Here
are some photos of the Italeri 1/72 UH-60A that I converted into an MH-60L
DAP from the 160th SOAR. I won't go into its history as that's
been pretty well covered in other areas of the internet and books that are
available.
I'll
preface this with saying that I'm generally not a huge helicopter fanatic,
but I've always had a love of heavily armed gunships and when I came
across the DAP Lima model Blackhawks... that had the shortened ESSS
pylons... with the fixed forward mini-guns... and the 30-mm chain gun...
and the sinister black paint scheme... I couldn't resist doing one!
Click on
images below to see larger images
Unfortunately,
there are no MH-60L kits available in 1/72 scale, so this was going to be
an interesting conversion to say the least. Luckily, Italeri
includes some of the parts needed to get there with their UH-60, but
there's a lot that has to be modified or scratch-built. On this kit
I had to scratch-build the refueling probe and its attachments to the
fuselage and landing gear sponson. The fuel tanks and ammo boxes
inside the cabin were scratch-built. The ESSS pylons were shortened.
The FLIR turret and radome in the nose were cobbed together from the
different noses of old bombs I dug out of my bottomless spares box.
The plume detectors on the nose and on the rear vertical stabilizer were
scratch-built from Evergreen styrene plastic and rod. Most all of
the external antennas and flare boxes were scratch-built from Evergreen
plastic and rod. The antenna on top of the vertical stabilizer was
cut from thin brass wire. The mini-guns are resin copies of the
barrels from the mini-guns in the Italeri MH-47E and had the rest
scratch-built along with their mounts. The M230 chain-gun was robbed
from an aborted Italeri AH-64 that was doing a terrible job at trying to
masquerade as a D-model Apache. The chain-gun took additional
modifying with plastic. I also had to drill out a few additional
openings in places that Italeri had moulded as solid plastic.
The
kit itself does not have the greatest of fit between parts, so a lot of finesse
was required to get everything lined up half way decently and then filled and
sanded without destroying other surrounding details that there was no way
around. Removal of the right side pilots door was required as it's moulded
with the right fuselage half whereas the left side door is a separate item.
Too bad Italeri couldn't have moulded both of them separately like they did with
the main sliding cabin doors.
Painting
was a cinch for this one... overall flat black on most everything! All
other exterior details were picked out in their respective colors and it was
time for the markings. Uhm, WHAT markings???? Yeah, there are not a
whole lot of markings to be found on the airframes of DAP's, mostly consisting
of airframe numbers in places, some artwork on occasion and "UNITED STATES
ARMY" on the tail. These are interesting on the DAP's in that they're
usually done in olive drab or dark helo drab giving the DAP's a kind of
'reverse-image' of normal U.S. Army choppers. There aren't really any
DAP-specific decals available in this scale, so I made up my own with my lazer
printer and white decal paper. I decided I wanted my model to have a
little character, so I went with the one that had "Southern Comfort"
on the sides of the engine nacelles. I printed a black surround to my
green letters and applied the decals to the kit, then touched up the edges of
the black surround to blend the decals in. Not the most perfect way of
replicating this, but it works if you've got some special markings that you
absolutely must have on your kit.
Click on
images below to see larger images
I'm
amazed at how well this turned out, considering it's my first completed
helicopter model in approximately... oh, about 22 years since my last one!
It was a little different experience from my normal aircraft staple, but was fun
nonetheless. Could've been even better if there were better Blackhawk kits
out there for this scale and after-market companies doing a better job of
filling in the blanks with resin accessories like they do for the larger scales!
(hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink... can I spell it out any better for ya????)
God knows the larger scale builders have an easier job (by way of size) of
scratch-building this stuff in their scales than us small scalers!... but look
who keeps getting all the dang gravy from the after-market!
Anyhow,
I know there's some mistakes and omissions with this kit, but I can live with it
as there's only so many things I'm willing to attempt with this scale before
letting it be as it is. Eventually I hope to showcase this one alongside
an MH-47E and an AH-6 in similar markings, but that may be a ways down the road
yet. Priorities, priorities...
J.C.
P.S.
- I'd just like to send a special shout out and thanks to Albert Moore for all
his inspirational chopper builds. I hope I've done you proud with this one
buddy!
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