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Colin Gomez
33 articles

Westland Lynx AH-7Airfix 1/48

September 5, 2022 · in Aviation · · 18 · 1.4K

Here is my Westland AH-7, representing a British Army machine serving in Afghanistan. It is my first ever. I took care to preserve all of the beautiful rivet detail of the kit through careful fitting and no excess sanding of joints. In the end, I think it came out the way I wanted. The cockpit and cabin details were added using Eduard etch plus my own scratch-built harnesses and seat belts using paper, etch and bits of plastic from the kit. The pit is pretty dark in photographs, especially with the blue tinted window, but a few carefully lit shots reveal the red-orange of the seats and other details. I may open the co-pilot's side door at some point to show the very detailed IP and other panels and switches. For now, I just want to enjoy the nice lines of the Lynx without opening it up too much and breaking the outline.

I put a lot of work into the chaff dispensers on the tip of each skid. They were detailed with scrap photo-etch to show the lightening holes in the support structure. I added wires from fine magnet wire.

The anti-missile "dazzler" is a transparent piece that I painted transparent gold on the outside (mixing Tamiya Clear and Gold). I put a rolled up paper insert inside with checks drawn on to simulated the multi-faceted look of the dazzler. I think it looks OK in the end. I also thinned out and detailed the windshield wipers with stretched sprue to match photos. If you are interested in the details of the build, you can see how this came together in the Helicopters GB.

https://imodeler.com/groups/helicopters/forum/topic/westland-lynx-ah-7-airfix-1-48/

v Overall, I really like the camo colors and general look of the Lynx AH-7. I did the green portion with Tamiya NATO Green and the the Grey with Gunze H75 Dark Sea Grey - slightly lightened with Flat White. Tamiya Clear coat for decaling and matt coat with MM Acryl Flat - thinly applied. Oil pin-wash for weathering. I may do a little diorama with the wood base shown eventually. BTW, the photos on the base are a bit crude but they show colors and details well in more natural diffused sun light. I have a Revell naval version of the Lynx in 1/32, which I may do as a French Navy machine some day. I hope you like this build. It was quite fun but not without its challenges, especially in how to handle the model during the painting process. Comments welcome.
Reader reactions:
10  Awesome

18 responses

  1. Wow! @coling, That is an excellent build Colin! 😃 It looks fabulous and so well built and painted. Your scratch-work is superb as well! Overall, two thumbs up sir! 👍👍

    • Thanks, Gary! It was fun to build and confidence-building for future helicopter projects. The Airfix kit is really well-engineered in general and the tiny detail elements are amazing in this scale. I've wanted to build a Lynx for a long time. I am glad this one looks the part in the end. One of the coolest-looking helicopters out there and now quite a veteran in various roles.

  2. ^I agree with Gary ^ ! That is very cool…. I’ve never seen rotor blades like those before….. very nice work on this, Colin, @coling .

    • Thanks, Jay. Yes the rotor design is really interesting. I am not sure about the detailed engineering behind the blades. I know that the Lynx was very fast for its time and held some speed records in its career (it still held an overall speed record of 249 mph in January 2022). Maybe it has to do with getting extra speed. (Just checking Wikipedia - it's something called BERP rotor tech - helping the Lynx fly faster and be fully aerobatic. It can do loops and rolls - very unusual for a helicopter) BTW, the long decals for the blades were quite tricky to apply (on the top and bottom of each blade). That's eight big decals that needed quite a bit of coaxing with Micro Sol to conform to the curvature. Overall though, the kit decals were excellent, thin but strong enough to take repositioning without shattering.

  3. It’s very cool, Colin, I always enjoy seeing an Airfix model, especially when it’s as nicely built as this one, your detail additions make all the difference, and thanks for letting us know how you did them.

    • Thanks, George. A lot of the newer Airfix releases are very good. The 1/48 Lynx has better surface detail than the 1/32 Revell kit and some very fine parts for the rotor detail. Comparing parts to walkaround pics, it's amazing how accurately they have molded everything. I really enjoyed putting this together in the Helicopters GB - it was a challenge adding enough extra detail to the interior to make it look realistic through that big windscreen. Always fun to share that kind of learning experience.

  4. Very nice work on this @coling. Great result.

    "Helicopters fly because the earth repels them" 🙂

  5. Great work on your first helicopter, Colin @coling
    All the extra work you put into it was definitely worth it.

  6. Excellent job, Colin! It was a pure joy to follow your build thread. The overall result speaks for itself.
    Congratulations!

  7. Great looking Lynx, Colin and congrats on your first helicopter, that’s what the group builds are for - great motivator. Those rotors do look awesome as well as the additions and complete build. Congrats!

    • Thanks, George. It was a fun build. I hope others are inspired to do a helicopter from the GB. I still have a Mil Mi.6 to finish, plus a couple of Apaches and an HU-7 Wessex. It would be interesting contribute to a helicopter table at a model show. There doesn't seem to be another model show coming up any time soon in the Toronto area. It seems interest has dried up amongst the usual organizers.

  8. Hard to believe this is your first helo, Colin (@coling). It came out terrific. I really like helos, but I don't build many of them. I had a few helo rides when I was in the Air Force, but I never really got used to them. I guess flying in planes spoils you. Well done.

    • Thanks, George. It was a really interesting build. That rotor takes up a lot of shelf space, though. I once flew in a Bell Jet Ranger (Army Kiowa) with my Dad when he was setting up a microwave relay on the side of a mountain in the British Columbia wilderness. The bush pilot who flew the Jet Ranger was a kind of daredevil and he really put that helicopter through some interesting maneuvers. I was thrilled and wanted to become a pilot like him. Oddly enough, though, he really talked me out of it, saying it wasn't much of a career, unstable income, miserable work conditions etc. I still kind of regret not going for it, although I did finally learn to fly (but not helicopters). Later on, I had a ride in a Chinook when I did a stint in Canadian Armed Forces Reserve. Anyway, always liked helicopters and the Lynx is one of my favorites.

  9. Excellent work Colin, it looks great, the Gold trims on the rotors and some panels looks really nice, looks like you did quite a lot of detail work on the interior. Brilliant man.

    • Thanks, Anthony @anthonyricco. Glad you like it. The interior doesn't show up to well in photos but the cockpit detail is pretty visible in person through the big windshield. It was fun to do the scratch-built bits, especially the seats, which were little models in themselves.. One reward of building a model is that it can help you understand how the real thing works. I am looking forward to completing my next helicopter, once I get some WWII projects done.

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