Having one helicopter now under my belt - the Airfix AH-7 Lynx - I have decided to forge ahead with a new build: Special Hobby's H-21C in German and French service. I plan to do a French machine serving in Algeria, using the excellent kit decals.
In fact, I've had this one in my stash awhile but finally figured out how to build it well enough and fast enough to make it a worthwhile project. The GB gives me a chance to work through it carefully without getting bogged down. The kit has some photo-etch, resin and a couple of very nice white metal rotor hubs.
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I have heard it is tricky to butt join the rotor blades to the white metal hubs, so I plan to make a thin styrene sleeve from drilled-out rod for each blade. This will reinforce each hub mounting point, being a joint glued in place with superglue as attached to the white metal and liquid glue for attaching the blade. Other challenges are the usual with short run kits and general fit of parts looks excellent so far, so I am good to go on this. In fact, doing a slightly more challenging kit may get me back to the Mi-6, which has just been too daunting so far. Detailing of the interior for the H-21 could be quite limited, in theory. I have always liked the look of the red cargo netting that hangs inside the cargo bay area, just behind the windows.
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1. Red cargo bay webbing above seats and behind cabin windows. This is a French H-21 in Algeria.
The netting also blocks the view of the interior enough that i don't have to do a lot of extra detailing on structural ribbing, should I decide to keep the cargo doors closed. Eduard will provide etch for the netting and belts.
SH provides decent seats, floor, and ceiling duct-work for the interior but only smooth interior walls.
I MAY do the structural ribbing anyway with strip styrene but we will see. I plan to take the most care with scratch-building the cockpit, highly visible behind the crystal-clear transparencies. These have much finer ribbing than the new-tool Italeri transparencies and therefore look more accurate in my view.
I now have some good shots of real cockpits of H-21s in my collection to work from. I have begun test fitting and minor construction of seat components so far.
More to come soon.
Anyway, hope you like this one. I have always liked the look of the H-21 "Flying Banana" and actually find it quite graceful and dynamic-looking. I will be happy to add it to my collection and the GB.
