Sikorsky HNS-1 USCG

[Aaronw]

The Sikorsky HNS-1 (R-4) was the first helicopter used by the USCG. I'll be doing a post war HNS-1 in the USCG's overall chrome yellow. I'm using the MPM 1/72 R-4 kit with custom decals.

[Helo 53]

Hi Aaron ;

I hope you dont mind me asking , but where did you buy the Sikorsky R-4 kit .

I just gotta get me one of those .

John

[Aaronw]

I couldn't find one anywhere, but finally got one off of ebay last year. They are not particularly expensive (I think I paid around $20) but don't pop up very often.

If scale doesn't matter to you, the 1/48 Special Hobby kit is much easier to find.

[Remington Box]

If you need any help with the decals.. let me know... I am in decal printing mode at the moment.

[Wayne S]

Interesting subject bud :)

[Aaronw]

Thanks, but the decals will be pretty simple. These things didn't have much beyond United States Coast Guard and the National Insignia on them.

I think they were counting on "if its yellow and flies without wings it is on our side" ;)

In reality I don't think they were much more than semi-operational experimental and training aircraft, although one did become the first to rescue someone from a ship while using a winch.

[Remington Box]

How in the world can more than one person even fit in that thing? Actually, how big is it?

[Wayne S]

How in the world can more than one person even fit in that thing? Actually, how big is it?

Big enough I guess. They must have been hard to land by looking at the landing gear.

[Aaronw]

It is a two seater but it sounds like in a pinch they could cram 3 in. Some of the first rescues occured in Burma during WW2, and it sounds like they rescued more than 1 on a few occasions, looking at it I imagine that meant riding in someones lap. It's not real big, similar in size to a Bell 47 but maybe narrower.

It also wasn't unusual for the next generation of helicopters that followed (Sikorsky H-5, Piasecki HUP etc) to fly with just a pilot and after winching the victim up flying home with the guy dangling on the cable. There is a scene in The Bridges of Toko-Ri where the crewman has to jump out to help the pilot into the horseshoe. The helicopter flies off with the pilot hanging from the winch and the crewman has to wait for the second helo to pick him up. The HUP actually had a door in the floor so the pilot could look right down at the victim and winch him into the helicopter (the door was under the co-pilots seat).

Well I have had a little progress, I've got the cockpit assembled and am working on the fuselage (the cockpit slides in after the fuselage is done). Not having the best of lick painting the fuselage I had forgotten how much fun yellow was to paint. Hope to get some photos tonight so I'll have something to show.

I couldn't believe my luck the other night, on a whim I checked ebay and managed to snag another one of these kits. After playing with the vacform canopy though I won't be adding a second one of these to my built pile for awhile. The pieces are not too bad but the instructions are not too great and it is not always obvious where I'm supposed to be cutting. So far no problems but I'm constantly worried I'm going to cut something I'm not supposed to and they don't provide a spare canopy.

[Aaronw]

Well not a lot to show but progress is progress.

The tailboom was fun, it took a ton of cleanup to get it looking half decent, kind of like paint by numbers but with plastic and an exacto knife. After I got it cleaned up I still had to figure out how it went together (it was two oddly shaped pieces, with no positive mounting location on the fuselage.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Aaronw

[Wayne S]

Looking good bud. How big is she in 1/72nd? She must be small, looking at the specs she is about the length of the OH-6, just a bigger rotor diameter, and a tad taller.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Wayne S

[Aaronw]

Nose to tail about 6" long, much bigger than an OH-6, it is actually almost exactly the same size as the HH-65. When I take my next set of progress pics I'll park it next to a some other aircraft, to give it some scale.

Not really a whole lot to them, a fabric covered metal framework, a pair of seats, a radial motor and fuel. It might be the same size as the HH-65 but it weighs 1/2 as much and only has 1/8 the load carrying capacity.

[Wayne S]

Nose to tail about 6" long, much bigger than an OH-6, it is actually almost exactly the same size as the HH-65. When I take my next set of progress pics I'll park it next to a some other aircraft, to give it some scale.

Not really a whole lot to them, a fabric covered metal framework, a pair of seats, a radial motor and fuel. It might be the same size as the HH-65 but it weighs 1/2 as much and only has 1/8 the load carrying capacity.

I wonder if she is large for the scale then. Should be about a foot or so longer then a OH-6. Wiki shows the R-4b at 33ft. HH-65 is 38ft.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Wayne S

[Aaronw]

I find helicopter measurements can be inaccurate due to an apples to oranges comparison. I've found more than one that lists length, but in one case is measuring from the tip of the rotor to the tail, and in another just length of the fuselage. This is not always the case, but I've found it frequently enough to question "length". I've run across it occasionally with tanks too, sometimes they give the length of the hull other times from the muzzle of the gun to the back of the tank.

I don't have a built OH-6 but looking at the sprues of Italeri OH-6 to this one, the OH-6 is only about 2/3 the length. Since the R-4 is just over 5.5" that would make it around 33-35 feet. I just checked a couple of other sites, Federation of American Scientists specifically lists the fuselage of the OH-6 at 25 feet, and gives over all length 31 feet, so it looks like Wiki is using the overall length on the OH-6 and the Fuselage length for the R-4. Another site gives the R-4s fuselage length as 35 1/2 feet. I've found 38 and 44 feet listed for the HH-65 so the Wiki measurement on the HH-65 is also probably fuselage length.

[Wayne S]

I find helicopter measurements can be inaccurate due to an apples to oranges comparison. I've found more than one that lists length, but in one case is measuring from the tip of the rotor to the tail, and in another just length of the fuselage. This is not always the case, but I've found it frequently enough to question "length". I've run across it occasionally with tanks too, sometimes they give the length of the hull other times from the muzzle of the gun to the back of the tank.

I don't have a built OH-6 but looking at the sprues of Italeri OH-6 to this one, the OH-6 is only about 2/3 the length. Since the R-4 is just over 5.5" that would make it around 33-35 feet. I just checked a couple of other sites, Federation of American Scientists specifically lists the fuselage of the OH-6 at 25 feet, and gives over all length 31 feet, so it looks like Wiki is using the overall length on the OH-6 and the Fuselage length for the R-4. Another site gives the R-4s fuselage length as 35 1/2 feet. I've found 38 and 44 feet listed for the HH-65 so the Wiki measurement on the HH-65 is also probably fuselage length.

Yeah, looks like 33ft is fuselage length. I found two sites with two lengths for the R-4B. Stated 33ft fuselage other length was 48.6.

So total length should put her just a tad over 8 inches.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Wayne S

[Aaronw]

I think many of the early helicopters are deceptively large, I know I was quite surprised by the size of the Bell 47 when I actually saw one in person. You think something that only carries 2 maybe 3 guys is going to be small, heck even an OH-6 can carry 4.

The engines were larger and I think the rotors compensated for the lower power ratings by being longer. As a result the tail booms had to be longer to get that tail rotor out of the rotor span.

We get a Lama here quite often, and it is the same way, it has that big rotor disk for high altitude performance so it has this long erector set looking tail boom, but the actual helicopter is just a bubble for 4 or 5 people, a big fuel tank and a big turbine. It looks so flimsy that it is hard to believe it is the record breaking workhorse that it is.