I am part way through building an Italeri 1/72 UH-34D Marine Corps helicopter like the ones that ferried me around Vietnam. I am now facing the accurate painting of the tips of the tail rotor blades — two white stripes separated by a narrow red stripe. I’ve painted the entire tip white, thinking that the red will cover white better than the white would cover red. I seriously doubt my ability to paint that red stripe by hand; while masking the white with Tamiya tape seems difficult at best, it may be the best method. Your suggestions will be welcome. (I’ve searched FineScale posts without success.)
Your thinking sounds quite right - painting red on white should work. Masking off white portions also would be the right way to go. One potential problem might be paint getting under the masking tape, this is especially dangerous when brush painting, so using a decal might be a nice option here. My trick is to take a piece of decal (plain sheet or some unused symbol) and painting it red. After it dries you can take a ruler and a sharp knive and you can cut a strip out of it, and you say how wide this strip is going to be! After cutting you proceed as normal - dip the cut part in water, wait until the decal glue releases and slide on the model - the normal process.
I hope this helps - good luck with your “Seahorse”, I’d love to see the pics! Thanks for reading and have a nice day
Well, wow! That was easy! I took the advice to use decals to heart. I printed my own decals with Experts Choice clear decal ink-jet film, sprayed them with three coats of Mr. Hobby semi-gloss Topcoat, and voila!:
I’d actually been avoiding this step, thinking I would spend hours screwing it up, then have to go to Plan B, using masking tape and red paint. But it only took me about 20 minutes. Before joining this discussion board, I had no idea that I could even make my own decals. Thanks for your encouragement!
While I don’t say the helos you’ve seen didn’t have it this way, two days ago I got a vintage paint specification from 1971 and it states white-red-white. That’s also the way I’ve seen on most photos that show tail rotors. So I’d say Bob got it right - plus he’s also “been there, done that” and he had seen that rotor personally, too. So I wouldn’t want to correct him on this one.
Just going with what i know.All rh-53ds,uh-1ns,sh-3h,sh-2s i’ve seen had red white red tips,that’s all.Not trying to criticize.It just looked funny to me.
Ahoy Rotorheads. It seems that MIL-STD-2161 (various revisions) lays out guidance for painting Navy and Marine Corps aircraft. The following information is from MIL-STD-2161B May1, 1993. It is unchanged in the 2014 version. I haven’t located a more recent version. I note that the original post cited 1970 vintage markings which may have been entirely different from my information below.
Red-white-red, you say. Well, this is embarrassing! At least I succeeded in getting it wrong!
Even though I was in Vietnam, as Pawel notes, I had a lot more on my mind besides examining helicopter tail-rotor paint schemes. But that doesn’t explain how I could fail to note that virtually every image I’ve seen, not to mention the model’s instructions, clearly show red-white-red. At least I haven’t yet sealed the decals, so off they come. I should probably remove the white paint, repaint the rotor tips red, and make some white stripes. Lotsa fun.
The helicopter has actually turned into a “test bed.” I’m more or less pleased with some weathering I’ve done; the cockpit detail is my best effort yet, and I’m pleased with the canopy. I enjoyed adding a bit of extra detail — a stretcher and an electrical able — to the cabin. But I managed to screw up the nose light and the exhausts; scuff a window a cabin window. Both of the main landing gears broke, and one of the main rotor blades fell off after the rotor assembly was glued together. Somehow the flight deck got installed a slight angle (but it looks OK).
I’ll finish the one I’m working on, after correcting tail rotor tips, and then start all over again, with more knowledge and confidence. (I’d already bought a second model for replacement parts, and just a couple days ago a third one arrived.) Considering that the ugly old thing probably saved my life in Vietnam, it deserves my best effort.
Thanks to everyone for keeping me on the straight and narrow!
Ahoy again Bob. Don’t give up at this point. Doing a little more digging I found the following. Pic is an Army Ch-34 at the Pima Museum. Also, the army markings manual pages below clearly indicate in 1986 white-black-white were the specs. Your memory is better than you think.
Thank you, G. Morrison! I did find one photo of a tail rotor with the white-red-white stripes. It probably was an Army helicopter. But all of Marine Corps photos I found show the red-white-red stripes.
I wasn’t able to base my decision for the white-red-white scheme on any memory, nor on the kit’s instructions, because I have no memory of those stripes. So, to assuage my ego, I’ll blame my confusion on the concussion I had in my plane crash all these years ago!
I have stripped the stripes (!) and repainted the rotor blades flat black, but not without one more problem: with the first gentle swipe of paint remover, one of the blades broke off. I managed to repair it with crazy glue, but I’ll have to handle it even more gently from here on. I can’t believe how fragile some scale model parts are.
There! I’ve finally caught up to where I was earlier this month, when FineScale discussion board members pointed out to me that I’d got the tail rotor stripes on my Italeri 1/72 UH-34 D wrong. I’d painted them white an added a red decal, when I should have reversed that by painting them red and adding a white decal. Well, I’ve done the correct thing now. Here’s the result:
I noticed as well that I should have painted the opposite end of each blade red, so I’ve done that too.
Thanks to everyone for keeping me on the straight and narrow!
