Good start Richard. She looks a big old bird.
Lots of space to detail too.
Will follow this one, (we have Chinooks fly over us regularly)

You are right there George, they are noisy, but distinctively so.
Even Rose knows what one sounds like...

Thanks very much guys. When I lived down the lakes I used to see them from time to time. They definitely make some noise!

I've got a bit more colour down on the interior floor, but still a long way from ready!

The interior is going to take a long long time to finish. There is a lot going on anyway out of the box but with the extra detail sets it is going to be quite labour intensive. And I still haven't received the window minigun from live resin, starting to worry a bit about that one as it's been 2 and a half months.

The chairs are ready for their seatbelts now and I've painted the fire extinguishers. They are fiddly enough in 1/35, I wouldn't like to attempt them in a smaller scale.

That's it for now though, I'm away offshore in the morning and have to make my way up to Aberdeen tonight.

Getting there slowly Richard, but it looks good .

It all looks very neat, Richard, especially the seat belts. Congratulations on the Sauber by the way!

Hi Folks, excuse the late reply, the internet was down.

Cheers Simon, the progress certainly isn't rapid, but as usual I've got other projects on the go as well. Thanks very much George, I was more than happy with the runner up on it!

Hi Bryan, some of the rigs I go to are still from the old days! I will be able to work on models offshore when I get a core crew position, but at present I go to a different rig every trip. This means I can't take a craft knife or sprue cutters in my kit bag. Health and safety gone mad unfortunately. I could order them in by boat when I get to stay in the same place eventually. There's also no room left in my bag at the minute as I need to take my boots and uniform with me every trip rather than leaving them in a locker!

Thanks for following Frank. I'm still not sure myself what the finished model is going to look like. I'm thinking about doing a slightly different camo scheme on it as it is going to be a special forces conversion, but nothing too unrealistic or elaborate. They look good anyway just in the standard Olive green so I'm still a bit undecided on that one, maybe it would look better left alone. What are your thoughts?

I managed to get the cockpit all glued into place but still work to be done on the interior shelving.

Test fitted the floor and cockpit into the main shell of the chopper. It seems to be a good fit but I can see a lot of filler is going to be needed in certain places to get rid of the seams and gaps.

I bet that was a traumatic experience for the racoon. The lads I know who have few in the Chinook's say they are a bumpy ride anyway, let alone hanging underneath one! I'm still undecided about the colour to be honest, I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I've been doing some more work on the interior. The instrument shelving is up behind the cockpit and I've put some emergency exit signs on the ceiling making sure they will line up with the windows.

I scored around the front left window and carefully removed it using a mini drill. This is where the front left minigun will be mounted.

The sides of the fuselage are moulded into two parts which align well, but leave a large gap to fill.

I used some Tamiya masking tape to protect the rivet detail and panel lines before sanding which seemed to work well enough.