I’ve been planning this build for quite a while now, but needed some motivation and additional reference and parts to begin. I can’t remember why I decided that I wanted to build this exact Huey. I think I was actually looking for Cobra decals and stumbled upon the Fireball Models website where I began looking at all their 1/35 scale decal offerings. This scheme and design really stood out and looked like it’d be fun to build.

The decals are alps printed and look very nicely done. There’s enough decals that I could do several copters and still have a lot of nice markings leftover for other stuff. Plus it came with some very nice color-printed decal and color/marking guides. I’m planning to do the Navy NAS FALLON version from the sheets.

Now before I get the inevitable “that’s wrong” or “that was never used in that particular helo”, or “there’s 182 rivets on that panel, not 123 and you suck for not having fixed that” comments, I should say that this is my first ‘real’ aircraft build and don’t expect it to be 100% accurate. Frankly that sort of stuff doesn’t interest me as I really want something that looks cool. If it happens to look close to correct in the process, well all the better! If I’m not having fun doing this then it’s not worth doing, right?

Back to the kit, this is the Dragon/Panda 1/35 scale UH-1N Gunship kit. It’s a rerelease of the old Panda kit with added detail and 2 sheets of PE, one prepainted for consoles and seatbelts. I’m working on the interior first so havent even worried too much about the exterior. I plan to have the side doors open so there’s a good but of detailing that needs to be done.

^ First Aid packs on floor will later be hung on interior walls. ^

Looking through my refs, these SAR copters are chock-full of stowage goodies. Bags, coolers, hoist, First Aid packs and kits, etc… I’ve sculpted a lot of packs using Aves Apoxie Sculpt and others are from various 1/35 armor kits. A few are from the 1/35 Gundam kits, but shhh! I won’t tell if you don’t. The hoist was ‘borrowed’ from my Acaremy/MRC 1/35 MH-60G Pavehawk kit. I was going to use the hoist from the UH-1D HEER kit, but it’s awful. The pack suspended from the roof is also Aves and lead foil and I use my Wire Wrapping tool to make the headset cords to be hanging from the roof as well.

I also have been using some PE parts from the Eduard UH-1C interior set. Again, probably incorrect, but it helps me fill in details like the sidewalls and door panels. Stuff that isn’t really all that noticible, but makes it more visually interesting by having added it.

Anyway, that’s all for now. More on this once I start priming and painting. The interior needs to be completed first so that I can glue the exterior halves together and detail/mask/paint them after.

Here’s some of my main my reference images for my HH-1N build, all re-sized from my original downloads. Let me know if you’d like a zip of my archive or if some of these belong to you as I downloaded them a while ago and don’t necessarily recall where I got them all. Some of the photos do have URLs though so check out their sites full of great pics!

Progress continues on the BergeLuther. I’ve applied the oil discoloration using the 502 Abteilung oils paints. This time I used the colors German Gray Highlight + Faded Navy Blue, Light Rust, Dark Mud and UN Faded White. These were dabbed on as usual then blended in with clean odorless turpenoid. Before this I attached a fuel barrel/mount, tools and extinguisher to the main body. The rust of the barrel mount was done with a rusty base coat followed up by sponging on lighter and darker rust tones. More pics below…

I also began work on the Mig Productions Burned Out Modern Car kit which arrived a few days ago. After cleaning the resin and constructing the wire seats using the supplied jig and a soldering iron, cleaning up the kit and painting has been a fun and relatively quick process. I used an SBS at the Mig forum by vsuarez666 seen here. It was a great tool for getting great results quickly. I’ve still a bit to go on it, but here’s where I’m at so far.

After priming the kit with self-etching primer I followed up with a coat of flat black spraypaint. Over that I sprayed a dark overall rust tone using the black base as shadows to show through, followed up by two lighter rust coats mottled on with my airbrush.

Over this base coat I used cheapie acrylics and stippled on yellow, brown, gray, blue and red with a damp sponge. This adds more color and variety to the rust and will add more depth in the next steps.

Over this stippled coat I sprayed a flat layer of FFA to seal the base coats. I let that cure overnight and the next day I sprayed the kit down with hairspray and generously sprinkled kosher and table salt over it.

After the hairspray dried I sprayed on some neutral gray, white, then a light mint color for that “classic” car feel.

I removed the salt by rubbing and with water and a brush removing some of the hairspray layer as well to re-expose the rust. Rubbing the salt off took some of the base coat with it resulting in some dark spots, but those actually add to the overall rustiness and look great IMO.

Then I took some rust-colored oils, some dark brown and some ocher and blended them into the surface to enhance the color. I then took some white and Faded German Gray which is a very light bluish color and enhanced the leftover paint spots of the vehicle.

Once this layer of oils dry I plan to go back with some grays and whites and dirty the car up as it’ll be sitting in a pile of building debris.

And speaking of debris, here’s the start of my base for the Berge. The Berge will be plowing some debris off a road and into an open crater. There will be corrugated steel, barrels, building rubble, the car, a fridge, chair and vacuum, girders, pipes, bricks and more.  The base is foam and thin plywood for now, but all that will be covered. The exterior in basswood and the foam in Bondo, Celluclay, and a Sculpey road surface (made, but not pictured)

Since my last post I’ve pained additional details such as caution stripes and the rubber feet parts and applied more chipping effects. First I went through and used a butter color to create false chip highlights next to some of the paint chips as well as scrapes that didn’t go through to the metal. This same color was sponged on for more of the effect on random places… wherever it looked good. Unfortunately the color looks too white to me now, but a few filters of yellow or German Ocher will fix that. After the light yellow I went back and added yellow back to some of the larger chipped areas. This is known as “negative chips” IIRC. Works well and helps when I’ve removed too much paint with the hairspray technique.

Lastly I added finer chips using two methods. First I flicked spots of dark gray Vallejo paint onto the model to make fine little chips. A little goes a loooooong way so don’t overdo it. Then I sponged on Dark Rust and Dark Gray Vallejo to create more worn areas of rust where there would be more wear and tear. Feet, shovel, lower legs/shovel arm, etc… Then I clear-coated and added a few decals followed by a satin coat to prepare for the weathering steps.

I included a few more of my reference pics I’m using to depict a well-worn construction mecha. Here’s all the pics!

I’ve been pretty bust with the commissions and such so I need a mental health build badly! I had the BegreLuther resin kit cleaned of mold release and ready to go for months now so I figured it’d be an interesting and fun build. I started off by cutting and cleaning up the gates and mold lines. That went quickly as they were mostly placed well or non-existent. The kit was cast VERY nicely!There was not much clean-up at all on the main body.

The potentially hard part was the legs which come in halves to incorporate the joint movement, however it was fairly simple. I used regular liquid super glue along the edges before joining the parts and that not only glued them together, but acted as a gap/seam filler as well. All I needed was a little Tamiya putty here and there and the legs went together very nicely.

I read a lot of feedback from modelers on my KV-X2 kit and one of the comments that enlightened me the most was concerning the pistons and hydraulic lines. Since the BergeLuther has quite a few visible pistons I wanted to add the various pipes and hoses one would see on normal construction equipment hydraulics. Very small brass rod and tube was used to create the piping and later I’ll add black wire for the tubing. Luckily there are plenty of reference images available online for this.

Once construction was (easily) completed, I moved on to painting. First I primed the parts with dark gray Duplicolor primer. Once cured everything received a coat of a dark warm gray. That was mixed using Tamiya Acrylics Nato Brown, German Gray and Black.

Next I sprayed some Neutral Gray on parts of the shovel as this will help with the large rusty bare metalness later and light mottled random sprays of a rust mix over everything.

This is then followed up with a light thinned coat of Future to seal it all up before applying the hairspray.

Next I’ve sprayed all the parts with hairspray and sprinkled crushed kosher salt over the wet hairspray for additional chipping.

I forgot to photograph a few steps, but after the hairspray I sprayed the entire kit first with a very light gray as a base to brighten the yellow, then as seen below a nice construction yellow mix.

Then I let the yellow cure for an hour or so then begin the chipping. This is done by wetting the surface which loosens the hairspray and salt, Then with a soft brush and sharp plastic bits scrapes, chips and whatnot can be made. A great side effect of the hairspray over my rusty base (not sure if this happens to others) is that it mottles the base colors making a great realistic worn look. Note the differences of the inside of the shovel between the above pics and the pic below.

Next up is painting other colors then a clearcoat and decals.