UH-1D Iroquois 'Huey'

Glad you like it Adam.

The film you are thinking of would be 'We Were Soldiers', an adaptation of the book 'We Were Soldiers Once... and Young' by Lt General Harold G Moore and Joseph L Galloway. An account of the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry battling the NVA troops led by Lt General Nguyen Huu at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley in November 1965. An excellent book by the way, although it makes quite harrowing reading in places.

The film is reasonably accurate in most respects, taking into account the fact that a fairly complex chain of events had to be compressed into under two hours (it is especially accurate with regard to uniforms and equipment), but is slightly marred by a tagged on 'crowd-pleaser' Hollywood ending, which was aimed at American audiences, as practically all the other events in the movie are in large part truly depicted. The DVD is worth a look for the special features, which includes Hal Moore talking about stuff.

In reality, huge losses for the Americans at LZ X-Ray were the result of overconfidence at a high level in the American command structure, which at that time was convinced they would easily destroy a large NVA force if they could bring it to battle.They moved into the area expecting the NVA to run to the Cambodian border, and it was hoped that in their disarray, they would be easy pickings, however, the NVA actually wanted to engage the Americans to learn their combat capabilities, and the US troops were not prepared for such an onslaught.

In fairness to Harold Moore, the commander of the US troops (played by Mel Gibson in the movie version), he did conduct an excellent defence strategy after the initial debacle, which prevented a total massacre, but the movie and the book glosses over some command shortcomings to make a nicely flowing story. That said, it is easy for me to sit here in a nice snug room and say that sort of thing, so I'll not be too critical of him and the troops (on both sides)  who fought there, as their bravery and commitment is beyond question.

Al

Back to the sixties man...

Here you can see what I mean about going for a very washed out '1960's photo look' for the colour of the Huey as it gets an early coat of green, which was mixed up from Reeves tube acrylics, using: Titanium white, Yellow Ochre, Light Green, Phthalo Green and a touch of Payne's Gray...

Probably anathema to the colour purists, but hey, it's my model!

Altogether: 'S'cuse me while I kiss the sky....

More piccies soon.

Al

Pull up!

As is sometimes the case when you shoot some paint at your model, a blemish you didn't spot shows up and such was the case here. The surgery I did on the elevators to make them look more like the real thing means that their attachment lug (being more to scale than the original fixing method) was rather small, and so I had epoxied the elevators in place for strength. Unfortunately, with paint on, a trace of the epoxy was apparent, and didn''t look good at all.

So there was nothing for it but to remove the elevators, clean off the traces of epoxy and modify the lugs to be thinner so that when fixed together, no adhesive residue would be visible. This means that the elevator pivot lugs are now pretty much bang on scale, and (unfortunately) even more fragile, but I'll have to live with that, because if I had left things as they were, I know I would have looked at the finished model and wished I'd sorted it.

Of course this means a repaint is necessary for the tailboom, but there's no way I'd have been happy with things as they were, so it had to be done.

The thinner attachment lugs:

The elevators in place with no traces of adhesive in sight:

More fun and games soon!

Al

Got it in one! I went to bed last night thinking what the hell was that film! lol

Will be keeping an eye on this as I want to do a Vietnam dio next...

looks really good Alan, great work

R

Paint it black... again

Been respraying the Huey after the issue with the elevators looking less than perfect after the first paint job showed that up. Since it was going to get sprayed again and I had to mix up more paint - necessitating an overall spray - I took the opportunity to tidy up something else I spotted with the paint on, that being the bottom of the windshield where it meets (or rather doesn't meet) the nose.

Being raked back about thirty degrees as well as curved, getting a really nice flush fit on all sides of the windscreen is tricky even though it is a pretty good fit for the most part, but the paint showed up a bit of a gap at the bottom of the windshield, which to be fair would probably be disguised by the fact that the nose is painted black (to prevent reflections dazzling the pilots). I suspect the black paint would conceal any shadow in the gap, making it hard to spot, but, being a picky sod, I decided to fill it anyway - easily done with a thin 'sausage' of Milliput which I smoothed off with a cocktail stick, so it barely needed any sanding to look okay when dry.

Whilst doing that I smoothed tiny bits of filler over one or two other blemishes which the paint also highlighted, as well as a slightly visible bit of seam on the bottom of the cabin where the two halves of the kit's fuselage join together. Again, that probably would not be seen, but while I had the putty mixed up there was no point in not addressing it, so it got done. Leaving just enough Milliput to make a tiny man - is it just me, or does anyone else do that?

So, that done, I redid the preshading on the tailboom and some other parts with flat black, and mixed up some more green, which I've just sprayed on a minute or two ago. Looks quite snazzy now.

Since my camera is crap at shooting in artificial light, I'll post piccies tomorrow. Thanks for the nice comments by the way people. Hopefully onto the finishing touches shortly

Al

Return to base...

Pics of the redone base colour:

When this is dry, it will be time for the paler top shade and the darker lower shade, to enhance the appearance of it being in the strong sunlight of SE Asia.

In between that, I'm currently also fixing our front door, which I had to kick in the other night after my wife and I raced out of the house at 2.30 in the morning, forgetting our keys. We were on the way to the emergency vets with one of our doggies who was ill.

Alas, with my wife driving and with me on the back seat with Theo, our doggy, he died before we made it to the vet. Still, at 14 years old he had a good crack and won many trophies at dog shows when in his prime. RIP Theo, a good friend and a nice chap.

Al

Get your people back, it's gonna be a big one....

Having sprayed the main colour, the shading can now take place, which is of course a lot easier to do on simple olive drab paint jobs, and worth doing to give them a bit of dimension, as well as helping the scale of the thing to look like it is being lit by the sun.

So it was time for a big spray pattern from the airbrush nozzle and quite high pressure, to ensure that the paint particles blast directionally downwards rather than float onto the sides. That's the nice thing about having mixed the acrylic base colour too, in that simply adding a bit of the base colour to some more yellow and white is sufficient to make the lighter tone for the 'sunlit'  upper surfaces in this case, which is most apparent on the tailboom in this piccy:

Next up will be the shadowing for the underside, which is just a case of darkening down the base colour with a bit of brown, flipping the thing over, and doing the same thing.

More pics soon.

And yes, you're right Yngve, losing dogs is very sad indeed, I used to play, 'paper scissors stone' with Theo when he gave me a paw And I'll miss that, it was fun (Theo was a bit of a wierdo, or maybe it was me)

Al