SH-60B 1/35 Seahawk by Kitty Hawk

Nice !

Wow man, that looks awesome

Thanks !

Today the intake trunks were installed along with another piece of skin. I then did the detail painting on the rotor, but there's still more to do there.

The trunks had a very narrow gluing edge. I spent time finishing the outside edges, but you don't see that. What you do see is the inside seam looking up the trunk. That doesn't matter either since the spliter and intake protector block off any view lines. I needed to give a little clamping assistance to make sure that all the seams were down tight.

The angle drives needed to be detatched from the torque tubes to fit them into the airframe. In all these images, neither the trans or the final drives are actually glued in place. The unit is upside down in these two images.





While this was setting up, I went about painting all the details on the rotor hub. I used Bare Metal Foil brushed aluminum for the main shaft. I picked out some of the mechanicals with my dark galvanized mix (steel) and flat aluminum. I then used NATO black to paint connectors and piping. I used Molotow chrome on the snubber rods.



Lost another one of those %&$#()%$@ brass straps. I don't have more. Will have to make one out of PE fret. Bummer!



The rotor is gloss coated so I can use some Tamiya Panel Accents. They don't work well with a flat finish. I also need to pick out pipe fittings with gold (Brass) and further age the unit just a trifle with some pastels. Some of the hoses are not black and I will make those additions as I go on.

Here's a status shot, again, not finally assembled. I also treated the engine compartment walls with some brown panel accent, and a mixture of black and rust pastels to simulate the heat damage to the walls as seen on some of the pictures.

Excellent !
This is just the power plant - really looking forward to the rest of the airframe !!

Wow.

Thanks Fellas! Yeah… I feel the same way. I've sst the bar so high, I better not screw up the rest of it.

The main rotor is pretty much done. I did more detail painting, painted the white patches on the distributor, added some bright brass at the pipe ends, added some panel accent block in some strategic locations, and painted a single pipe to the snubbers a blue that matches what I've seen in the pictures. The ResKit was challenging and at times, so daunting that I wondered if it was worth it. That said, the results are definitely worth it. If you can stand breaking more than a dozen tiny carbide drills and lots of CA gluing frustration, I would recommend it.



Here's a side view.



There's one more line that goes on after the blades are installed; the nitrogen leak sensor line that goes to the spot of the arm where the other half of this line was previously installed.

Just for comparison, here's the real deal showing that blue line going to the snubbers.



I could still add some more metallic accents to the tubing clamps. I'll see what my mood it...

The intake fairings didn't fit well over the ResKit's angle drives. They are bigger than the kit's I think. Some selective shaving took care of it, but if you'll notice on the above picture, the fairings DON'T full close the drive housing openings. The instructions DO NOT clearly show this and I was attempting to get them to fit.



Here's the rubber-band clamps getting it all together, but now I have to go to the shop to see if I glued the forward part in error. Nope... not an error. Here's the fit. Again, instructions do not tell you how this should fit. That acts as a splinter to not injest boundary air, also gets some cooling to the trans and final drives.

My Lord, that is incredible detail. The difference between what those parts looked liked before you worked your magic and now is incredible.

Wow, and I aam thinking I was detailed busy, Compparing your work, I've to learn a lot

Very very nice.

Thanks all! I've sort of made a pact with myself that each model I attempt has to offer a new challenge or learning. So far, that's how it's working out. I really didn't do all the piping and stuff until fairly recently. I will confess that in 1972 I added all the piping on the AMT Caterpillar D8 Bulldozer kit. But after that, I really didn't get into scratch building anything until I the mid-2000s.

I wish Tamiya made this kit! I'm having trouble with some of the fits and the aftermarket stuff isn't helping. I spent a lot of time today, filling gaps and preparing the surface after that activity. I was unsure about how the intake fairing fit and my suspicions were well-founded since the engine hatch didn't fit well and needed a piece of fitted styrene to fill it. Later on I checked the entire assembly onto the fuselage roof and the fit there was quite challenging. It's going to require a shoe horn and some patience to get it settle down as it should. That step is very late in the assembly and that, unfortunately could make it more difficult. There are two slots on the fuselage top that mate to two tabs on the inner engine compartmemt walls. It's a blind joint and would really benefit by having your finger pushing up to engage the pins. But... you won't be able to do that because the cabin will be installed and nothing will be able to get in there. It may be better to just cut off the tabs so nothing has to go into blind slots.

I didn't like the obvious seam running down inside the exhaust stacks so I filled that with Tamiya putty. I used some adhesive backed sand paper wrapped around a paint brush handle to sand it smooth.



I used shaped styrene to fill the intake fairing gap.



I then finished it with a bow-sander with fine grit. I had to re-engrave the seam lines. I used masking tape to protect the surfaces around the fill to not do more damage.



There is another fairing that encloses the other half of the exhaust outlet. It too has some more seams that needed a little help although nothing to the extent of the intake gap.

I again used Tamiya putty to fill and the sanding bow to level it. Not only was there a gap and I also got a significant glue smear resulting from putting the liquid cement in the back, but having it wick out the front under my thumb.



Here is the sanded version.



Lastly, some PE and some antennas and such went onto the engine housing roof.



Y'all have a nice weekend. We're due for some strange and rare weather tonight and I'm not happy. There is a significant tornado threat all night long as a major cold front crashes into this unseasonably warm weather we've been having. Most of the most agressive parts is supposed to be west of Louisvile, but you never know. I don't like tornado threats!

What nice work.
At least in your scale it has a collective stick and controls innit!

Lovely work so far!

Thank you!

Happy Monday. First of all I want to tell everyone that Louisville was spared any damage from the monster storm that ran through KY. Unlike many, I do not either blame a diety or praise one regarding where a weather front decides to become malevolent or benign. It is almost the pure definition of random. it's that randomness that drives people to want to identify an actor, but there is none. With tornadoes, a house on one side of the street is reduced to molecules and the one on the other side of the street is untouched. Gods have nothing to do with this. What I would want a god to do would be to prevent the storm from happening in the first place.

On Friday afternoon, I listened to a broadcast from one of our local weather forecasters where he was discussing "Athmospheric Caps." I hadn't heard the term, but it was very interesting. It is the high pressure that exists high in the atmosphere that can limit the ability of a storm front to make tall super cells. It results from when low and high pressure areas collide and the high pressure rides up over the low.

It was strong over our area and weak in Western KY. He said depending on how long it hangs around, it could mitigate how strong the storms would be over Louisville. I feel this effect was the main reason the storms broke down as they reached our area. Tornadoes did form about 25 miles south of the city. Meanwhile, my trash totes didn't even move. Others in the Commonwealth did not fare so well and it was horrific in the extreme.

So I am extremely happy that my wife are I are alive and well... that our house is intact, and my workshop is here so I can build this model and write about it to you.

Today began with gluing the interior onto the right hand fuselage side. I used some Quickie clamps to hold it tightly in place. The fit was pretty good so far.



This view shows how nicely the rear of the cabin fit the fuze side. I forgot to put in a piece that lay inside the nose one each side. I had to stick it to a sticky picker and slide it into the narrow space, and glue it. No harm no foul. I did glue it to the other side that wasn't attached.



I then attempted to fit the left side in place and was greeted with terrible gaps. If I got the top to fit tightly, the bottom was wide open and vice versa. Two factors were at work. With the cabin being a completely enclosed structure, you can't look and see if it's aligned properly as you could when it was just on one side, and I suspected that the cabin bulkheads were just too wide in spots preventing closer.

Here was the bottom: Notice the bulb in the front. That was an option that I decided after it was all glued in that I didn't want to use it since I wanted the FLIR option on the front end.



And this was the top! Ugh!



This was totally unacceptable and made for bad fits of the engine housing and the front fairing.

I selectively reduced the outer edges of the bulkheads and kept trying the fit. I finally got it as far as it would go, so it was time to glue. But first, the rear landing gear has to go in because it's trapped by the two fuze halves.

I painted the gear silver only to identiy that it was probably white. I first tried bare metal foil for the oleo strut, but scrapped that and used Molotow chrome brushed on. Meanwhile, the scissors link broke. I glued it together once, and it broke again when I was fussing with the foil. This time I drilled and pinned the scissors joint and glued it again. This time reinforced with thin CA.



But then, disaster struck again during all my manhandling when trying to close those pesky joints. Another piece of the scissors broke in another place and got lost.



I'll have to scratch-build or 3D print another scissors. Annoying! My UV 3D printing resin is tougher than styrene... or at least the Kitty Hawk styrene.

I changed out that front piece before commencing the fuze gluing. This one has the mount for the FLIR in front.



It was time to glue the fuze together trapping the landing gear and the front piece. I worked the bottom joint first since it's exposed more. I let the top joint go for a while. The bottom will get a little filling tomorrow after the joint is fully dry.



The top joint still ain't so hot, but it's hidden. It could cause fit problems with engine housing, fairing and the front glazing that I'll have to figure out as I go.

I'm going to fill this seam with styrene and then filler.

The tail seam was the best of the bunch and looks pretty good. I apply the liquid cement on the inside in as many areas as I can before wicking it in from the outside.



While the paint on the gear was drying I assembled the wheels and made some masks for the hubs. I use a small machinist dividers with one point ground to a sideways chisel edge. I measured the diameter with the digital calipers, divided it in half and used this setting to set the dividers. I added a dab of Molotow Liquid Mask to cover the tiny hole from the dividers' point.



Fuze cleanup will start tomorrow.

Lovely work so far!

Holey moley.... wood working clamps?????

Thanks! Sure! Why not woodworking clamps? I use them all the time.

I am persistent and today that persistence paid off. I decided to go for it and mount the entire engine housing on the craft. It took lots of handling, pushing and shoving and if any more add-on details were on the plane, I would have surely broken most of them off.

Before doing this I started working on the major gap issues. For the top gaps I used a combination of strene strips and med-acccelerated CA.



When dry I used a single-edges razor to slice the excess off near the skin line, and then using power precision sander and other sanding tools to level it. This entire joint is buried beneath the engine housing. I also used the razor to scrape the joints, not just rely on sanding.



For the bottom and tail seams I used mostly Tamiya filler and some strategic CA to fill it all. In this case I didn't use the power sander, but used the bow sander for all the convex curves.



Getting the engine house on required some surgery and lots of pushing and pulling. I though I wouldn't be able to use the ResKit trans because fit issues, but that was a red herring. The real culprit was the engine itself. It was too fat and was holding the entire assmbly off the plane. I also had to pop off the intake fairing to so more cutting. I relieved the front edges also. I lost the control rods on the trans, but they would be buried under the nose fairing.

I had to grind some of the engine, and cut one of the pipes so the engine would fit properly.



With the interference removed I was able to rubber band and clamp the housing and start gluing all around.

One joint needed some more attention with the addition of a piece of 1/32" rod and CA. That joint, even with removing the interference, was still too high and need persuasion to get where it belonged.



Here are some of the other fits after correction.



I was rewarded after all this work to see that the nose fairing fit almost as it should. This is not glued. There's some internal pieces that must go on first. You can see what's left of that Phos-bronze pin.



The last gap was due to a mismatch of the fuze sides at the rear engine mount vertical face. I could see this offset, but it seemed in a difficult to remove it, so I decided to handle it with filling.



Again, I used styrene (2 pieces of 0.015" stock) to fill it. It will dry overnight and I'll sand it the next work session. More cleanup work will be done tomorrow on the bottom filling too.