1/18 Wooden AH-1F Cobra

Gallery Article by David Landivar on Jan 21 2015

 

      

Hi. Let me introduce you my latest wooden model and certainly the most amazing masterpiece I have ever built: The legendary Cobra.

The story of this model began on late December 2013. I must admit that a dream of mine was to build a wooden model with a crystal cockpit, but as the time went through it was just an illusion, since it was too complicated to turn the concept into real stuff. But one day I thought about Plexiglas and suddenly the once impossible idea seemed somehow feasible. Then one morning I took the challenge and invested some 200 dollars in buying a Plexiglas sheet to test the possibility of building a model with a clear cockpit for the first time. This decision was in fact a bit risky, because not only was my money at stake, but my pride as well.

On the other hand, it was long ago that I had not built a helicopter model and so I put an eye on the AH-1F, because it met the requirements of being easy to shape and its almost flat-surface cockpit made it ideal to prove the concept. With that in mind I started by shaping the fuselage and beginning to turn raw wood into a model. I started to play with Plexiglas but when I tried to join pieces together, no glue was able to do the job. At that moment it seemed the dream was over, because no special acrylic cement was available in Ecuador or was impossible to import.

I was kind of disillusioned and so departed my country in a journey to Italy for my PhD studies this March. Nevertheless, once in Europe things changed and suddenly the model stuff impossible to find was now off-the-shelf, including special cement for Plexiglas and when I returned to Ecuador this August on a research journey I was ready to retake the building of the Cobra. This meant going into the unknown as the cockpit science was then trial and error. So I built two samples of the cockpit: the test bed and the definitive. The rest of the model was easier to build. Additionally, I added some two pounds of lead counterweight cleverly camouflaged in the instrument panels to complete the interior and balance the helicopter. 

 

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For the crew I took a couple of toy soldiers and after some scratch build they were transformed into airmen. Additionally, a couple of bearings made the rotors fully movable as well as the M107 Gatling gun that I must admit was a nightmare to build. The nose turret is also movable and some panels are raised as in the actual model and I also grabbed the main panel lines. The tow missile racks are made with brass tubes and plastic as well as the rocket pods. The rest of the features are quite proven works: all metal nozzles and exhaust.

For the finishing I painted the helicopter in overall desert paint (after a whole morning of mixing colors the right way) and brushed the model with a flat coat after some weathering. I also made some of my decals with decal paper and Micro Set products for the very first time in a wooden model, but the shark mouth was made the old way, masking and brushing it for hours. This model is also special for another reason: It was built to celebrate my birthday and the 20th anniversary of the first time I ever tried to build an aircraft model on my own.

I hope you enjoy it too..!

David Landivar

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Photos and text © by David Landivar