and I thought I was a Sikorsky S-58 geek… [:D]
Hi Len ,
I’ll try and match the Army serial numbers to suit a CH-34C , another mistake I made was the Marines recovery helicopter was for the Mercury Spacecraft .
Thanks for the tip [Y]
John.
Yeah , I guess I went totally into the helicopter ‘dark side’ with these birds ; I forgot to mention while visiting hannants.co.uk , they also had these decals for the S-58…
I always like the picture on the front of Squadrons H-34 book , with the Belgian Air Force HSS-1retirement scheme, I also ordered a couple more Hobbyboss UH-34A kits .
I’ve given up on trying to correct the droop on hobbyboss’s rotor blades , the one’s that didn’t snap only ended up badly kinked , so i’ll leave the rest as they are .
John .
I was searching the net for images of the H-34 and saw this pic of a die-cast West German Navy H-34G
All of the pic’s I have seen so far , have shown the ‘Marineflieger’ [Naval Aviation] H-34G’s with the V style landing gear . Len Lundh’s H-34 book mentions that nine H-34G’s were transfered from the German Army to MFG5
I was wondering how accurate the die-cast model is with the overall aluminum / orange scheme and the markings , with the bent leg landing gear . Seeing I haven’t had much luck tracking down any more UH-34J kits with the V style landing gear , I was a little curious as to the accuracy as I would really like to add a German Navy H-34 with the aluminum/orange finish to my H-34 builds ???
John .
While looking through the Westland Wessex reference book , I noticed that the HC-2 and the HAR-2 Wessex helicopters have the same square shape fuselage cabin windows like the Sikorsky UH-34 helo’s .
I guess I’ll have to use one of the UH-34J kits and add the HU-5 Wessex nose to the fuselage to give me more accurate HAR-2 Wessex with the overall yellow paint scheme . The Wessex book also shows the duel pipe ducting under the fuselage , so I’ll add that as well .
I noticed that the Italeri HAS-3 kit has an option for an all over yellow RAF Wessex HAR-2 , however I couldn’t see any reference to the RAF using the HAS-3 version with the dorsal radome and horse collor on top of the oil cooler exit louvres and the fuselage cabin windows seem to be the wrong shape , so I’ll just use the RAF decals from the HAS-3 kit on my hybrid H-34/HU-5 bird .
John .
Yep, Italeri didn’t do their homework very well or they just really wanted to model a gate guard. I was curious about this when got the kit, so did some poking around online. The story I found is rather complicated.
The decals are for a company owned helicopter used as a gunnea pig for various Wessex upgrades over the years. When the Wessex was coming to the end of its service this airframe went to the RAF I think to their flying school and then to a local air museum. The museum painted it up as an RAF Rescue helicopter for display and apparently Italari used this aircraft for their decals as the numbers match up.
Aaron , thanks for the tip about the RAF decal markings , I’ll make sure I use serial numbers that actually match a HAR-2 version .
Something else that got me a little curious , was while searching through airlinners.net for images of the S-58 , I saw some pic’s of non military commercial S-58’s without the transmission deck covers . Although this looks kinda weird , it got me thinking about the way Matchbox produced their HU-5/HAS-31 kit .
The rotor shaft is molded seperatly …
Of course there would be a lot of work adding some plumbing and an oil cooler to the deck but it got me thinking about modifing another UH-34J and using the Matchbox rotor shaft as a starting point .
I like this pic I lifted from airlinners.net …
Coming up with decal options to suit commercial versions would also be quite difficult , so for the time being , I won’t put together the Matchbox Wessex , I’ll see if I can figure out some way of getting/making an oil cooler and piping lines ???
John .
I’ve been trying to scrounge up enough decals to go on a previous built H-34 with an overall fluroescent orange color scheme . I have some Numbers in various sizes I can use but I haven’t had much luck finding letters the right size to suit .
Something that caught my attention and is a little worrying is the fluro orange is starting to fad to a light pink color on one side of the fuselage …
I only airbrushed this helicopter about 18 months ago and I’m suprised how soon the color is fading , "I’m not sure if it shows up that much in the pic I posted’’ , I guess I will have to re-mask the Helo and airbrush Gunze H-14 orange , I don’t think I’ll use those Fluroescent color’s again .
John .
I’ve finished three more UH-34’s ;
First is a Italeri , U.S.Army CH-34C…
Next is a Italeri , UH-34G I for the West German Army…
Thirdly here is a Hobbyboss , UH-34D for the VNAF…
Here is a group shot ;
John .
Hopfully by the end of the week , I’ll have another three H-34’s finished .
I had some masking tape issue’s with the Air America S-58T and the RCAF UH-34A ; I forgot when trimming the masking tape that the outer edges on sides of the tape tend to be a little feathered to start with ; When I pulled the masking tape off , some decarmation lines where nice and neat but other lines were not , there was some masking tape residue in a few spots as well , so I have lightly sanded both birds and I’ll re-mask and airbrush the color’s again . A little frustrating but I’ll get there eventually…
John .
John,
You’ve got quite a fleet of H-34’s there. Really nice and neat builds. You’re fast too. The Civvie versions are colorful and I like them very much.
Keep them coming.
Cheers,
Richard
Excellent work, John. It’s great to see the different colors-and-markings combos so well replicated. The possibilities for S-58 and H-34 schemes are almost endless.
I know you’re mass-building for liveries, not detail, but have to point out that – thanks to the kit manufacturers – the tail rotors are all backwards.
Keep up the great work on these birds!
Len
.
Here’s one for you.
Thank’s for the kind comments on my H-34 builds , everyone .
I wanted to add a U.S. Army , Medivac bird to the collection , so I scrounged around the spares box and found some streatchers .
I tried printing my own U.S. ARMY lettering to suit as I didn’t have anything in the decal stash to use .
On this build I added a small wedge shape block to represent where the rotor drive shaft would travel through , I also tried to give the cabin roof panel a quilted look ; It’s rather basic but it’s a little more detail than the other H-34 interiors I had previously done , I got the idea from watching Richards amazing UH-34D build .
I also found some pieces to use for the nose antenna , bits from the Huey spares box .
The decal lettering isn’t as bold as I would have liked , but I really like the medivac bird so I’ll keep going with her .
John .
Unfortunatly I haven’t completed any more H-34’s as yet but something interesting I found out while using Tamiya Masking tape to mask the canopies ;
Until recently I always used the 40mm wide Tamiya masking tape and this year especially , I had a lot of issue’s with canopies not looking all that great after airbrushing and removing the tape . With the last three H-34 builds I completed , I started to use the Tamiya tape that comes in a plastic dispenser , 18mm wide , and I was really happy how the canopies looked .
To me it seems that the 18mm tape is a little more easier to work with especially when pushing the tape into the frame line edges with a toothpic . It also seems a lot easier to cut with a hobby scalpel .
Anyway I’ll be using and buying the 18mm Tamiya tape in the plastic dispenser from now on ,as it appears that I have solved a big problem I was having with canopy masking …
John .
I was a little curious as to how difficult it would be to scratch-build my own V-style landing gear set up .
I haven’t done a lot of scratch-building in the past as I’m not all that confident trying to replicate the real thing . My first try at the V-style gear is a little chunky in places so I still need to do a little filing with the sanding stick , the two main support struts are just sitting in place to see how everything looks .
I guess its okay for a first attempt , some more sanding and filing especially on the underside where it attaches to the bottom of the fuselage should make it look a bit better , If so I’ll build a West German H-34G III Navy version with the overall aluminium and orange scheme , I think I can scrounge up enough decals from the decal spares box !!!
John.
I had a second try with slightly smaller diameter rod [1mm]
I think it might work , I just hope the super glue holds all the joins together …
I’ll leave the two upright support struts off and glue the V shape frame to the underside of the fuselage and get ready to airbrush .
I hope this works…[^o)]
John .
I glued the V-style frame to the underside of the fuselage .
I have four H-34’s ready for the spraybooth
I found some decals for a German MFG5 Navy H-34G III , I also found some U.S. ARMY decals for my medivac bird
There is also a USAF and another VNAF H-34
I cut out an opening for where the lower exhaust was originally positioned on the USAF H-34 , I wasn’t happy with the paint finish on my USMC “Evil Eyes” UH-34D , so I lightly sanded her and re-masked for a camouflage “Kingbee” VNAF UH-34D .
For a USMC Evil Eyes bird I thought of doing this…
I’m going to add M60’s to the cabin windows and door opening , I found some figures to use like in the pic above and I’ll see if I can get a couple of pilots and maybe cut open the cockpit windows as well .
John .
Well I just discovered I made a really dumb mistake , I thought the cut-out in the landing gear frame faced the rear to allow the pipe ducting to fit ; However I was looking through a back issue of FSM [April 2005] , there is an article on building a SH-34J Sea Bat . I was checking to see how to cut open the cockpit side windows and saw this pic…
I guess I’ll have to carefully remove mine and turn it around , [:(]
[bnghead] John .
I managed to carefully remove the landing gear frame , turned it around and re-glued it back on ;
I suppose it doesn’t look too bad for a first attempt ;
Hopefully everything will blend in nicely when she is all painted up ;
John .