SH-60B 1/35 Seahawk by Kitty Hawk

Great work so far!

First I unsuccessfully printed a gaggle of scissors links that turned out to be too thin to properly drill for the assembly wire I was going to us. I'm going to redesign.



I then finished cleaning up that complex fill area where the engine house joins the tail section. I used various sanding aids including a riffle file that works on concave surfaces.



The rest of the long work session was spent installing lots of little bits that make the model unique. The SH-60B LAMPS version has a lot of antenna and sensor sticking out everywhere. I reinforced some of the most delicate with wire. The instructions called for the canopy to be installed now, but I'm holding off until much later. I will mask the interior without the glazing. I also built and installed the FLIR unit that hangs on the front. There are loads of lights on the ship which I install with canopy glue on a surface prepared with Molotow Chrome Paint.





This phos-bronze is firmly holding this protrubing antenna.



There are two lifting eyes that were broken on the sprue. There are two "E" sprues and the part was broken on both.



I formed new ones out of wire and installed them with CA. They're a little thick, but that's the best size I had. Everything else was too thin or even thicker.



Here are some of the lights. That ugly seam is actually closed with CA. When painted it will disappear... thankfully!



There are sensors that go on the four corners of the cabin. Not sure what they are, but they have lights on the front ones also which I pre-treated with the Molotow. The FLIR goes on an optional bracket on the nose. It even includes some nice connecting leads.



The forward half of the FLIR ball is transparent so I pre-masked the optical windows before attaching to the airframe.



It's captivated by the two halves of the lower frame. The ball articulates vertically, but does not rotate.



Can someone tell me what that rectangular array is? IFF?

As a former UH-60L Black Hawk guy (yes I know, different from the Seahawk) I am loving this. Cannot wait to see the finished product.

Many, many years ago I was building a 1/35 UH-60L. I brought actual touch up paint home from the hangar for painting the model as accurate as possible, and was trying to scratch build as much as possible (I am pretty amateurish at modeling). Unfortunately in one of my moves the model was destroyed before I could finish it.

Nice update again, I like the lights, I will try to make them the same way you did ffor the landing Light off my Mossie

Thanks guys. Sorry to hear about the move wrecking the project.

I re-designed the scissors print. Instead of printing them all directly on the build plate, i drew a plank below them and supported each print sufficiently so no part of the link would attempt to print in free space. My reasons for this change are due to the nature of starting layers. The first 8 layers printed are exposed for 60 seconds per layer (as compared to 10 secs/layer on the rest) to ensure that they are well hardened and adhered to the build plate. If not, when the plate lifts to allow fresh resin to backfill for the next layer, the previous layer could adhere to the teflon barrier at the resin vat bottom, and not lift with the build plate thus creating a failed print job. This long exposure has a negative side effect. It causes the first layers to spread out beyond the part's boundaries creating what's know as an "elephant foot". For large parts, the elephant foot's no big deal, but on small parts it can distort the shape pretty badly as it did on my first attempt.

By elevating the parts off the plate and supporting them, the elephant foot is on the plank, not the parts, and the parts come out true size. Notice that the print was actually starting to faill on the right side of the image with the plank lifting off the build plate, but enough of the plank was still attached to produce a bunch of good parts. That's why I ALWAYS print a lot more parts than I actually need. The resin is cheap for tiny parts, and the print time is the same since it's the number of vertical layers that determines print time (along with exposure times and print layer thickness).



I post-hardened the bars before drilling the holes and separating them from the bar.

I tried to drill one and did have success. THEY WILL WORK! Notice the one in the background has a broken leg. Again, that's why I print so many. They're fragile and drilling is a bit abusive to tiny parts.



Work continued adding fuselage details. There were three antenna that went onto the tail boom. I had pre-opened holes for two of them, but had missed opening the square hole for the middle one. Rather than just drillng anywhere, I came up with a scheme to shine my iPhone light down the boom and lo and behold, the thinner plastic where the location was on the inside glowed just enough so I could poke the hole from the outside and produce the square hole in its correct location.



The crew door is supposed to be installed now, but I want it in the open position to pose a mechanic sitting on the sill. That means the fuselage must be painted before the door goes on since you can see the fuze wall through the glazing. I also drilled and pinned the delicate door handle. I have the Eduard transparent parts mask set for this model. I use the Testor's Canopy Glue for all the transparent parts.



Up next was the torpedo rack on the strb. side. It's a 3-piece affair where you have to sandwich a part inside before gluing the two halves together. It was confusing to me just how this part was to be installed so I spent a lot of time studying it and ultimately got it right.

Onto it when four, very tiny sway braces. These suckers were really, really tiny. I used a 'parts catcher' apron (a la watchmakers) stapled to the underside of my work bench that catches about 80% of the crap that I drop (as long as I remember to clothes pin it to my shirt). One of these parts dropped into it. Here's what it looks like. Imagine seaching the floor for that!



In case you think I'm being hyperbolic, he's a cropped closeup showing it's actually a molded part.



And here they are glued in position on the underside of the torpedo rack.



Last thing I did was assemble the co-pilot's door. Again, I have to hold off on the full assembly since the inside of the door is black, like the interior, but there's a inner frame that goes on over the glazing, making painting and masking more complicated. I'm going to mask the glazing inside and out, paint the inner wall, then assemble and paint the outer frame. I looked to see if it was possible to open the door, but it's not going to be very straight forward since half of the hinge is molded into the fuze wall. I it could be cut out and glued to the door part it might work. I think about it.

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Until next time...

Good stuff, and that part isn't tiny, it's almost bl**dy invisible !!!

Good work so far!

So glad you are enjoying it.

Started masking the various glazing needed to do the early painting. Then I found that the Eduard masks for the MH Blackhawk don't actually fit this version, as seen here.

If I'm going to have to add more mask to fill out the spaces, I might as well mask from scratch, which is exactly what I did. This was the exterior of the glazing.

And I masked the interior too. The sliding door interior will not be seen, but the cockpit doors are viewable and will be painted black.

I also replaced the plastic door pull and the missing door handle with metal parts.

Lastly I spent a lot of time... to darn much time on making the scissors links. Here's me cross-drilling the link. My drawing was a little off making the legs too thick. In attempting to open up the gap I kept breaking the legs. I also broke a ton of these drills for various reasons including putting side pressure on the drill and actually bummping something when I put it down on the bench.

I ended the session without finishing this. At least I can print more. I'm post-curing one batch for the second time to maybe toughen it up a bit more. Not too much production for an afternoon's work.

This scale is perfect for detail.
You seem to be doing it all.
Well done!

Thanks and I'm trying.

Finally got a reasonable scissors link installed. I don't really like it, but I've spent WAAAAYYY to many hours screwing around with it. After breaking a half dozen micro-drills at a buck fifty a pop, I didn't even pin the darn things. I just CA'd them and that's that. Still needs paint.



Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Everyone have a wonderful one!

Merry Christmas !

Nicely done so far!

Happy Monday after Christmas.
Odds and ends day. Finished masking the cockpit doors, hung the personnel hoist, prepared and installed the corner cockpit windows and the nose skin, and installed the outer wall that covers the sonar rack.
Again, I masked the interior and exterior of the cockpit left door, sealed all the edges with clear gloss to prevent color leakage. And again, made the hand pull out of phos-bronze wire. Since the metal stuck through the other side a bit, I drilled holes in the inner frame so the wires wouldn't keep the frame from seating properly. The plastic door handle is again wired in place.

I airbrushed the interior parts with NATO black and then pulled the tape. Came out okay. Before gluing on the inner frame I picked out some details with my "steel" metallic mix. I AM going to put one of the doors (co-pilot's) in the open position reinforcing it with wire. It will require reshaping the hinge details so the door can be properly opened.


I masked and installed the outer left skin that covers the sonar rack. I had to carefully position the left side of this panel since it wanted to fall into the craft to deeply. Needs a tad of filler on the lower lip.

Assembled the personnel hoist and then glued it to the fuselage. it was trickier to position than I would have thought and I had to remove some of the locating pin on the stem so it would settle down on the fuze properly.

It was time to install the nose cone and the lower corner windows. After putting on the nose cone, I had to paint the edges and touch up the interior before the glazing could go on.

I masked these windows off the model and then glued them in place, again with canopy cement. Again I sealed the edges with clear. I'm re-thinking installing the main glass to avoid having to mask the delicate interior.

It's too bad that you can no longer see any of the avionics which I so painstakingly painted...

Thanks Gino! I did do just that. I did all the masking off the craft and then glued it in place. I did NOT use canopy cement. It's not secure enough. I DID use solvent cement and think I was careful enough to not wick it onto the clear portions. The Eduard decal set almost worked perfectly for these windows. I say almost because the Seahwak version does have some slight variations even on the front windscreen starting with the overhead control panel that is a painted portion of the glazing and has a curved portion on the left top that gets left unmasked. I'm adept at using a #11 to trim windshield masks even without them being pre-cut. None of the side windows masks worked at all.

That 1/32" cap on the roof keeps rearing its ugly head. In this instance it made an objectionable gap on the left side door, both on top and at the windshield joint. The windshield ended that gap's thickness too soon and didn't reach the door.
I again used shaped styrene to fill the gaps. There was also another gap at the right-top-rear edge of the windshield, also filled neatly with styrene. Filling with styrene reduces (not necessarily elimates) using paste fillers that often need multiple coats to fill a stubborn gap.

Before snapping the door in place (no glue needed), I painted the inside of the shim with interior black using a brush with a long handle from the opposite side of the cockpit. That's in case the rivet counters peer through the open door and see white styrene on the other side. I know, I know AMS!
With the door in place the gaps are now closed and the door fits tight enough to not need internal masking.

The right side fit was too tight and I had to trim the inner door frame so it would close enough to seal the paint out. The other shim is pointed out here. I had to use some canopy cement on the door's upper edge to keep it shut before painting. As I said, it's not that strong and the door is removable. This door will be open.

I added the left side weapons sponson. it too had four of those tiny sway braces. Little spot needing some filler.

We're not making out annual trip back East for New Years. Too many unknowns with the pandemic. I'm telling y'all this to say, building will not be interrupted.

Wow