HH-3E Alaskan Air Command

[Helo 53]

I'll be building Lindbergs 1/72 HH-3E Jolly Green Giant and using Wolfpak's decal sheet 72-024 "Alaskan Air Command"

I started by cutting the cabin door from the fuselage starboard side ,

I added some 2mm plastic strip to the door opening to account for the saw cut and filing.

Next I cut an old CD plastic case top to use as the rear cabin floor

I scrounged around the spares box and found an old HH-60H cockpit instrument panel as well as a couple of cyclic sticks to use .

I made some troop seat backs from masking tape and I found some seat bases to use from the UH-1 Huey spares box ;

I airbrushed all the interior bits and pieces and next I'll start glue those parts in place

Here's everything all glued in...

I needed a bit of tamiya putty across the top of the fuselage but overall the HH-3E is not too bad a fit ;

Hopfully tomorrow I can start the masking and get ready for airbrushing .

John .

[Helo 53]

I was searching around the internet for reference pic's of my HH-3E Alaskan Helicopter and I found this site ;

http://usafhpa.org/5040helisq/alaskapics.html

There's quite a few good reference pic's of the HH-3E , including one which has the fixed landing gear struts for the main wheels .

Squadron Signal also have a pic of a CH-3E based at Elmendorf Airforce Base Alaska . I have some spare support struts in the Seaking spares box I'll have a look at to see if I could use to modify a second Lindberg HH-3E .

John .

[Helo 53]

Well the HH-3E is starting to look like a helicopter ;

There is an issue with the fit of the canopy , there is a small gap just below the three front windscreen panels where it meets the front fuselage ;

I can fill it with some evergreen plastic strip and putty to blend it in .

Speaking of evergreen plastic strip , I had a quick go at scratching up one of those fixed main landing gear struts on a possible second Alaskan CH-3E build

It doesn't look too bad for a first try , It may actually work out okay .

Anyway I'll fix the gap under the canopy and I should be ready to start masking .

John .

[Marlin]

Great Build you got there John.

What kind/brand of red are you going to use on your helo.

I think our Swedish fighters had that dayglow red markings during the Cold War.

That's way I'm asking.

Good luck with your build.

/Bosse

[Helo 53]

Hi Marlin ;

The Wolfpak decals I'm using also provide a quite an extensive history of each aircraft on the decal sheet along with which models are best to use and what conversions are required as well as the painting colors . Here's an extract from Wolfpak's instruction sheet ;

I may have to mix some Gunze acrylic reds and orange together and match it to the pic's I saw on the internet ?

John .

[Helo 53]

I came across this site last night while searching the net ;

http://www.rotorheadsrus.us/documents/231.html

I like the name they give this version of the CH-3E ...."Crazy Legs"

I also didn't realize that one of these versions was used during the Vietnam conflict .

John .

[Aaronw]

I always like seeing these ancient kits getting built. A modern new tool kit would be great but you are showing once again these can be made into a decent model with a bit of work.

On that canopy gap, I had asimilar problem with the Italeri OH-6. I found Micro Krystal Klear did a pretty good job filling it, and since it dries clear I was able to paint part of it, and leave part clear to blend the gap into the fuselage.

The fixed landing gear looks good, I've wanted to do one of these Carson S-61s for awhile but they also have that fixed landing gear. I'll be interested to see where you go with that.

Edited January 1, 2012 by Aaronw

[rotorwash]

I always like seeing these ancient kits getting built. A modern new tool kit would be great but you are showing once again these can be made into a decent model with a bit of work.

On that canopy gap, I had asimilar problem with the Italeri OH-6. I found Micro Krystal Klear did a pretty good job filling it, and since it dries clear I was able to paint part of it, and leave part clear to blend the gap into the fuselage.

The fixed landing gear looks good, I've wanted to do one of these Carson S-61s for awhile but they also have that fixed landing gear. I'll be interested to see where you go with that.

John,

Your HH-3 is looking great! I better get busy or you'll build one of every arctic/anarctic helo ever made before I get the parts off the sprue!

Ray

[Helo 53]

Thank's guy's , the build is going along nicely .

linden Hill imports have those long bodied S-61 in resin , both the S-61N and S-61L . I've been tempted to buy one a few times but hesitated at the $69.99 price tag . Although I seem to waste plenty of money on ebay on other stuff , I really should make a list of kit priority's to buy instaed of impulse buying .

Anyway Wolfpak's decal instructions suggest painting the landing gear , wheels and wheel wells silver , so I mask and did that this afternoon and also a couple of coats of flat black on the canopy frame lines ;

I experimented a little bit with some Tamiya acrylic X-6 Orange and X-7 Red ; I tried mixing equal parts of both for a International Orange color .

It looks okay on the stick , so I'll give it a go on the nose and tail boom first thing in the morning and see how it looks .

John .

[Helo 53]

The 50%/50% mix of Tamiya acrylic X-6 and X-7 for my international red/orange has worked out nicely ;

I added a little bit of Tamiya's "flat base" to the paint mix , so when I mask the red/orange area , hopfully I won't leave any masking tape residue as it seems to happen with gloss finishes from time to time .

Tomorrow I'll airbrush the ADC Gray (Gunze H-61) .

John .

[Helo 53]

I airbrushed the ADC Gray yesterday ;

First thing this morning I'll mask around the lower canopy frames and exhaust areas for some flat black .

Once that's done I can remove the masks from the red/orange area and give her a few light coats of clear gloss , then onto the decals .

John .

[Helo 53]

The painting process is complete

I'm quite happy with the finish colors , I just hope the canopy frames look okay when I eventually remove those masks .

Anyway I gave the HH-3E a few light coats of Gunze H-30 glear gloss and she is now ready for decaling .

John .

Edited January 5, 2012 by Helo 53

[Helo 53]

Seeing that my first HH-3E build has gone quite well and I'm up to the decaling stage , I'm keen to have another go at a Alaska Based CH-3E .

This may seem like deja'vu , however this build will have the fixed style landing gear "Crazy Legs" based at Blair Lakes Alaska 1974 ;

I'll cut open the side cabin door again and add a rear cabin floor , I also just found a couple of nice pic's over at FSM that another modeler posted a while back of the rear section behind the cockpit ;

After copying the pic's into the computer last night , I went back this morning to find the link but couldn't seem to get back to that same page . Anyway I'll have a go at making those equipment racks behind the cockpit and some more troop seats for the cabin as well .

John .

[Helo 53]

No decals on the HH-3E as yet but I've been busy with some work on the CH-3E "Crazy Legs" build .

As with the first build I cut open the cabin door and this time I drilled and filed the two fueling points on the fuselage port side .

Next I cut some sheet plastic the same size as the cockpit bulkhead and then drilled and filed out openings for shelves ,

The equipent rack should look okay once it's painted and glued into position behind the cockpit ,

I then turned my attention to the landing gear struts . I wanted a slightly fancy look to the supports struts , so I scrounged around the spares box and found some old Revell Seaking fuselage halves and cut the landing gear support bracket pieces from the fuselage to use on my Crazy Legs build ,

I used part of an old H-34 landing gear struts as extra support pieces as well '

The fixed style landing gear seems to look the part ,

Everything was alittle trial and error but I'm happy with how it's gone so far . I'll cut some plastic for the rear cabin floor next and work on the rear troop seats as well .

John .

[rotorwash]

John,

lookin' good! I like the way you scrounged up parts to make the "crazy legs"

Ray

[Trojan Thunder]

Wow, great job on both H-53s! I have the Wolfpak decals and I think I will have to drag my HH-3 out of the stash and have go at it.

Great scratch building as well BTW

[Helo 53]

I finally got the decals on the HH-3E first build this evening. There's not that many markings so it didn't take long ;

First thing tomorrow morning I'll gve her a couple of light coats of clear flat and then remove the canopy masks , glue on the last bits and post finish pic's

John .

[Winnie]

I don't usually build 72nd anymore, but these builds are giving me some inspiration, so I might just have to get some!

Looking good!

Cheers

Harald

[xmh53wrench]

Really nice work on the H-3, the seats look great!!...once I'm done with all my Air Racer builds, I'm going to have to build my old Pave Low III from my stint in the AF, 10923, MH-53J in 1/48 scale.

[Aaronw]

The first one is looking great, and I'm liking the fixed gear "crazy legs" too.

Did you ever figure out the extra fuel tank on the H-34? I remember at one time you were working on that. Once I'm settled again, I want to try and get King Pin II done for this GB, and it has the extra fuel tank.

I did buy one of the long body S-61 conversions, nice kits but like you say not cheap.

I intend to build it as the HM Coast Guard as provided in the kit, but bought it largely to act as a template to see if it would be reasonable to modify or combine two Seakings into one long body (I need one Fujimi kit to finish the resin kit anyway). The one I got does not have the fixed gear, so I will still need to put something together to do the Carson S-61.

[Helo 53]

In regards to the Sikorsky LH-34 Antarctic Helicopter , unfortunatly I still haven't figured out what the support pieces look like that keep the external fuel tank from swaying side to side ; There must be something there ? . My 1/72 Hobby Boss H-34 build stalled because of this issue , the kit is built but not painted as yet , I still search around the net from time to time hoping someone may have recently added a photo or two of the space between the fuselage and inner side of the tank but no luck so far .

There are some nice close-up pic's on google images of the the Carson S-61 fixed landing gear struts , although it's a little differnt to how the CH-3E fixed gear is fitted , it did give me a good idea of the size of the support pieces to use on my build.

That's a good idea on kit bashing two Seaking fuselage's together to build a long bodied S-61 , there seems to be a few 1/72 Fujimi Seaking kits on ebay lately , I know because I recently bought two more for my stash . One I'll build as an LA County Sheriffs Dept Seaking and the other as a VH-3D Marine one .

Using both the Whirly Bird resin conversion sets from Linden Hill imports . I settled on these two and thought I would go back sometime later when I had some spare cash and buy the S-61 conversion set.

Anyway I posted some pic's of the completed HH-3E in the finshed build section , I'm quite happy with the build and I hope Crazy Legs comes out as good .

John .

[Helo 53]

Not to confuse anyone about which kit I'm currently working (Lindberg HH-3E) ; But I picked up off ebay a couple of 1/72 Starfix HH-3E kits .

Originally I bought them to use as donor kits for my Lindberg stash of HH-3E's .

There are some negatives about the Starfix kit but there are also some positive's as well ;

The cockpit interior lacks a bulkhead behind the pilots but it would be easy to cut some sheet plastic and make one .

There are some nice cyclic control sticks and foot pedals , something the Lindberg kit doesn't have . The seats and pilots look a lot better too , as does the instrument control panel .

The two main landing gear struts need an extra support piece added ;

The engine intakes are molded seperatly which would make it easier to paint them black seperatly .

The main reason for me purchasing these two kits was the under fuselage hoist for external sling loads ;

I'll use this on my current build and the other one in the second Starfix kit will be used on a later "Crazy Legs" Vietnam War build .

Starfix also molded a much nicer main rotor housing , however there is no small bulge on the rear left side of the rotor housing depicting the APU unit .

Although a little tamiya putty sanded to shape could fix that ;

The fuselage halves are completly smooth , no rivet detail or scribe lines at all . I have one of those inexpensive trumpeter rivet tools , I could always practice using it on these two kits .

The canopy arrange is certainly something different to what Lindberg and Revell offer with their HH-3E kits but at least ther is no 2mm gap under the front canopy like Lindberg leave you with .

The external fuel tanks look completely wrong , however I've decided to build these two as early CH-3C versions , one silver overall and the other ADC gray over white . That way I can dispense with the external tanks .

So , at least I now have the under fuselage hoist for my current CH-3E build , I'm not sure how accuarte the molded piece is but it looks the part and it's better than anything I could scratch build so I'm happy using it .

John .

[Helo 53]

Well I've been eye-balling the Starfix kit and looking at the inaccuracies to see what would be needed to do to correct a couple of things . As I'm now thinking of using the Starfix HH-3E as the base kit for my Crazy legs CH-3E build .

One of the main faults with the kit is the size of the cockpit overhead tinted windows . Starfix made theirs too narrow in width , so I have two spare Lindberg canopies and decided to carefully cut the two top overhead panels out and then file the window openings bigger on the starfix fuselage to accommodate the slightly wider linberg pieces ;

This seemed to work out okay ;

So now I have settled on using the Starfix kit instead of Lindbergs ;

Next I cut open the fuselage side door and added some plastic strip to the door edges to make up for the saw cut and filing . The I decided to cut open the pilots side cockpit windows and pose them in the open position ;

While doing this I suddenly discovered that I made a mistake on my first Alaskan HH-3E build , in that Lindberg didn't mold a raised panel frame line down the middle on their pilot side canopy windows and I went and looked at my finished build and I can see the error . I can remask both sides of the canopy and airbrush a frame line and fix the error .

Anyway I continued on with the Starfix kit and cut the rear ramp open and I have just cut some plastic sheet for two cockpit bulkheads , one behind the pilots and the other I'll file some openings to represent the equipment rack . The one I had already made for the Linberg kit is 2mm too wide for the Starfix fuselage , so I'll just make another one ;

So that's about it so far , I will use some spare Linberg rotors and tail rotor because their's a little nicer than the ones Starfix offer . Sorry about swapping and changing things around so much but hopfully it will all work out .

John .

Edited January 11, 2012 by Helo 53

[Amen]

Excellent work John very creative.

[Aaronw]

I think this is the first time I've actually seen the Starfix kit. It does seem to have the nose shape better than the Lindberg kit. The Lindberg nose looks too pointed to me. It will be interesting to see thetwo side by side.