UH-1 Huey Helicopter Platoon - Team Yankee

So we now made it into the New Year by this point in the build… HAPPY NEW YEAR, everybody!!! 

The main rotor blades on the second Huey appear solid! I put a little CA glue on the top blade junction for a little extra hold. 

I was going to use “Tamiya Clear” (which I assume is a gloss), but I decided to throw caution to the wind and try my old “Pledge with Future Shine” acrylic, which is old as the hills, for ALL the windows on the Huey without all the rotor blade issues. Applying it with a thin artist brush, it looks amazing at the moment… we’ll see as it levels overnight and see if it fogs or cracks; I anticipate all will be OK with it, and I love the glasslike look! The Huey on the right has the Future glass…

 

The Huey on the left in the following two pics has the glass look…

 

 

The Future didn’t cloud. There was a tad of cracking on a couple side windows but I just applied a little more. I’ll need to go back in later with some Matt Varnish to clean up where the Future bled onto the fuselage’s window casings.

 

 

 

 

Of course, what would this build be without issues, hahaha! Remember when I glued those rare earth magnets on with reverse polarity and had to cut them off the main rotor boom? I apparently tossed those two… they had glue and paint on them and I probably figured it was too much trouble to scape them clean. Well they weren’t spares, after all!!! …they are used on the flight stands. UGH. So I am two sort from being able to affix both helicopters on a flight stand each. The fix for now is top grab one of my other kits that has other helicopters and *borrow* those. I wrote to Battlefront to see if I can get replacements, but I’m not holding my breath.

Now, I’m just trying to decide which height flight stand pole to use… there’s a short one, typically used fr helicopters, and tall one typically used on aircraft; I’m just deciding what would be easier to use in-game.

Anyway, getting closer! My only hesitant regret is, I should maybe have tried dirtying them up with a wash… I bought some Flory washes which would work well, but at this stage, I’m running on fumes!

So this is where the build sits at the moment and I’ve got you all caught up… there’s the matter of the flight stands completion; I did order the rare earth magnets and have a ton now! I’ll have a final lookie at the minis to see if I want to add a wash, but I’m 99.9999999% sure I won’t.

Trie to helicopter flight mechanics, ‘…ups and downs’, is the perfect way to describe this build! …in the case of this miniatures build, I would say it was a matter of not slowing down enough when I did finally make it to the bench each time, to fully plot out the next steps; even when the instructions were bad (which they are horrific!) or non-existent (like the flight stands, which you have to go online to find), I should have slowed my roll enough to think through what was coming up. I’m really not being excessively hard on myself here…just recognizing that I’d had the same problem with my reentry into models last year, so it’s something to watch for on my personal building habits. 

Regardless of errors, this has been a fun build and I really like how they came out. I did contact Battlefront and they are passing along my recommendations to their design department to have a closer look at the the rotor blades, and the potential problems with handling and transport offsite to clubs and such.

Stay tuned!