1/35th MH-65D USCG Kodiak, Alaska

Greetings all! I built Trumpeter's 1/35th scale US Coast Guard HH-65 kit upgrading it into a MH-65D from Coast Guard Station Kodiak, Alaska. I have a love/hate relationship with Trumpeter-I love that they are doing subjects that no one else is-especially modern armor-but there always seems to be something off about their kits. The fit of this kit was great. Until it wasn't. The windscreen up front has a sort of locking/pop in fit that took forever to get right when a simple lip would have worked fine. Ultimately I got it to work and did not even need to use any adhesive, but I had to sand/polish the parts several times and this fit problem threated to tank the whole enterprise. I ditched the completely fictional (for a USCG helo) interior and scratch built my own. I updated the antenna suit for a MH-65D and added screens from Alliance Modelworks to the intakes. For anyone needing figures or crews for check out Reedoak, I can't say enough about how excellent their figures are! I used Reedoaks US Army pilots and crew, modifying the seats of the pilots to look more appropriate and doing a little carving to make 2-piece flight suits into 1-piece flight suits. Again Trumpeter strikes again, the co-pilot door not having the lower clear window, they are missing the rather prominent pitot tubes on the nose, missing door handles, mast sensor, tail light-all off which weren't too hard to add so I'll quit whining. After all they did bring this kit to life. I primed it in white and used Model Master's Chevy engine Rea for the much debated USCG MH-65 red/orange paint, white primer just makes the red “pop”. I used Caracal's beautiful decal sheet on the Dolphin and homemade decals for my crew patches. Gloss coat is Pledge/Future Floor Shine. Of course that's when I noticed I didn't get the rotor blade stipes right-they should be evenly spread down the length of the blade. Maybe someday I'll fix it but for now, she's done.

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