Rick’s Airfix Sea King HC4, 1/72, Operation Mikado, Falklands war

[Geoffers]

Great work so far Rick

I like the idea of using Maskol to keep the part free from paint ready for gluing.

Geoff.

 

[Jakko]

Very nice work with that wire. I’m guessing it was fiddly

 

[rickoshea52]

Very nice work with that wire. I’m guessing it was fiddly

Not too bad once I got used to it actually.

 

[JMARC]

I took the plunge and had a go at replicating the pipe work for the automatic blade fold system on the main rotor head. Using a 0.5mm drill, superglue, tweezers and copper wire I knocked this up. Hopefully it will look better with a coat of paint.

View attachment 451663View attachment 451664View attachment 451665View attachment 451666

If anyone is wondering why I have only added one wire to a single blade this is because this blade does not fold, only four of five have the hydraulic pipe work. However, all five blades have a drag damper and blade sleeve which are fed with oil from reservoirs on the top of the rotor head.

CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCOOL !

 

[rickoshea52]

A dab of yellow for the main rotor tips and some blue grey on the rotor head, with a wash this will tone down.

 

[rickoshea52]

Some light weathering confined to exhaust, oil streaks and comp wash streaking then unmasking. The sponsons have been added.


I prefer painting the tail rotors rather than using the decals. First a coat of white , some masking then red. Next will be more masking followed by black. Finally I’ll do the rotor hub in RAF blue grey and aluminium for the rotor tips.

 

[adt70hk]

Rick,

Coming on VERY nicely indeed. That looks very good!

Agree with you on painting over decals for the rotas.... Only ever done one chopper and the decals were a pain!

ATB.

Andrew

 

[JMARC]

YYYYYYYYYYou getting there ... Keep it up ....

 

[Tworrs]

Another great book on the Falklands war which featured the Sea King extensively, is a book I have just read by Corporal Mark "Splash" Aston and Stuart Tootal called SAS Sea King Down. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
At one point Splash escaped the Sea King he was on, which had crashed into the sea, via the broken off tail rotor folding section, unfortunately a large number of those on board were not so lucky and lost their lives.

 

[rickoshea52]

Got this finished a while back and finally took some photos. Better ones to come later.

 

[rickoshea52]

I just received the latest issue of Airfix Model World magazine only to discover there is a feature on exactly the same cab that I completed earlier this year in this build thread.

 

[Waspie]

Give us your address Rick and I'll send you the book.
Best quote: On touching down and deciding to abort.
" It's Chile"
" It's f*****g freezing mate"
Jon.

As an aside, the crewman on that mission was a course mate of mine. It took ages to get the full story out of him. The cab was stripped right down, so as to get maximum range out of it. Great work horse the SK4.