Kitty Hawk 1:35 SH-60b Seahawk: Start to Finish Build

Modeling Subjects Helicopters
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As you can see I screw up with regularity, but I also have great recovery skills and lots and lots of persistence. I had a short session and kept working on the tail boom and the main landing gear.

The tail boom has a small vertical stabilzer that went on nicely. Needed a little filing here and there to get a close fit.

I then needed to back up and build the main landing gear. The instructions on its assembly are a bit sparse. The main gear housing (minus the strut) consists of a 3-piece sandwich. I built the first one after figuring that the two pieces I removed from the sprue didn’t quite make the whole assembly. Then I went to cut the parts for the other side and only found two of the three on the sprue. I didn’t remember cutting off one of those pieces, and after a thorough search of the work bench area and parts racks, was unable to find it. It was quite desparate becasuse this was not an easy part to scratch-build. I did a complete search of the immediate floor around the workspace, but nada. Then I spotted a beige piece of plastic across the room under my 3D printing bench. And it was the missing piece! I don’t know how this happened, but I was very happy that I didn’t need to fabricate a new one. And with Kitty Hawk out of business, I don’t know of any way to get a new part from them.

The strut is captured by fingers in the housing and, if the shock strut actually moved, could articulate. But… since the strut is solid the gear is fixed. I also glued the wheels together in preparation for painting. BTW: a large part of the filled underbody in the front will be covered by the large, round radome.

And we had our first snow of the season here in Da Ville. Winter has finally arrived.

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Wonderful! I love forums. There are always followers who have actual, real-world experience on what I’m building.

What color are the gear struts themselves. Normally they’re white, but in this case they’re always exposed.

I still haven’t decided on exactly what color scheme I’m going to use. There are soooo many choices.

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35237 blue on top

36320 grey on the sides

36495 light grey on the bottom.

Not sure those colors correspond with as far as model paints.

There was also a LOT of variation in how those colors were applied. But typically the struts were solid 320 grey. Sometimes they might have 495 light grey on the bottoms of the struts. The tail strut can be either 495 grey or 320 grey.

MIL-STD-2161B(AS) is the 2008 copy of Navy paint schemes. The SH60 series is page 166 and it can be downloaded. The NATOPS manual can also be downloaded and it shows a ton of information useful for modeling. A1-H60BB-NFM-000. But you may want to skip that one because it will show you just how much is wrong with the kit and you are too far along to fix some of it.

I’ve been waiting on La Quinta Studios to come out with their 3d decals for the cockpit and SO station. I’m also trying to learn how to vacuum form so I can make the clear shield for the sono launcher.

One problem with the KH kit is the main struts are wrong.

If you look down near the axle there is a small bump on the top and bottom of the drag beam. That is a jacking point and should only be on the bottom of the strut. The top side would be a nut.

Also if you look near the hinge you will see a small arm sticking out between the two plates That is the Weight on Wheels switch and is on the top of the port strut only. The stbd strut does not have it.

The wheels can be gloss white or 320 grey. Either is correct and can be mixed and matched. The brakes calipers are gloss white. There is also a brake line that runs along the strut to the hinge area where it comes to a large orange QD.

Also your tail pylon trailing edge fairing is missing the two MWS sensors. Not sure if they are in the kit as an option or not.

I was an AT (Aviation Electronics Technician) Pretty much all the electronics and weapon systems were mine to maintain. We were also required to be a plane captain which means you must know the entire aircraft from rotor tip to tail to ensure it’s flight worthiness.

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I downloaded the file you suggested. Thank you! Always great to have a follower with actual real world experience on this equipment. I’ve been studying a lot of pictues and some look to be the medium gray throughout. Some of the images show the vast variations in weathering that can be applied from sparkling clean to worn in various spots especially the underbelly.

This one is pristine! And appears to be monochromatic.

Here’s some underbelly soiling that could be added. It also shows the lighter bottom color and it looks like I’ll have to add that. Good view of the missile detection sensor on the EMS at the front corner. And here I thought it was another search light… The cargo hook in the belly looks like it’s painted light blue.

And another bird… Again, very clean… a little soiling on the tail boom. Also, panel lines are very tight and not very noticeable. Amazing extension on the tail wheel shock strut.

Here’sa close up showing just how clean these things can be. What is that red panel with the handle on it? Notice the Maverick missile loadout.

Another bottom shot. This one again shows the soiling esepcially in the low pressure area behind the radome. This one looks like the bottom is NOT painted in the lighter color.

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What a great resource. The last bottom pic looks lighter to me - you can see the demarcation along the boom. And the super clean pic has 000 - CAG bird?

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The first bird 456 is from one of my old squadrons. I actually worked on 456 but not the one shown in the picture. That one most likely replaced the one I worked on.

The cargo hook is probably a new one and in a pristine 320 grey. All the dark spots you see on the bottom of the aircraft are actually drain holes. A LOT of hydraulic fluid leaks from them. Also towards the rear there are two square holes which are gang drains for the engines and hydraulics and can get very nasty.

The HSM-40 bird is a training squadron in Florida. 000 is their “show” bird. Each squadron is allowed one “show” bird which get brightly painted. Those birds typically do not deploy. HSM-40 never deploys overseas. The missiles are AGM-114 HELLFIREs. The aircraft itself is actually an SH-60R. The red cover with the handle is an avionics fan cover If you look just below that cover you can see the brake line for the main landing gear.

The bottom picture of 712 does indeed have the 495 grey on the bottom. It’s just very very dirty.

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Great reference pics. One point though…

The HSM-40 helo is actually an MH-60R, they are no longer SH-60s. With the S and R models they are considered MH or Multi-mission Helicopters since they are used for many different purposes. The MH-60S is a navalized version of the Army UH-60M Black Hawk, while the MH-60R is the latest naval version. They can both be used for ASW, SEAL support and insersion/extraction, VertRep, SAR, etc., etc…

MH-60S info: https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/MH-60S-Seahawk

MH-60R info: https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/MH-60R-Seahawk

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My mistake. I got out just before the HSL squadrons turned into HSM and changed from Bravos to Romeos.

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No issue, times they are a changin’.

Here are good diagrams that show the 3-tone color scheme.

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Great diagram and good info of the updated models.

Today’s post combines yesterday and today’s work. Got the tail rotor built and wrestled the horizontal tail plane into submission.

The ResKit tail rotor has great detail, but in my case, the lifting rods (that control the pitch horn) just seemed way too short so I substituted them with 0.022" wire. Drilling the small rod ends was painstaking, but went ahead without difficulty.

Here are the four blades with the three parts attached: Blades, hubs and angled horns.

The arrow denotes on of the tiny counterbalance arms that broke off during cleaning. Another broke during assembly so two are not metal. Nothing attaches to these protrusions.

The four lift rods go between the spide and the horns. The arrow points to the kit part that just is way too short. I doubled checked what I was doing and couldn’t find a mistake.

The instructions called out exchanging the kit supplied prop shaft with another that was significantly shorter. Unfortunately (for me) I had already fully assembled the tail boom and that required this part to already be installed.

The solution was simply to drill the resin hub deeper to accept the kit’s pin.

Here’s the rotor in place without glue.

Next was finishing the boom with the horizontal wing. I glued it up according to the instructions. The actual gluing points between the side pieces and the center were ridiculously small and fragile.

After it cured for about an hour I tried to snap it into place with the two small pins protruding from the center piece that engaged into two holes in the tail boom mount. It was quite flimsy, and when I put it into the folded position the wing was completely in the way. How the heck did this thing fold?

As I studied the tail plane I realized that those delicated attachment points were actually hinges. The darn thing folds! This was not called out at all in the instructions, nor did I study the folded tail intensely enough to pick this out. So broke the previous delicated joints and realized their surface area could not support the tail pieces in the upright folded position. Instead I faked it and made some phos-bronze wire supports. They’re not scale nor prototypical, but they’ll support the tail pieces in the display position. While the main rotor is folded hydraulically, all the tail boom folding appears to be manual.

That finished yesterday’s work. Today I ‘hinged’ the opposite side and did some more work on the center section. I drilled it out 0.022" and then opened to 1/32" and used wire to make a much stronger assembly.

And here’s the end result with the tail planes in their folded position (unglued) that will allow the boom to fold next to the fuselage as it should.

Now y’all are up to date.

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I was torn on getting the res kit tail paddles but opted not to.

One thing you will need to add is the wire that go from the top to bottom of each pitch control link.

Also since you are folding it there is an indexer motor the kit does not come with that is under the tail gearbox cowling. It indexes the tail paddles to allow the stbd stab to fold. Drill out the hole indicated and put the rod sticking out of the hole. The rod will be about half the size of the hole. The head engages with the “crown” to index the paddles.

For the stabs and pylon to be folded you’ll also need to fab up the struts used to hold them. These are some drawings but not to scale obviously. Remove before flight tags would also be on the struts.

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Svt40 made a valid input and of course I never ignore valid input. The first thing I did today was add the wiring that goes from the pitch hub into the center fitting on the tail rotor. You can clearly see this wire in this image. This wire’s hole would have been MUCH easier to drill had I realized I needed it BEFORE building the whole deal, but I persisted and got the holes drilled. I am NOT installing that finer loop wire that goes from the spider. The wire in question is the fatter one.

It’s interesting to note that the rotor has no actual hinging for the pitch control. There are two crossed carbon fiber beams that go from the tip of one blade all the way across the center to the tip of the opposite blade. The fiberglass blade sleeves slips over these beams. The beams act as torsion bars and will twist when pitch motion is introduced into the. The blades leading edge are titanium and there is an applied rubber de-ice boot on the leading edge also.

Svt40 also pointed out several other small details that I’m going to add. One is the ehad of the rotor indexer. The indexer positions the blades so they don’t get damaged when the boom is folded. I put the motor shaft in, but his drawing also calls out for some head detail. I’d love to get a picture of it. My search today came up empty.

The other details are the removalable struts that secure the tail planes in their folded position and secure the boom itself. I will make these also. And I need to get some “remove before flight” tags.

This image shows the struts in position keeping the tail plane in the folded position. The picture also nicely shows the color line for the white/light gray bottom.

The strut goes from the movable hinge to the fixed hinge.

I put on the static probes, but they’re really flimsy and I constantly was bending and unbending them. They needed to be on becasue it would be awful to try and install them on a painted model. In this image you can see the index motor shaft. The boom is almost done.

Here’s a fold test to prove that YOU DO NEED TO FOLD THE TAIL PLANES FOR THIS THING TO WORK. The instructions missed this entirely was a big and almost fatal omission.

I kept breaking that rear antenna support. I fixed it at least three times and each time it was getting worse. I bit the bullet and made one out of soldered wire. Not exactly scale due to the round versus airfoil cross-section, but it ain’t gonna break.

We’re really closing in to the day when I break out the masking tape and airbrush and start painting this model. All in all, it’s one of the most challenging and complex plastic aircraft kits I’ve ever built. I knew it would be a challenge, but the addition of the ResKits really upped the ante. Some of the challenges were my own doing in fixing my mistakes. Others were just in the nature of the beast.

Any ideas for a carrier deck base for this model? I’m sure there are 1:32 bases. Would they work for 1:35.

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It is coming along great. Good additions of the prop rods.

For the deck, there is this…

I have one and it looks really nice.

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Some excellent work completed today. The wires you added to the tail are for the de-ice harness. Getting me motivated to start on mine. I just have a few M1 Abrams and an FT17 to complete first.

Here is a picture of the tail rotor index motor engaged. You can see how it engages with the crown on the back of the tail paddles.

Here is a shot of the rear tensioner for the HF longwire antenna. The standoff is similar to the rest except it has a spring loaded capture device that holds the wire and provides the correct amount of tension. You can also see the black wire from teh HF to the tail boom just in front of the standoff. The black triangle is a weight and there is one before each of the upper standoffs. The black wire just keeps it from flying up and getting caught in the blades if it were to break.

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The page just froze… so I’'m doing it again.

Those are great pictures and I used the tail rotor image to create a index motor head. I didn’t go the full route with the roller and pin, but it’s shaped so it fits the crown on the tail rotor rear. I was wondering why that part was shaped that way… now I know. (and so do all of you). Looking at this close up, it’s still a bit big and I can reduce it.

We’re at the stage of the model that’s equivalent to the punchlist phase of building a new house. The last little bits and pieces take an iordinately long time. Another thought I have is just how much more complicated the helicopter became when they turned the Blackhawk into the Seahawk. All the folding stuff adds mechanical complexity AND sensors to ensure that the flight crews knows everything is in the right place. Blackhawks don’t need a blade indexing motor.

I started cobbling together the tail plane lock bars. They attach to the hinge point on the tail plane and clamp to the edge of the center section. I added doublers to some styrene stock that I’ll shape to make the contours more like the real ones. They have to dry overnight since when I tried to shape them before they were fully dry, they didn’t like it.

I also had to add back a hinge point so it would have something to hold onto. The kit’s part disintegrated when I had to rip off the already-glued tail panels.

I started painting stuff! This is a milestone. I painted the tires rubber black which finished the smaller tail wheels.

remember I made some round masks for the small wheel hubs a while ago when I painted them white.

But for the large main wheels I didn’t paint and mask the hubs first. The tie-down ring protrudes from the wheel and I didn’t want to break it by masking on top. In this case, using the same dividers with one leg sharpened to a chisel edge, I cut the circles, but used the piece with the holes.

I then sprayed them a base coat of lacquer, in this case some Tamiya silver, and I go back and paint the while. The lacquer acts as a barrier and prevents the black from leaking through. I always put on DullCoat when I’m going to change colors and don’t want any blending.

The last things I painted was the exhaust chutes. I first shot the turbine outlet some dark iron and then went back and did the whole area with flat black taking car to not overcoat the previously shot dark iron.

This is flash shot (which I rarely use) that lights up the innards.

And here’s a non-flash shot showing the whole area. This will be masked to the proper outlines as needed. The last thing I did was shoot this paint with DullCoat to seal the black and make good base for the body colors. BTW: that chute where you can see a little bare color is the APU’s exhaust which would be in that part of the overhead.

I have to write a real punchlist to ensure that I don’t miss anything. It’s a relief that all the ResKit work is now complete and reasonably successful. I still have to solder together the rear view mirror brackets, which I’m doing tomorrow.

I also glued on the big radome on the bottom since it was time.

I need to build a base and want it to duplicate the surface of a hangar deck. I’m going to 3D print my own tie down cups. They’re available from Reedoak, but they’re expensive and I want to keep my powder dry to buy their 1/35 Naval Aviation service people.

What is the diameter of the modern USN tie down cup?

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The square opening behind the exhaust on the stbd side is the ECS exhaust. Basically the air conditioner for all of my electronics. It’s a light fiberglass brown color similar to the IPS ducting on the engine. THe square hole lower on the fuselage, same side, is the intake for the ECS and is the same color deeper inside but often times grey at the edges.

As for the tie down padeyes it all depends on what type of ship. I was usually on cruisers where the padeye is about 6 inches across with 4 bars.

Funny story about those. New guys tend to get hazed a bit and sent on errands to get stuff that does not exist. Such as a “padeye wrench”. Well we sent the new guy out for one and he came back with one! Turns out the padeyes on the cruiser were removable with 4 allen head bolts.

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I found a print for a tie down cup. It’s 9.81" in diameter and almost 4" deep. I drew them and will print a gaggle of them. I also am drawing a US Navy wheel chock set and the base itself which will duplicate the surface of a hangar deck. The models is a scale 60 feet long so the base is going to be 30" by almost 14" with 60 tie down pucks. Reedoak wanted $5.50 USD for 14 pucks plus shipping from Europe. It would probably be $50 just for the tie downs. It took me 20 minutes to draw them after I found the drawing on Google and the run of 20 will cost $0.25 worth of resin. I’ll print 60 for about $1.00. BTW: with the 3D work that I’ve sold over the last two years, the printer is paid for more than once, so any work I do is a direct cost savings to me.

These will be the modern 5 spoke design. They should print nicely. This is how they will appear on the machine when done (only upside down).

Here’s my hangar floor design. I eyeballed the plate and tie down spacing. I looking at a series of hangar deck images, it looks like the plates are 8’ wide and the tie downs look like they’re 2’ off the seams and about 4’ apart. Does anyone know the actual dimensions. I making it on a bias so it’s more interesting.

I’m also drawing a set of 1:35 Naval wheel chocks. It looks like the only sizes commercially available are 1:32, 48 and 72. Now they’ll be 1:35s also.

In the shop I did some stuff also. Got the tail plane clamps done. One of my fabricated clamps worked okay, but the other fell apart during shaping. I chose a different approach making it out of a solid piece. However, as you can see they’re not exactly the same. They’re on the underside of the tail and difficult to view. I’m calling them done. I also replaced the missing hinge loops on the tail planes that were wrecked when breaking the joints.

I touched up the wheel paint and the rear landing gear. I then went to work making a set of metal rear-view mirror frames. It took a couple of iterations, but got them built.

These small jobs are made very doable with the resistance soldering unit AND the MicroMark ceramic soldering pad that lets you stick the parts into the surface and hold everything still with T-pins. The metal is more scale in appearance than the plastic and a whole lot stronger.

Here’s the right side one being fitted.

And the left side…

And with the mirror housing installed.

There is a slight problem. When looking straight ahead the left side is hanging lower than the right. Fixing that (if I fix it) will have to wait until Monday.

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I Redid the left side mirror frame. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better. It really doesn’t take very long to bend and solder a new one togeher.

Painting has officially begun today with the masking of the exhaust channels. This was a finicky masking job because of curves and concave faces. After masking I coated the edges with clean to better seal them.

I was tired of bending and un-bending the static discharge probes and scrapped them and replaced them with 0.012" guitar string (I think it’s a B string since I use very like gauge strings). They’re tough as nails… well actually tougher than nails since piano wires is harder than most nails. And they’re very sharp and will getcha!

I broke my last micro drill, but 20 more are arriving shortly from Drill Bits Unlimited.

I mixed up a very light gray, almost white for the bottom color and air brushed all the bottom facing things including the undersides of the horizontal stab. This all has to be masked and that will probably happen on Wednesday.

I then I find these on the HF sprue. Looks kinda like the support struts to hold the horizontal stabs in the folded position. Too late. That boat has left the dock. I tried to remove the homemade ones, but they were just too well glued and I didn’t want to risk any damage. It’s part HE33 and is on the Seahawk-only sprue. There was no mention in the instructions or any information about folding the stab at all. If you’re following along with me and plan on building this model, now you know. There are parts to fold the stab, but they just don’t tell you. Now you’ve been told.

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Looking good. Thanks for the heads up on the folded stab support too.

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Thanks and you’re welcome.

Short session today. Paint masking is well underway. I decided, because of the way the side and bottom colors interact, especially around the sponsons and radome, that I would have to mask them carefully. There’s a nice seam line running down the fuselage length to demarcate the bottom and side colors.

To mask the dome I measured it’s diameter, cut it in half, set the calipers and cut the circle. I’ve described this before when masking the wheel hubs. This was easier since it’s easier to use the dividers as a circle cutter on bigger diameters. I have one point sharpened to a cutting chisel in the direction of the cut.

To mask the lower edge, again, measured its diameter, cut it in half and used that setting. I got a really accurate mask this way.

As seen in this image, the nose has a very specific curve also a circular shape so that too would get the dividers treatment.

And here’s how I did it. In the above it also seems to show that the gear legs are bottom color. Is that correct?

And then I got going on the rest using a combination of 3M Blue Tape and three thicknesses of Tamiya. I absolutely love Tamiya tape, but it’s more expensive than the 3M so I use them selectively with the 3M covering bigger areas. The curves had to be 3M due to the width I had.

I still have to mask the sponsons on the opposite side and then I’ll be ready to shoot some gray base color. I don’t think the bottom of the personnel hoist is bottom color. None of my diagrams show that.