Well, its an intresting helo, thats for sure. I got this one off Ebay, and being that I am an model builder, not a model collector, I built it. Its an old Hawk kit, circa 1967. This is a 1/32 Vietnam era rescue helo operated out of every airbase in Nam during the war. It was also operated in variants by the Navy and Marines. This one is a HH-43B Husky built by Kaman. The kit went together well and for being nearly 40 years old its a good kit. Fit was good, detail is good. The only downfall was the decals which had yellowed over time. I went ahead and used them, and I may or may not replace them later with new ones. right now though, I wanted to keep them on it to show the vintageness of the kit.
Ah, the exhaust pipe. First I painted the whole thing with Tamiya Metallic Grey. I have become adicted to the new Tamiya weathering kits, so using a foam makeup wedge, I “dry-brushed” the pipe with rust and then a little soot on the end. then I added some mesh to the very end to close it up. I agree that it came out way better than I had expected.
I am about to start building Testor’s Huskie H-43B and was looking for any messages on the forum relating to this model. I have not been disappointed as several modelers have commented about it and some have submitted photos, and for me this is very helpful as some of my questions have already been answered before I asked them. For example, I was going to ask about how did other modelers deal with the lack of cabin detail in the Huskie when built OOB. Other modelers have already drawn attention to the lack of detail in the cabin. Apparently only Cobra have made any after-market detailing set for this model but it is rather expensive. However, I still consider buying it if it is sold in my own country, the UK, but have had no luck in finding it so far. If that is not acquired then never mind, I will proceed to build the kit OOB. I wonder when did this kit first appear?
I’m quite a bit into helicopters right now, and what attracted me to the Huskie in particular was the unusual inter-meshing rotor system. Gear wheels are supplied in the kit to enable you to carefully turn the rotors by hand if you want to. I’d like to take this a step further if I could by inserting a little battery-driven motor in the chopper that would turn the rotors (but not go so far as to make it leave the ground, case it breaks). However, I may lack the proficiency and patient to do this out of scratch, and so it might not happen.
The H-43 came out in the 60s and was produced by Hawk initially. I pretty much ignored it until I had to fly in the things while I was in the A.F. during Vietnam. The name it went by was Pedro, but I never found out how it got the name. Not only were they used for crash rescue, they helped fly supplies to neighboring villages, do medivac flights and were used for base intel and defense work.
Since then I’ve built a few of them and always had a little fit problem with the canopy. I have a copy of the flight manual for those times when I build the interior. Then came Cobra and the interior detail set. Maybe this year I’ll get to it.
It seemed to have spread to every H-43 unit over there. Sometimes you have to wonder what Kamen thought of the name their creation was given. I talked to someone from the company years ago and he was not overly happy when I mispronounced the name of the company. I thought it was KAmen like the gator, but it’s more like kammon.
