UH-1 Huey Helicopter Platoon - Team Yankee

I started building a box of the UH-1 Huey Helicopter Platoon (TUBX07), back last October! It’s not that I am that glacially slow at building miniatures, but it’s not only been saddled between multiple home and model building projects, but crazy life stuff as well. These are wonderful little miniatures kits made by Battlefront, for the Team Yankee WWIII miniatures gaming system.

 

This box contains two plastic UH-1 Huey helicopters, two plastic flight stands, eight rare-earth magnets, one decal sheet and two unit cards.

 

I will of course, be able to use these with the Team Yankee system, which I own a substantial collection of miniatures and rulebooks/supplements… however, I bought these for use with a miniatures game I’ve been developing, called The Legion: Rumble in the Jungle. My miniatures game uses 15mm Old Glory miniatures of Vietnamese Viet Cong and American U.S. Army “Green Berets” (a.k.a, The Legion), which I based and hand painted. In this regard, the Huey’s fit to scale well enough.

 

The Legion game revolves around four American “Green Berets” miniatures, representing individual soldiers who complete various missions per scenario. The mechanics of the game involve missions (scenarios) where the Green Berets work their way up from the bottom of a battlefield map, through jungle and villages, to the top of the map, where the helicopters will typically be used to extricate the team; these missions may be recon missions, rescue operations, search and destroy, etc. Rather than just make it to the map top and hop off, I thought it’d be cool to have The Legion hit an LZ, sometimes hot and a danger to the helicopter…just nice, added tension!

The battlefield is comprised of 2.25” square tiles that I designed and painted.

 

An example of a playtest game…

 

The Bell UH-1 Iroquois, commonly known as the "Huey," was a multipurpose utility helicopter famous for its widespread use during the Vietnam War. Bell developed the powerful helicopter in the mid-1950s and produced more than 16,000 units between 1955 and 1976, over 7,000 of which served in Vietnam.

The Huey’s will be used for troop extraction and fire support.

The Huey’s come on sprue trees, just like model kits… a new direction for Battlefront, where they used to make their miniatures in solid resin with white metal accessories.

 

…and started assembly of one of them, on the interior deck. It’s surprisingly well detailed on the plating and had a nice fit with a bit of TETC.

 

 

So first up was the interior of both Huey’s… I’m gonna build both at the same time. The inside passenger interior of the helicopter is gray, which I started with a solid gray mixed from Folk Art Acrylics (black and white), and hand brush painted on after assembly of the seating and deck/walls.

 

 

 

Took three thin coats to get the level I wanted. Next was installing those interior seats inside the fuselage, which dry fit perfectly so, I applied a little glue to the bottom of the fuselage and pressed the seating unit in firmly on the right side, and repeated for the left. Holding the two halves in my left hand, copter upside down, I was able to apply some TETC via capillary action, and then use clamps to hold tight… big one at the nose and a couple small ones for the tail boom; these are Dollar Store finds, by the way! Everything cured on the bench.

 

 

I applied a wash on the interior to make the interior look more troop used, rather than factory fresh. I’ll check out seams afterwards and get anything ironed out that stands out.  I have more to assemble, of course, but it’s coming along. I’m making these as U.S. Army Huey’s for the game, but these could be made as Marines birds! These are 1H variants, which were available in 1966 and made in large numbers. They had powerful engines, and represent what I need to get in and get my boys out of harms way!

Speaking of boys, I checked out the two crew members (one being a gunner) against one of the Old Glory miniatures I’m using for the Green Berets and the size is pretty close; the models’ being a bit chunkier in body frame, but nothing way out of scale and pretty damned close!

 

Both are being built in tandem. This is such a small scale, and some parts require steady handling with tweezers, or dead reckoning with fingers that feel like tree trunks! I started this session by sanding and smoothing seams and checking joins.

The synchronized elevators in the tail boom were surprisingly tricky, as the fit was a little loosely goosey and one of them has a bit of a gap I don’t like. I’ll have to look at it with a fresh view tomorrow but, I think the elevator on one slipped down while drying… unfortunately, by the time I noticed, it was dried solid in place; I’ll see how bad it looks and if necessary, use some Squadron putty to fix ‘er up.

The tailpipe fairing on the other hand, was much easier to place into the end of the engine cowling; the sculpt was made in such a way that in the placing of it within the cowling, the natural angle of the unit itself, nudged it up to the correct facing… definitely needed angled tweezers to get these into place. Not having a third hand, TETC was kinda useless, as it dried by the time I got the tailpipe fairing in the tweezers and raised to the cowling…so, I ended up using Model Masters in a squeeze bottle/pipette.

 

 

…yeah, I wasn’t crazy about the seams… as a model builder, they wouldn’t do at all and I’d definitely putty them. Ah, therein lies my dilemma: as being a wargamer, and these are for wargaming, that’s a bit over-the-top. “What will he do, what will her do???” (I. Don’t. Know.)

Next up was the nose compartment door at front. Dang, here we go again with fiddly! Getting it to snap into place was not easy at all and required some sweet talking to each girl; TETC again was not my friend, as it dried before I could rearrange grips and do the do, so again, I placed a dab of MM to secure in place, and then some TETC all around.

Lastly, the machine gun mounts. O.M.G. These drove me about mad. The mounts basically fit two tiny posts at the bottom L-shaped hinge, into two tiny slots at the base of the compartment floor. MM to the rescue again, but this was honestly the worse component fit of everything and I worry about longevity of the hold, as these will be handled a lot in gaming… they really should have been molded into the fuselage shell halves somehow.

 

Machine guns, skids, rotors, and doors to be added next session. Then I’ll get to the interior compartment washes, and then painting. Might be a couple little items to add, like litters, which might fit in. There’s not a diagram for decals included so, I’m doing a little research on the ones provided. I’m 99% sure they’ll be 1st Cav. I still don’t know if these are to be Hogs, Slicks, whatever… Battlefront was sneaky in being vague in this. Still, it’s a fun build.

I switched to painting the gunner/crew, with Vallejo acrylics and finishing with a heavy splash of Citadel’s “Devlin Mud”.

 

I clipped off and sanded the skids for next sessions’ application, but turned my attention to fitting the gunner/crew into the birds… oh man, they’re a tight fit! They are of course, a tad over scale, and I guess intended to hang out of the cargo/crew bay blasting away with their machine guns! Battlefront FoW is full of shit with their website depiction of these, as the gunners on the site are much smaller, hold the MGs better, and sit INSIDE the cabin on the benches…

 

This is not so on the miniatures!!!

 

 

 

All’s good, though… they are for wargaming after all, so a little artistic license is acceptable. Next up, added the skids to each Huey…

 

…and then working on one of the Huey’s main rotor blades assembly; trouble started with the one rotor blade that would attach to the mast’s top peg (a small square peg), where the tiny tab with the square hole started to snap off! I used TETC to remelt it before it snapped off and got th rotor on the mast, followed by the top rotor blade that caps it with a solid cap. It’s quite precarious and even without the tab mishap, I wonder as to its longevity with repeated handling of the miniature in gaming… it makes me long for the days when Battlefront made it’s miniatures with some solid metal and resin components, where this whole rotor and mast assembly should have been one solid piece in metal. I’ve got it propped up overnight and will work on the other main rotor assembly tomorrow, hoping for the best on this one.

 

 

Tail rotors put on…

 

…and the second set of main rotors and mast…

 

…this set was a bigger disaster than the first set; when I cut the rotor blade with the square hole in it, it sheared the tab in half, with the loose bit flying ing into the wilderness of my furnace room workshop area’s floor never to be seen again by human eyes! I glued both blades and mast together best as possible but time will tell if it holds! If not, one Huey will be converted into a downed wreck.

The good news is, the other set done yesterday seems to be pretty solid! Surprisingly, the main rotors cured up pretty solid! It’s so frailty built around the connections of blades to mast that I was figuring this a 50-50% result at best, but these must be enough overlapping and abutting to have made the melted plastic, mold solidly enough…on quick inspection, anyway…time will tell as these are gamed with, but I’ll always try to remember these rotors are a bit delicate.

So yesterday, I glued one sides’ gunner/crew bay’s “sliding” doors on (they of course, do not slide), and I did the other side tonight; San while I did the main rotors paint work, I got the tail rotors while I was at it.

 

 

On the paint, I used Tamiya Semi-gloss black, but I think I’m going to switch to Citadel Chaos Black for the second coat, mainly ‘cause I want to see how they look with that. Note that the black is still wet, as is the Tamiya Dull aluminum. Next up, I’ll finally be able to get some paint on the exterior surfaces, and then a toned-down clear coat… and these should be done!

First coats on the exterior!!! Base color is Vallejo Air “Gunship Green”, applied in a thin coat with a wide artist brush. I was planning on airbrushing them burn my workshop area for that is under reorganization at the moment. Hand brushing is actually fine with me, as these are for 15mm gaming after all and I’m not looking for 100% realistic paintwork necessarily. The color was just slightly (and I mean, not by much) lighter a hue than the plastic the kit was molded with…

 

After that latter dried sufficiently, I went back in with Vallejo Air “Light Green”…

 

 

…NOTE: This is the first build that I am using my new cell phone camera and the green is a tad off… on the bench, it has a more proper color.

…the new workbench light I have is awesome for building, providing amazing light… but the paint job comes across brighter than on the bench; I wasn’t sure when I came back upstairs after that latter of painting, and I had to go back down and take a look…looked darker to me, but still bright. I took some time to work on the windows, where I used Folk Art acrylics blue and white to fill in the window areas, and after fried, went back in with Vallejo in a hand-made mixture of dark greens to paint in forest reflections. I had to go back in and touch up some of the hull and window frames from a few errant brush swipes… but the final result seems pretty good to me and gets the suggestion across. Ironically, they very last step of this build, after dullcoat is applied, will be to go back in on the windows with Tamiya Gloss to get the “glass” look…

 

So I took a chance on, rather than trying to tone the color down with a new coat hand mixed darker, I tried an application of Citadel’s “Devlin Mud” wash…

 

…I’ll have a proper look after everything dries appropriately, and with a fresh look, probably tomorrow. I really can’t say if I’ll darken the overall color or not… I’m kinda frustrated at the moment and don’t want to let that ruin things. The exterior color has been somewhat elusive so far! Here’s a good reference shot I’d saved as inspiration…

 

On another subject, the decal sheet that came with the kit is NOT the one pictured on Battlefront’s website! Ticked me off, actually… the decals that come with the kit are minimalistic in content. I went ahead and ordered a decal sheet from Miscmini for $5 ($1 shipping) that has 1st CAV emblems in two sizes and great markings that look better than Battlefront’s. The build is pretty much on hold (other than tweaking the exterior color) until the decals come in.

The next session was pretty simple, paint the machineguns with Tamiya “Gun Metal”, but in the process, I snapped a rear rotor blade off the boom! Son-of-a-gun (no pun intended), Battlefront’s design truly sucks with its rotors!!! I mean, I’m not that Gorilla-handed. I glued it back on, but gosh knows the longevity of that once I start gaming with these… I’ll have ti remember to be VERY careful in handling.

Next up was the exhausts, done with Citadel “Chaos Black” and a little Tamiya “Gun Metal” to highlight. Then, a first coat on the bottom cockpit windows…I might tweak those later. Lastly, a thin re-coating of chaos black to the main rotors.

 

 

 

Phewie, I’m almost there on these! So the decals that came with this do NOT match up with what Battlefront advertises on their website, including no sharks teeth, not unit emblem seen on their example pictures… the box art is actually, extremely vague in comparison so, what’s their game? (…no pun intended). Ah well, I went ahead and found new  decals  (<— see link) on the secondary market from Miscellaneous Miniatures, which arrived yesterday, which are super nice; I was looking specifically for 1st Cav Division emblems and this set had them. The owner is extremely good, and actually called me to offer a discount on shipping in card envelope rather than box (…was $5 shipping, which went down to $1!).

 

I put a coat of Pledge (Future alternative) floor acrylic on the areas to receive the the decals last night… spent time today putting the decals on. Man, these suckers are TINY, but they are nice quality. Printed on the entire sheet, the numbers, wording, and symbols must be cut individually, and at this scale, that alone is tough. My hands aren’t as steady as they once were, I’m afraid and it can be aggravating. But, I got every decal I wanted on both units, except for the tail ID numbers… it was just too damn tight to squiggle them in there, based on a dry-fit, so I skipped those… there are plenty of examples of Huey’s without them. In fact, while researching the usage of IDs and unit emblems, I came to find out that it was all across the board in the ‘Nam, so there’s a lot of wiggle room in what goes on. Remember too, that these are for gaming so, literal iterations aren’t typically the name of the game with these! 

The hardest decals were the red arrow prop blast warnings; followed by the United States Army decals, which probably should have been cut in half, but they are so finicky to place, I figured I stood a better chance as a whole… there were plenty provided so, I did take off one that didn't go on too good, placement-wise… same thing for the nose number for what ended up being “818” (…which started out as 809 and then “624”, but of which had issues in placement). The 1st Cav emblems went on nicely on the nose, but the tiny ones on the tail wing were a challenge, to say the least! All of these look pretty good in the final result, though… I used Solveset to place, and Micro Set to seal (…yeah, I figured better safe than sorry). 

 

 

 

 

The last bit will be for a dullcoat, which will likely be airbrushed on later this week, once I get some squeeze bottles I ordered from Amazon…like the one you get with Vallejo or AK Interactive; I’ll make my own concoction of 70% Pledge/30% Tamiya Flat base, as I like to stay as non-toxic as possible in my hobbies. I’ll finish with Pledge on the windows to better simulate “glass”, and then assemble the flighty stands for gaming.

Stay tuned… this project is winding up shortly!!!

Oh, forgot top mention… I did try a brushed on coat of my home-brewed dullcoat concoction, but ran into trouble. I applied it just to to the underbelly of one Huey, and inadvertently hit the side of one boom and crew bay door… but it had several fogged areas

 

 

After some butt kicking on myself for not properly testing on a test piece, I days later, went back in with some pledge and it corrected the finish flaw, though now quite glossy! Thinking on what may have gone wrong, and talking about it on the forums, I figure…

1. The main culprit may have been too thick an application with the flat brush?
2. The Tamiya Flat Base I used is a bottle that’s probably well over a decade and a half old and had gone bad? It was gray and clumpy on the sides of the inner bottle; when preparing the mixture, it came out kinda like thickish yogurt into my clean mini-jams bottle and probably had bad play with the Pledge (Future).

The correction went well enough, thank goodness, so I ordered a new Tamiya Flat Base and will see what the contents look like… and try a new mix. I did try the old mix with a thinner application by brush on a test area and it was fine, so idk. I’d rather be safe than sorry! New flat base due in this coming Thursday. Stay tuned!

 

NOTE:  It was at this point in the build where I came down with COVID, from a wargaming expo I’d attended… this was in November of last year. The build resumed at the very end of December 2023, a couple days before New Year’s.

Well OK then! The Vallejo Matte Varnish worked a peach!

 

 

It took the shine off the regular acrylics, as well as the spots with straight Future gloss on the noses. I think this stuff is Brilliant!!! Applied with a quarter inch flat brush, it glides on and leaves no brush strokes. I am half thinking of applying some gloss on the windows… I may try that with Tamiya gloss. What surprised me the most though, was how it brightened up the rotor blades, smoothing out the overall finish.

 

Of course, something had to go wrong, as has happened throughout this build… I learned a valuable lesson however, which will serve me well in builds down the road: Magnet polarity only goes one direction!!! You see, I glued one magnet disc into the top engine cowling atop each Huey, and one on each end of the main rotor booms that mount into the engine cowling’ however, I didn’t think to check if I glued them in the right polarity direction. When I went to mount the main rotors, they repelled away!!! Ugh.

I couldn’t get the magnet out of the cowling, or cut it off the rotor boom mast. Doing a quick read, I saw you can soften CA with Acetone, so I brushed some on the mast and let sit a tad… then, I was able to use a craft knife with #11 blade to carefully cut the magnet off the boom masts. Much to my amazement, I was able to do so and keep all my fingers intact! The only hiccup was snapping a blade off one of the rotors… UGH. I set that blade back on with some CA. I then grabbed new magnets and made sure I popped thm into the engine cowling in the right direction; opting to glue the rotor booms onto the double magnets instead…trickier, but I didn’t want to chance gluing the magnets onto the mast in wrong direction again.

 

I had to prop (no pun intended) the rotar on a TETc bottle. I’ll check on the remounted blade to boom mast tomorrow after the CA hopefully cures tight …given success, I may have to flip it over and apply CA on that side and wait another day. I’ll consider the window glossing tomorrow.

The CA glue seemed to work well on the damaged rotor blade junction and seemed fairly secure… turning it right side up, I noted a channel between the blade attachment and the mast…

 

I figured I’d try to fill it with a patch of sprue; cutting a small sliver from a piece of soft sprue tree, shaved to a small diameter, I dropped it in the channel and applied TETcement, and then another sliver and repeat…

 

The blade was then mounted in the engine cowling and propped up as the previous assembly…