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Ok, here is/are my entries for the JSDF Group build. They're the two 2-kit combos of the 2011, 2012 & 2013 Kisarazu base anniversaries.

Depending on time I'll try to build as many of them as I can before the GB deadline.

I'll be using the Pavla resin cockpit set, originally intended for the Hobby boss kit, as well as the Master metal M197 metal machinegun.

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I was originally going to build the 2011 or 2012 one first, but decided to start with the 2013 Hannya scheme (No.2) to get my mojo going and get familiar with the kit, and any problems I may encounter with them. And as a bonus, the 2013 boxing includes the decals for the OH-1 "Kisarazu Yuzu", too bad there's no 1/72 OH-1 kit in the market to complete the four sisters crying.gif/>

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Here's a comparison of the Hasegawa part and the resin cockpit. It's a pretty good upgrade. The resin piece had the panel buttons engraved so I drilled them and replaced with styrene rod and stretched sprue to improve the detail. The resin had the front left control stick broken and couldn't find it in the box sad.gif I'll replace it with styrene rod later

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The fit seems it's going to be good. Just need to remove the positioning tabs inside the fuselage.

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I decided against using these resin parts, are they armored plates? One of them came broken and couldn't find it inside the box /sigh. The hasegawa plastic in't that bad and they'll be hidden behind the canopy frame once painted.

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After "improving" the resin cockpit I decided to make copies to use for the other kits. So here's another fit & positioning test. I removed the positioning tabs and another one on the sill intended for the plastic instrument panel. As for the resin just needed to shave down a bit from the front for the fuselage to close up.

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That's it so far.

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A bit of progress, or maybe not.

Now the first problem encountered. While getting ready some of the parts tha'll be inside the fuselage, I noticed this checking references.

Here's the original turbine exhaust

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And here's the JSDF AH-1S exhaust, notice how it looks shorter and barely peeks out from the fuselage. And from other photos the same applies to all other AH-1S used by the Kisarazu Base.

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I'll need to ponder how to tackle this. Tried to source an adequate diameter tube from materials or spare parts on hand, but nothing close. The original exhaust diameter is slightly wider than the opening, dunno if modifying the part or shaving it down will work. But at least solving this will help with the other 3 models down the line.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Looking good! What have you done with the exhausts to address the accuracy issue you mentioned?

Also, I believe the resin plates are armor for the crew seats. I have no idea if Japan used them or not.

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Some more progress.

For the exhaust, the solution was quite simple.

Just shaved and sanded down the detail on the can, and install it backwards. As seen on the next few pics.

The turbine face piece I just glued it inside the fuselage with some strip styrene to strenghten the join.

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I also hollowed out some engraved meshes, to be replaced with Wave's c-mesh for better detail. It's so fine it's almost like looking at stockings. I hope to achieve a see-through effect for the exhaust area like in some RL pics. /crossfingers.

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Since the cockpit was pretty easy to prepare and install, and while I'm at it might as well have the assembly line.

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Sometimes when I use a resin cockpit I have an aversion to buy and use Eduard photoetch. I wouldn't use most of the cockpit detail in it, and many of the other details I feel is superfluous, wasting most of a $20 PE sheet. So since long time ago I learned to make my own PEs to suit my own needs (there are tutorials here in ARC in the tool n tips section and all over the net if you search). I only used Eduard's instructions and sheet image as a guide on what I want and don't want to design mine. Made enough for the 4 helis, with multiples of some pieces just in case (usually to compensate anything lost to the etching acid).

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Some of the detail glued to the cockpit, here we got some for the front coaming and the HUD to replace the resin, which looked pretty thick and was a b*#% to clean up. Just gonna need to repaint the added PE. Also you'll notice that over the cockpit which was painted NATO black I picked out some details and the panels with black for contrast. It's very subtle but it's there.

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Finished the resin cockpit. Drybrushed the buttons and picked out some random ones in yellow and red, because the are plenty of reference photos of the instrument panels but not many of the side consoles.

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From looking at reference photos of the JSDF AH-1S, the seatbelts are grey on the back seat and the front ones are khaki. And as always on close up photos of a 1/72 cockpit it may not look perfect, but to the bare eyes it looks good enough.

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Getting the different parts glued ready to close up the fuselage.

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Fit is so-so even before adding the cockpit, the molds like many hasegawa kits are showing their age. About the cockpit, during dryfitting it didn't seem to interfere with closing up the fuselage but now that we're finally gluing everything I'm noticing that it will indeed affect the fit of the bottom piece and slightly widen the width around the cockpit which may cause problems with blending the canopy later.

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Oh well, while waiting for the putty I applied around the problem places to dry. Let's look at other assemblies. Applied the PE detail on the main rotor and bent it a bit with hot water to give it a slight sag.

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On this other angle I added a missing brace or strut to it with plastic strips.

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And here's the rear rotor with the added PE detail and some plastic rods.

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About my comment of superfluous details on the Eduard PE. Here's an example.

On the body of the TOW missile racks, only thing needed is remove the ejector pins marks. The Eduard PE covers it with a piece with rivet detail, but in my opinion they end up being hidden behind the TOW tubes as seen on the right, so it's just not worth it. Other things are just a hassle like the tiny tiny fins (less than 1mm in size) at the back of the tube, which will most likely fly off into limbo or be eaten by the carpet monster. Or removing attachment points and arming lever details around the tubes which would be a hassle to clean up, to add the PE, which just a few minutes of drilling and a wash would look just as nice. Yes this is just my personal opinion on what I want or don't want to add on my model, like adding some fiddly PE details 8 times is just too much vs adding some visible detail to the rotors just once, YMMV.

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A little bit of progress for today.

The underside needed plenty of putty and sanding, and some more. Also rescribed some lost or absent panel lines.

The two panels on the lower left of the photo, one with an antenna and the other one with two holes, were are b%#$ to sand and clean up and really got in the way. I think I'll make PE replacements for the other 3 helis, so I'd only need to sand the tail clean and glue PE on top.

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To align the skids, I took the measurements from the instructions which are well 1/72 scale. From those I made a jig to hold the skids and the fuselage level and stable while the glue sets.

Also notice that the area around the intakes, I start to paint it, since it'll be pretty difficult after the covers are installed over them.

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Also glued the stub wings and the horizontal stabs and the handle bars? on the tail. Be careful with the dihedral on the wings, the upper surface should be horizontal.

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The instructions tell you parts A5-6 and all E & F aren't used. But check your references first.

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The instructions and decals are given for 73461 as first option, but also includes numbers for 73459, 73430 & 73469.

Option No. 2: 73459 has the cable cutters (E parts) & hockey stick antennas (F parts), only problem with this one is that the skid legs are round cross section and not the oval ones in the kit. You'd need to either scratch them or reshape the ones in the kit.

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So back to option No.1: 73461 which, as seen on this photo needs the hockey stick antennas (parts A5-6) on the stub wings.

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And now the plastic representations are glued on locating pins on top of the wings, which the instructions erroneously told you to remove. The same antennas should also be installed on the other 3 ita-helis.

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That's it for today. I'm waiting for the glue to dry on the skids. Mean while I'm gluing and sanding the other little pieces but not gonna bore you with that until they're ready.

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Love the attention to detail and in proper scale too.

I ran into the same issue with the round cross-section skid supports when I built my last AH-1 (IDF/AF version) and ended up using some copper tube to bend new skid supports from.

Hasegawa 1/72 IDF/AF AH-1F Tzefa

Wow, yours is a masterpiece :jaw-dropping:/>:worship:/>

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Wow, yours is a masterpiece :jaw-dropping:/>/>:worship:/>/>

Thanks but apart from the IAF specific mods, didn't do much different from what you are doing and your detail work is very nice.

I couldn't make the angled main rotor work, so ended up tilting the whole rotor including the shaft, which is not correct.

The Master brass barrels really make this kit.

Let me know if I can offer any assistance at all. Looking forward to watching yours progress. I love the little Hasegawa Cibra and have more in the stash. I also note they are about to release the kit again as an IAF version with resin in the box for all the mods.

The paint scheme on the JASDF ones is very OTT but cool to see come together in scale.

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Took a while since last update

I had a mishap while gluing the little details inside the canopy. My hand slipped and smeared some super glue where it wasn't supposed to.

So stripped the future from the canopy and reapplied again. While it dried I worked on other parts.

Here I improved the detail on the rocket launcher's pylons with styrene strips and rods.

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Glued the little details inside the canopy, the PE rails, mirror and compass.

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While handling the model, I broke off the gunner's control sticks... /sigh. Had to use other spares. Also added the HUD glass. Last time looking at the cockpit before I glue the canopy.

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Glued canopy, puttied, sanded and rescribed. Also replaced the FM antenna on top with a strip of leftover PE brass.

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On the underside I replaced the other antennas with thinner styrene sheet cut to shape.

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I cut and glued the multi-directional speed probe in a vertical position, also added that other thingy on the mast, yes it's a bit overscale but even at that size it's so tiny it was very hard to shape and hold with the tweezers.

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And primed all the parts. The fuselage need a little bit more work. The area around the intakes I previously painted, planning to glue the covers and smooth out the join before painting the camo. But now that I think about it, I can live with the almost imperceptible join between cover and fuselage.

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Forgot to take pics of the cannon before priming. The Master metal parts are a big improvement and an eye-catcher. I also added detail like the gearing and some hydraulics with styrene rods and some cables to finish the detailing work.

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Well, just need to fix the putty work on the fuselage, prime it again, and then move on to the paint job.

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Done with painting the camouflage. Although I'll change the order next time. I started with black since I was preshading anyways, followed by the green and then brown thinking the masking work might be easier, but nope.

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Masking removed, but still needs some touch up work here and there. Also don't strictly follow the instructions. The port side intake cover has a black patch omitted in them. And the upper wing surface the central section they instruct you to paint it gray, but on photos it still got the camo pattern, under a coat of anti-slip coating or something.

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edit: now that I look at it, the Mr. Color C320 & C19 50:50 mix of browns given in the instructions seems a litle too light. I can live with it. But the next ones will use a 70:30 suggested in the Fujimi or Hobby boss kits.

After the touch-ups and hand painting some of the details I'll wait a couple of days for all paints to cure before giving it a coat of Future and start decaling.

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And now on the final stretch.

Decals applied. And it wasn't without its problems. First the Hannya mask decal didn't line up at all. Either you line up its features with the panel lines as in the instructions or photo references, but the holes for the door handle and step won't, and a bit of the decal will even overlap with some of the clear of the canopy. You could try to line the holes or avoid the canopy overlap, but I went for plan A, lined it up with the panel lines, touched up the holes with black paint and removed the overlap with canopy with a blade. Also you'll notice the hinomaru on the underside won't conform at all even with Mr. Mark Softer or microsol. Ended up melting it with Tamiya Thin Cement which helped it conform quite a bit, but decal didn't stretch enough and broke, so had to touch up by hand.

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Oil paint wash applied

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I had removed the plastic part representing a red light on top fo the fuselage and replacing it with melted clear sprue formed with a PE circle stencil.

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Here you can see the model almost done, just need final coats of clear coat. Also you can see the clear red light on top.

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I'd be interested in seeing how the front fuselage decals (the big ones with the girls) for the other schemes turn out, hope it's not going to be as troublesome as the Hannya mask one. From the photos it clearly shows the design on part of the canopy as well.

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I'd be interested in seeing how the front fuselage decals (the big ones with the girls) for the other schemes turn out, hope it's not going to be as troublesome as the Hannya mask one. From the photos it clearly shows the design on part of the canopy as well.

The 2012 & 2013 girl decals won't be a problem with the door handles or steps since they won't cover them. As for the overlap with the canopy, after it's painted and gloss clear, I'll print a copy of the decal on paper to use it as stencil to cut the masking over the canopy, then remove that little portion before applying the decal.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finished the first heli biggrin.gif

As a last note, I used the Hasegawa Trytool - Poralize Finish brown~cyan sheet to cover the sensor lens. It switches from Brown to green with a dark background, while it looks green/cyan over a light background or light source shining from behind.

Go check the rest of the pics on the Finished Builds thread.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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