1-72
Italeri Hughes H-500M
by
--------------------
|
Steve Bamford
will insert full sized version of photo 01.jpg here |
Hello, fellow modelers.
This time I’d like to share with you my
third helicopter gallery article at ARC, on the tiny Italeri
1-72 scale Hughes H-500M, in the ultramarine blue early livery of the Spanish
Navy (Armada Española.)
Although Italeri
has been widely praised for their helicopter models, this particular kit has
several shortcomings, namely:
§ The OH-6A Cayuse version
can’t be done out of the box, because the rear door windows are too big and misshaped,
while the rear roof windows are too small for this version. This fact leaves
the OOB modeler with two marking options: the one from the Spanish Navy, and
other from the Italian border police (Guardia Di Finanza.)
Nevertheless, the kit does include decals and guns for an OH-6A of the U. S.
Army.
§ The cockpit structure is about
§ The door windows are very thin, and thus also very
fragile. I made several little cracks on the port rear window when I was
removing it from its sprue. (I don’t imagine myself
working with one of those delicate vac-formed
canopies.)
§ The door windows are somewhat bigger than the openings
were they are going to be glued, so one has to file each opening and check the
fit several times until each opening becomes big enough for its corresponding
window. In this process the delicate windows can be marred. I think it would
have been wiser to mold the doors and their windows together as clear parts. It
would also make it possible to pose any door opened, not only the port front
one as I did.
§ The instructions have several mistakes, the most
important are: the location of the tail surfaces is wrong (they should be glued
at the very end of the tail boom, and protruding about
On the plus side, the cockpit interior
is well detailed for the scale, and the fuselage is well detailed with tiny
raised rivets.
|
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 03.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 03.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 04.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 04.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 05.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 05.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 06.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 06.jpg |
I chose to build the spanish
version because I haven’t build a spanish
subject before, and because I love ultramarine blue. At first instance I
planned to build my model OOB, but as soon as I found pictures of the full size
chopper on a number of the Fuerza Aérea magazine from Spain, and later at the Internet, I
decided to add several details particular to the spanish version that the Italeri
kit missed, specifically:
§
A small
structure located at the chin of the fuselage that holds the bottom formation
light.
§
The
bottom and top formation lights.
§
The
upper cable cutter.
§
The pitot tube (common to all versions.)
§ A box-shaped structure that goes below the tail boom
and holds an antenna, and the antenna itself.
Al these items were scratchbuilt
from spare plastic, except the pitot tube and the
antenna, which at first trial were fabricated from thin flexible copper wire,
but the antenna was later replaced with one made of a leftover piece of my
son’s electric guitar thinnest string wire, which is stiffer and therefore
keeps its shape. I also made the red tail-rotor chevrons from one of the OH-6A
version decals, and opened a hole in front of the cockpit canopy to represent
the ventilation intake, though I didn’t represent the inner ducting.
Unfortunately, when the model was nearly finished I accidentally pushed the pitot tube little wire into the
cockpit through the hole I previously drilled to attach it, and I couldn’t
recover it, so now the pitot tube isn’t outside the
helicopter, as it should be.
|
Steve Bamford will insert
full sized version of photo 02.jpg here |
Through my research I found that Spanish
Navy’s Hughes 500M earlier choppers didn’t have the inflatable flotation
devices that go over each one of the landing skids of later versions. As I’m
still not very confident with my scratchbuilding
skills, I decided to leave these devices off. Therefore, my model had to be
painted as one of the earlier spanish choppers.
Fortunately, the serial number provided with the kit decals (01-602) corresponds
to this early version, and I could use photographs of ‘01-
’01-
My photographic references show that the
instructions for the painting of the tail rotor and for the location of the
Spanish Navy’s insignia decals were wrong, as were the instructions for the
painting of the tail rotor from the Italian version. Furthermore, the instructions
didn’t indicate that the navigation lights for the early spanish version were located at the very tips of the
boarding steps. These lights are very tiny and barely can be appreciated in the
photographs.
The kit’s intructions
recommends using Gun Metal for the main rotor head and the tail rotor axle. In
my photographic references the correct color can hardly be determined, so I
followed the instructions. I used Humbrol Metal Cote
Gun Metal, which can be applied with a brush and then polished with cotton
buds, and with a small stiff brush for hard to reach areas. I really like the
contrast between Gun Metal and flat black near the main rotor head!
I made a mistake by painting the roof
windows Tamiya clear green, after the kit’s recommendation of using opaque bright
green. I now think that these windows would be better painted with at least two
coats of clear smoke, because the photographs show a very dark brown shade.
Although I applied clear smoke over clear green, the green shade still shows.
In conclusion, although the build wasn’t
free from mistakes, fit problems and accidents, I’m very satisfied with the
outcome of my humble researching, building, painting and scratchbuilding
efforts, and I’m also happy for having at last a
Spanish aircraft in my collection.
I dedicate this model to my cousin Ubaldo Rivas Sucre, who for a long time flew Hughes 500 helicopters
while working as aerial school-of-fish spotter for tuna fishing ships, and who
by the way has been living in Spain for several years.
Greetings from Caracas, Venezuela, a
country where nowadays a ½ oz. bottle of enamel paint costs the equivalent of
31.74 US dollars (computed at the official Venezuelan exchange rate.) Just try
to imagine the cost of one of those recent big 1/200 scale battleship kits or a
good dual action airbrush, if you can find one here!
Orlando Sucre Rosales
|
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 07.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 07.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 08.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 08.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 09.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 09.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 10.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 10.jpg |
|
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 11.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 11.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert a
click-able smaller version of photo 12.jpg here. Clicking on that photo will
bring up the full sized version of photo 12.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 13.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 13.jpg |
Steve Bamford will insert
a click-able smaller version of photo 14.jpg
here. Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 14.jpg |
Photos and text ©
by Orlando Sucre Rosales