This will be my other, relatively "easy", build for the Helo GB. I began test fitting major parts for this more than a year ago. I also began modifying the cabin seats to better represent the canvas-covered tube structure of the real thing. I stopped when I got slightly bogged down in thinning out the plastic for the "canvas" part, and put he kit away for a long while. I now have a good idea to finish it and make this look right (solution to come in next post). The next hurdle will be deciding between scratch-building the seat harness arrangement or just buying the pricey Eduard color etch. I have all the details I need in the Eduard Color etch set to do the main cockpit, although not the passenger cabin seats. I also bought the complete mask set so it really shouldn't be that hard to complete in good time.

I really like the Lynx and the Airfix kit is superb. Partly to avoid the difficult to reproduce mesh across the turnine intakes, I have decided to complete this as a British Army machine operating in Afghanistan as seen in the box art.

A large box-like structure for sand filtering replaces the usual intake arrangement. In any case the Afghanistan War provides a very interesting context for the type. The decals in the kit look really good.

I hope you like this one, it should be fun to finish with minimal stress.

Another nice looking kit, Colin @coling
The Lynx is indeed an elegant looking helicopter.
Looking forward to progress on this Airfix kit and see if this new tooling is nice on helicopters as well.

Nice job so far, my friend @coling!

This is looking awesome @coling, I love the Lynx, you are doing such a cool job with it.

Thanks, John. It was quite a production line painting session. I'm glad it turned out OK. More to come soon.

A quick update with more detail painting for the interior. I wanted to better illustrate the steps I took to layer on colors and elements to what I hope is best effect. First, I did the basic interior (cabin and cockpit color in Tamiya XF-54 Dark Sea Grey lightened with Flat White). This was, again, as per multiple photos of the real AH-7, ignoring Airfix call-outs.

Next up, the armored seats needed multiple colors for the seat, various cushions and survival pack. I airbrushed the flat yellow and red orange components and will hand-paint the green seat pan cushion on top of that. The molded-on seat belt will be sanded off for scratch versions in plastic, etch and paper. For now, I have just placed the pieces without glue to see how they will look. I went for a slightly faded look to the red-orange back cushion seen in Afghanistan serving Lynxes- this is authentic from photos. The more reddish color in other photos and some models looks a bit uglier as far as color harmony goes. A balance of accuracy and aesthetics, then. After that, I sprayed a layer of Tamiya clear on the Sea Grey floor parts and seat bases and then did an oil pin wash for detailing.

Lastly I masked the blue canvas backrests for the seat and sprayed the tubing same sea grey mix as the rest of the interior.

The photos show how the separately crafted and painted "canvas" seat components fit over the re-sculpted kit part so that the canvas looks closer to scale thickness. I need to hand paint some of the tubing in the back portion of the seat structure before attaching the seat belts. The next work will be to actually make the seat belts and harnesses for the cabin and cockpit. Probably at least a day's work there.

That's it for now. I hope this is worth posting. It was a fair amount of work, though easily summarized.

Thanks for your kind comment, John. More to come today as we have a Snow Day off work here in Southern Ontario! The pic of the cargo hold is very impressive indeed. It's a C-17 Globemaster III. The image is from Wikimedia Commons, link as follows:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Army_Lynx_9A_Onboard_a_C17_Transport_Aircraft_MOD_45151420.jpg

Even larger transports were also leased for transporting Lynx helicopters (apparently from the Russians, of all people). This is the hold of an An 124-100 Ruslan. Looks like a Costco store interior (North American joke):

Happy modeling!

Thanks for sharing, Colin @coling