: Hobby Boss 1/48 UH1-C "Easy Assembly kit" and Revell 1/48 Huey Hog.
The Hobby Boss kit is a pretty nice improvement over the vintage Revell one. Nice recessed panel lines and crisp molding. That being said it has a few drawbacks. Due to it's being an "easy assembly" kit, the designers have left the all the doors closed with very little interior detail. Moreover the kit comes with no weapons or ordnance. And upon further research, I discovered that the rotor blades are not the 27" ones used on the Hogs. What to do? The Revell kit provides a lot of parts that could be used to enhance the build. And the rotor blades are the correct ones. Viola! a kit bash.
A lot of builders would be quite satisfied to stop with that - a simple kit bash. But hey, why should I limit my imagination? Why do those doors have to remain closed? The Revell kit has a complete set of doors. A little styrene surgery, and those molded doors could easily come off. But will I be opening Pandora's box in doing so? Once they're open, the empty interior will be fully visible. The Revell kit has a few interior pieces that I could transfer over, but most of it will have to be completely scratch built. And so begins my journey . . .
Here's the Hobby Boss hull/fuselage (forgive my lack of helicopter terminology). Everything is molded on: doors, hatches, and screen vents. The kit is a tail sitter, so I threw in a few "weights" to keep her looking smart for the photo shoot
The first thing to go will be the doors. Once cut, I will later reattach the Revell doors in the open position. There's no need to worry about cutting out doors. It's a lot easier than you might think. I always start by locating the four corners of the open space. In this case, I marked them on the inside of the fuselage. I made my holes 1-2mm away from the outside edge. This ensures that my edge will be safe from damage from the Dremel. Using a drill bit, make your holes for each of the corners. Then connect each corner with a series of holes. Be sure to use fresh drill bits, as old ones will melt rather than cut through the plastic.
Once all the holes have been made, I just made a quick pass with the Dremel, cutting through all the holes. This will leave quite a jagged and messy appearance.
From this point on, I used my knife to trim away the remaining pieces of the door, making sure to leave just a little behind. The last remnants will be filed off with jewelers files. Because the doors are molded on, there were a few parts of the door that could be neither cut or filed away. I used a grinding bit and sandpaper to reduce the plastic until it was flush with the hull. Here is the final result.
I think this is a good place to stop.
