Italeri 1/72 HH-60 Seahawk

[LudvigN]

Ok, so this chopper is finally arriving on the bench! Have been postponing it for a while because after closer inspection, the kit looked mediocre at best. Of course this was after I ordered the aftermarket items so I guess it's time to bite the bullet.

The Kit:
I havent got the age for this kit but it feels rather old and cheap. This I shouldve known because I got it for 5$ at a sale since the box was pretty beat up, but the bags were still sealed so I went for it. The decal sheet is minimal but that doesn't matter cause I wont use them. The kit has raised panel lines (doh) and very mild exterior detail. The fit of the fuselage is not very good and will require some time at the mercy of my sanders. Clear parts look fine though I havent dry fitted them yet.

Construction:
This version of the Seahawk look heavily pimped and thats why it caught my eye. I never intended to build the US Navy version of this helicopter. The swedish armed forces recently acquired the Sikorsky bird and when I saw it, I immediately wanted to do an UN-copter with in swedish or american service(Of course there are no such helicopters out there). So the bird will appear in white with the UN markings and some mild weathering depending on how the paintwork works out. I got some aftermarket resin from Armycast M&M and the Eduard masking set. In the future I see this helicopter joining my other 1/72 UN-builds (in the pipe) in a diorama.

The pics:

Have started some mild rescribing of the panel lines with walkaround-photos as reference





The masking and the resin parts. Havent figured out where they go yet. The decal sheet looks ok but Im not going to use em because I got...


The fit isnt excellent as you can see at these pics:




So that's all for this time. Hope I will get some time to work on it, cause this kit will really require some work to look ok. Cu soon!

[Drunkmaster]

Hi LudvigN, You doing one of my favorite machinery next to the Mi-24 and the Bell UH-1A. I also have this set in a cabinet, I am very curious how it sticks together and how you come out.

I keep my fingers crossed for this project.
I will be visiting.
Regards

[LudvigN]

Hi LudvigN, You doing one of my favorite machinery next to the Mi-24 and the Bell UH-1A. I also have this set in a cabinet, I am very curious how it sticks together and how you come out.

I keep my fingers crossed for this project.
I will be visiting.
Regards

Sweet, then I look forward to seeing your Seahawk in a thread on ISM soon and show me what I could have done better

[LudvigN]

Ok, heres an update. The build is going really slow because the kit is really horrible. No exterior detail, no interior detail. For interior detail, you get cockpit seats, dashboard (which is incorrect btw) and an extra chair with molded seatbelts. I know it's an old kit, but it makes me a bit put off to be honest. However, I do want to post this pic here just for laughs. I mean, nobody likes ejector pin marks, but these are just ridiculous. The placement, the size, dont know whether to laugh or cry.



So right now im scratch building the interior, which im horrible at by the way. I see it as a learning process!

cheers

[LudvigN]

Ok, so I've been working a while trying to speed things up with this helicopter. Im open to criticism and positive feedback so if theres something that you see that couldve been done better or any tips and trix, feel free to tell me. Heres a large pic-bomb:

Some dry-fitting revealed some more horrible fit issues, mainly with the canopy. Oh my, that's going to be horrible to get right.



Heres how Italeri want the interior to look like. Dull and empty to say the least.


Noticed that there was a big gap below the cockpit, and being a helicopter, it had windows to show you the emptyness below. So I just glued some poly on there and painted, trying to conceal the space.



Scratchbuilding is entirely new to me so I'm pretty horrible at it and its really hard, especially at 1/72. The seatbelts made out of foil turned out kinda bad, but I figured that you dont notice at that small a scale.





Dryfitting the interior



Painting the interior






Final assembly and weathering:




And there we are, now to priming the interior of the fusilage and painting that! Im open to criticism or feedback
cheers

[Yellowlazer101]

It's looking great so far mate

[LudvigN]

Ok, so after much grief I find myself a good bit through the construction phase. Here is a large WIP-Bomb for all of you

painted the inner roof and rotor with a dark metallic (the roof isnt visible, so it might look a little messy).



Painted the interior of the fuselage and made it look filthy




Glued the windows using "Micro Kristal" and painted the doors



Bending and priming the rotors



One of the more painful parts of this build, gluing the fusilage with the cockpit inside using Tamiya ultra thin and left it over night.



Sink or swim moment no. 649, attaching the canopy and masking it. Used some of the Eduard masks, but found it kind of useless so most of it is made by moi.



Have never dry fitted, sanded or used this much filler on any other project.




Started on the resin



And that's all for now. Don't think i'll update too much during the weekend, but we'll see. Cheeri 'o

[LudvigN]

Ok, so still struggling through this build. Took a long break from it because I couldnt find an opportunity to prime the body, since I have to do it when the rest of the family is out of the apartment. Here are the pictures leading up to that moment.

Brush-primed the resin and other smaller items


Some tricky masking going on.


A buttload of filler required for the exhausts.


Fiddly resin parts attached.


Attaching some more fiddly parts before priming.



The torpedo painted.


The wheels painted. I used the eduard masks for these. They were really useful!


All set for rattle-priming!


The priming went reasonably well and Ive started some slight pre-shading. This is a little experiment considering Im hand brushing everything. Will see how this turn out. See you on the flip side!

cheers

[LudvigN]

Ok, so Ive been working pretty decent with this kit, trying to finish this damn thing off, putting all other builds on hold. Did not take any photos during the paint session, and thats no problem, since the paint session was a true pain. The priming was done with Tamiya rattle can and the white is painted with Vallejo model color.

What I learned:

(Hand on my heart)I will not do another white UN-vehicle until I purchase the white rattle can primer from Tamiya so I dont have to paint that many layers with my brush. Hand brushing white over grey and not getting any brush marks was a real farse. Im pretty happy with the finish of the body itself, but the big problems reveal themselves around the canopy. The canopy itself had horrible fit, so I can at least not be blamed for that. But when I have to paint over the canopy 7-8 times with paint layers, the masking tape could not be removed without peeling a part of the paintwork. So I was left with some really rough edges around the canopy. I have marked examples in one of the pictures below.

Anyway, so here are a couple of pics:

Primed and "pre-shaded" with a brush, as an experiment. These might have shown through, if I didnt have to cover the model with 7+ layers of paint just to get a decent finish.


Making these look good was a real pain, and even worse attaching to the model. Had to amputate one of the stands just to be able to glue it on. At least I got my revenge on the kit, hah!







Difficult to capture the annoying edges on camera, but here they are:


Ze guns


So now I have covered the entire model in Pledge. As soon as I have time, the decaling session will begin. Also, the rotor blades and the rotor base has to be painted and attached. Soon finished!

cheers

[longlance67]

great work mate

looks great


Shane

[LudvigN]

Thanks, didnt realize that the white would be so hard to hand brush, even with tamiya flat brush and vallejo model color

[longlance67]

just keep the paint very thin and build it up slowly in layers mate

that should give you a really smooth coat



hope that helps


Shane

[LudvigN]

The decals have left the sheets and are now on the model. I took decals from the box-decals (these were nice and workable, but a little bit out of register) and aftermarket sheets. Also used a couple of old stencils for the torpedo. The session went well. The only issue I had was the aftermarket decals. They reacted very strongly to Micro Set and was extremely brittle. That shows on some of the markings, especially the UN-flag. The outcome was satisfactory despite this issue as it just adds some wear to the paint work. Now I just have some minor pain(t) work left and weathering so I'm hoping to put this one in the gallery section soon.

I did not go after a specific scheme. I used the box as a reference for the warnings and I also used the ID(04) of a swedish blackhawk. Otherwise I just freestyled it. I really would have wanted some more stencils since I was really in a decaling frenzy, I couldve decaled the night away if there were any more. Here you go:











Next up: Dry brushing cheers

[LudvigN]

Accidentally snapped the small rod that helps support the rotor blade...... F*******K!!!!!!



Dont know how to fix this. I think I will have to get a drill

[LudvigN]

Ok so this will probably be my last update before the model is finished. I used a black enamel(revell) wash for the exterior and citadel dry compound (Necron) to dry brush the landing gear, rotor details and the helicopter exterior. I find it very rewarding to weather a white vehicle as you can achieve so much with so little. The panel lines (re-scribed by myself as it was raised detail from the start) were a bit shallow at some points, resulting in incapability of containing the wash, however I think the result was more than satisfactory, if not better, with some mild gaps in the panel lines.

I might have overdone the weathering, but the idea is that this helicopter has been in long service at sea outside the coast of Africa, so I thought it was alright for it to look filthy. Next im going to paint, attach and weather the rotor. Then I only need to attach the final gun and windows, then its all finished (thank god)

The rotors proved to be a worthy adversary. It keeps breaking for nothing. I dont understand why they cant make more sturdy rotors since theyre so prone to breaking.

[LudvigN]

This model is finished, thank god! I will post some more pictures in the Gallery section when I get the model outside to a nice backdrop. Thank you for the kind words during the building process!

Final conclusion:

Do not buy this kit unless you're prepared for a real challenge. I was not ready for that challenge. The fit was overall horrible and the design of the rotor blades going into the rotor hub was truly weak. I must have snapped the blades at least five or six times before I was able to make them all stick together. Now, I dare not touch them since it's so brittle. The canopy was also a mess with bad fitting. I would not buy this kit again, but I'm very happy that I built this since I learned a great deal from it.

I took some time and whipped together a little base for it aswell:



So here it is
























Nasty ejection pin mark that I missed!

Thank you for following this build!

cheers

[AchtungPanzer]

V. good work with interior buddy.

[Keleborn]

I think you did a terrific job for your 1st scratch built interior, especially in 1/72 scale! That's double tough!

[MrModelling]

I've built this kit too and I know what you mean... It ended up in a "BlackHawk Down" style diorama

[UKguyInUSA]

After all the irritations you encountered during the build, you pulled through and made a great job of her, Ludvig!

Cheers

Martin

[LudvigN]

Thank you for your kind words guys!