I am an avid helicopter enthusiast. However, I have found it difficult to find much info for th Blackhawks. I have found various forums, but they are very few. If I wanted info on a WWII warbird, I could spend months sifting through it all. It only took me a few hours to sift through everything I could find that was helicopter-related. Even FSM has only 5 issues since 1985 that had a helicopter on the cover.
I will start posting pics and info on my first attempt at building the Academy 1/35 model. I have only begun with the main rotor head and noticed how far off it is from the real thing. It is so inaccurate that I have taken time to learn how to scratch build prototype pieces, mold it, and then cast multiple pieces. I have scratch-built a new rotor hub, which includes the correct 9-degree dyhedral and 7-degree sweep. I have also built new spindles, spindle arms, elastomeric bearing retainers, damper mounts and dampers. I’m now working on the flap stops and droop stops.
I welcome any comments and constructive critisism. I know a lot about the Blackhawks, and have access to them. I have taken some pictures of various parts of the rotor hub during my model building effort to aid in accuracy. What I don’t know a lot about is scratch-building.
