Takom 1:35 scale AH-64D Apache Long Bow Attack Helicopter

Those turbines are spectacular. Looking forward to updates.

Lovely work so far!

Turbines are nice, but I would have liked to go nuts on more piping. Speaking of more piping. This is the piping on the J-58 that powered the SR-71. What an engine that was!

Over our vacation we visited the Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. A wonderful museum (actually 2 museums) out in the middle of the Willamette Valley south of Portland, OR. It's also the permanent home of Howard Hughes' monster plywood aircraft, the Spruce Goose. They have an SR-71 and one of its J-58s out in front on a stand. The image is a composite of a whole bunch. I dare anyone to super detail that piping! I amd not going to do that!



I got the tail rotor assembled. It's a challenge. Very engineered—to a fault. The hub assemble with the pitch rods is exceptionally unstable, although it got better when the blades went in a captivated the pitch rods.
was met with a sprue problem where the feeders were either broken or not fully formed. This led to one of the shorter ones being badly bent and almost broken before I even got to it.



The pitch rods didn't line up with the tiny pins on the blade arms. To glue them I clipped the pins so the misalignment didn't affect gluing. That's a really fine Swiss tweezers for scale.



The two sets of blades glued to the arm extensions on the hub. The tiny pins to which they align are assymetrical and it won't fit well if you get them reversed. I needed all my Opti-vior's magnifying power to make sure I was attaching to the correct pins. The imagae points this out.



I'm not puttint the blade assembly on until near the end.



I have a decision to make. I'm not sure my friend has the display location to have the ship with the blades extended. However, the folded blade scheme means not installing the Long Bow antenna, which is such an iconic aspect of this Apache version. And there's the terrible fragibility of the blade support rack. I decided to attempt to build the rack. If it comes out okay, then I'll do the folded blade version. If it's too frail to actually do the job, I will go with open blades and let my friend figure out where he's going to put it.

These two pictures show just how invoved this rack it. And here I thought the Seahawk's support rack was complex. The difference is the Seahawks blades are stowed all the time and are hudraulically actuated, whereas the Apache's are folded manually and only done when the ship is being air-lifted on a C-17 or its ilk. When folded the Long Bow antenna is removed and the extendable rotor shaft is retracted.



Assembly started with the parts that wrap around the fuselage. There's a lot of little and excessive PE, but I'm attempting to use it.



After adding the PE to the individual pieces I had to install these connecting post between the two sides. After fussing with them trying to make them stay still while fitting those tiny rods, I went to my old standby PanaVise to hold at least one part still. This worked okay. They have to cure overnight since it's a very fragile assembly. Still dubious about its strength to hold the blades for the trip back East.


I got the group done and will be ready for the next steps tomorrow. With these assemblies I have to overcome my desire to keep moving and let them really dry. Otherwise, I'm repairing more than building.




Here are the two sets. My method of holding PE is to use gel CA which can be applied in very tiny quantities and it stays put and does not cure. Then after the PE is in place I just get the accelerator near the joint to cure it. For the tiniest part I put the CA on the plastic and dipped the part (held in a tweezers) in the accelerator. It cures almost as soon as I get the part in place. No room for adjustment in the latter method.



Until next time...

Finished building the blade rack. It's very, very fragile and I'm still not sure if it's the best way to proceed. I'll paint it as if I'm going to use it, but it does change the rotor hub and that decision needs to be made shortly. The blade crane glues to the rotor hub without the Long Bow radar.

First up was the frail diagonal braces. Before removal I was met with one of the ends bent in such a way that any more bending would break it off. I wish Takom would have fudged it a bit and left the diameters constant up to the end link. By narrowing it to make it "more scale" left it very weak and prone to breakage.



The instructions had you gluing these on BEFORE assembling the main part to the base piece. That would be folly. Their gluing surface is micrscopic and if they were dangling there glued only on one end, it would not have ended well. Instead I glued the main parts together and then put on the diagonals. Even then, when assembling the lower part, they were coming unglued multiple times.



The base supports went on, but I think they're on backwards. I don't believe they are symetrical since the trial fit on the fuselage seems to fit better facing one way than the other.



The support wings went on next. These are even more dubious than the rest of the assembly. They're held by as tiny plastic shaft simulating a hinge. I reinforced with Bondic, but have not illusions that it's going to last. I tried the assembly on the model and don't like that it's tipping back so much. When I reversed as noted before, it fit better telling me that the base arms are not the same and I them reversed. Too late to fix. The parts would break in attempting to rectify. The blade holders on the arms are pinned with 0.032" phos-bronze since their mounting lugs were almost not existent.



Lastly, they have you assembling a blade crane which is used to swing and supprt the blades when getting them into the holders. This is like the rest, being very scale and very fragile. I had the side arm reversed, but caught it in time to break the almost-set glue joint and put on properly. Take a look at that tiny glue spot that's going to hold the crane blade shoes in place hanging on the end of the arm. I was attempting to glue it on yesterday, but decided to let everything cure overnight so I have a fighting chance to get it together. And then I have transport this… hmmm...



Not sure what color to paint this. For the Seahawk, all the blade stowage hardware was red. I will do some research to see what color this stuff is for an Army bird. Today's session will be building the main rotor hub.

Well…I guess I got my answer. Almost all red, but some white and black details as well.




It would appear that there's some soft material between the rig's legs and the fuselage. Notice also that the support angles are natural aluminum. All the bolt heads are natural metal also. Fun with the Molotow Chrome pen



More trivia: the blade stowage rig cost $160k and weighs over 1,000 pounds. All the shoes slide on their respecive beams. The support legs are held to the fuselage by straps that wrap underneath. I may try and simulate those. Notice too, how little weathered the Appache is. In the film from which I pulled these screen prints, there was a C-17 that is holding the Apache and it was immaculate! People over-weather too many models, especially modern equipment that's not in active combat.

Great work so far!

Yesterday's session had a turning point. I checked with my friend if he could handle the extended blade version and he said he could. Therefore; the work done on the support rig was for naught. As it is, before talking to him, I finished it up. Starting with putting the crane shoes on. A tiny glue area is holding the stem and it would break in a heartbeat.



With the good reference photos, I painted the rig and then set it aside never to be used again.




missing is the little bit of silver on the PE brackets.

The reason I needed the answer now was due to different parts having to be used in the rotor hub for the folded wing mode, and this was the point those parts were going to be used.

The rotor hub arms are another very finicky construction with microscopic plastic parts that don't like being captivated by tweezers. On one sprue all of these parts were unconnected from the sprue on one side, just waiting to be lost. I didn't lose any then, but did lose 2 out of 8 further into construction. This is how big they weren't.


Just the act of attempting to remove any sprue debris risked the loss of the part.

These parts made up the arm sub-assemblies.



I glued all four subs together and then discovered that they had to captivate this pin on the flanks of the top hub piece. Luckily, the glue hadn't hardened totally and I was able to pry them apart, get them all connected, add more glue and put them back together. Frankly, with having to trap the side arms into their little pockets AND get the pin in place seemed too much to do at the same time anyway. I don't know why Takom thinks it was necessary to make that joint movable. I know it's movable on the 1:1 model since this is the pitch axis of the blade, but it could have been a keyed pin that could have been glued AFTER building the arm, and assembly would have been a whole lot less stressful.

Once again, it's details without a purpose. The diagram shows the relationship. It's one of the drawbacks of having instructions with no dialog. It would have been nice if there was a clear note to NOT ASSEMBLE ARMS BEFORE ATTACHING TO PIN! I also understand that these kits are designed for a global market and words would be a problem.



All the arms are in place.


So the glue would dry with the arms tight I clamped them all and let them sit overnight.



That's where work ended yesterday. Today's a triple whammy day: It's Saturday so I don't work in the shop. It's the Jewish Sabbath which should also prevent me from working and it's Yom Kippur, and I definitely should not be working. In fact, I shouldn't even be writing this post, but I will probably be forgiven. If you observe, have a good fast and day of Atonement! If you don't observe, it's not a bad idea to ask for forgiveness too. The list of sins on Yom Kippur for which we ask forgiveness includes just about everything so no one escapes unscathed.

Looks great so far!

What you're seeing today is about 2 hours and 15 minutes of work. It should have taken 1/4 of that time. But, as things go most of the time was searching for parts that left this dimension, scratch-building parts to replace them and cobbling together a mess that kept trying to disassemble itself. That said, it did get togther and when painted and detailed it will be reasonablly acceptable.

I did start with some positive stuff. I solved one problem: how to get the model to Bucks County, PA without breakage. Answer: keep the blades off and mount them at my friend's house. To do this, I made some easily removable pins that can be inserted with a long-nosed pliers. I may also keep the tail rotor off for the same reason, but in that case, the shaft is very fragile, so having it exposed may solve one problem, but create another.

This isn't prototypical but it will do the job. When painted, they'll look "important."




There were 4 small pillow blocks that went onto the hub piece. The instructions showed them going in with all the arms, but I read that you need to put the spool pieces in first and then the blocks. One got lost. I cobbled a poor repressentation out of styrene. They're on the bottom and invisible, but they do support another link system.



Later in the build I dropped a swash-plate link and when finding it on the floor, found the missing pillow block. I removed my scratch-built version and put on the correct one. The links are very tiny, fragile and breakable. I lost one to the dimension rift. Seriously. It was in the middle of the work surface. I picked it up with my fingers and when I looked it wasn't there. IT WASN'T ANYWHERE! There is only one explanation… dimensional rift. If all goes to plan, tomorrow it will be sitting on the bench right where it was supposed to be today. So I lost one link and then the other broke. I made two out of 0.032" phos-bronze. It doesn't have the adjustment rings, but they work.

To make things like this I flatten the ends using a very old Vise Grip Model 10R. I keep tightening it down and crushing it until I get the thickness and width I want. I prick-punched the ends before drilling then opened the hole to a "C" shape using a diamond-coated half-round file duplicating the model part. They have about a 45º twist on them.

I held them in place with thin CA.



But in handling them, a lot of the previous work decided to re-kit itself.



At long last all the pieces were back in place. I reinforced the diagonal link with Bondic, since the glue surface left something to be desired.



Last thing I did was try it on the bird. It will work out. But boy, these high-detail choppers have a lot of temperamental tiny parts. I'm not sure if it's a blessing or curse. I suppose there are modelers out there that don't suffer these ills. Perhaps they're younger and a bit more steady, but some of the problems are simply kit engineering… attempting to increase parts count and fidelity by make multiple part assemblies that could be done differently. Example: the control box for the Long Bow antenna is a rectangular with a core and 6 separate faces that have to be glued on plus some PE. Do you really need to have each face as an indivifual part? And some of the pieces would be best in investment cast brass instead of very thin cross-section styrene. Takom styrene is brittle. I had to do the same thing with the Kitty Hawk 1/32 Seahawk. All the those links had to be created in phos-bronze wire also.



Next up is the Long Bow system and the weapons and we're ready for paint and decals. A lot of the Apaches are very faded olive drab. Have to think about it… The end is nigh!

Your build makes me wonder how the real thing stays airborne. That's a lot of moving parts!

Great detailed build Myles and don't fret any about the upcoming big 80, I've just had mine and my modelling is not suffering and it is one great recreation.

Great work so far!

Thanks Guys. Nope! Nor worried about 80 either. In fact, 79 is a boring age. When you say you're 80 people's ears perk up. Tell 'em you're 79 and it's ho hum. Or that's how I see it...

And I agree… I don't know how helicopters stay in the air. Sometimes they don't. You're flinging around big, long bars at reasonably high speed, and while they're doing all this spinning, you changing their pitch angle constantly, when they're receding it's one pitch and when it's the advancing blade it's another pitch and while this is going on, there's another pitch angle that overlaid on the whole set of blades that determines if the ship is gaining or losing altitude. That's for the Apache wi\th its fixed blades (all helicopeters for that matter), but if it's a Navy bird, then you add the complexity of automatic blade folding with the knuckle that supports the blades being rotated hydraulically and the locking pins that keep the blades from folding while flying. And yet… they do fly for many hours and many years. All I know is that in 1/32 scales all those links are really fragile.

I built the Long Bow antena system today. I scrapped the plastic wiring and substituted .5mm solder wire. I intended on using the plastic ones, but one broke so quickly that I stopped messing with them and went to wire. The control box had way too many parts. in addition to these shown here, there ware also two PE plates that made up the front and back. The back one was only there to add a tiny flange sticking out the side, and it will not be noticed…. Period.



I had to open up some holes for the solder and, of course, broke a pasal of carbide mini-drills. Holes are way too expensive!



A long time ago I broke the plastic vertical shaft and made a brass sleeve to connect the broken parts. As it works out, the sleeve itself works to center the antenna. I tried the antenna on the ship and it works okay.



Here's that sleeve. I opened up the bottom hole in the antenna to accept the 1/8" sleeve.



I have good references on the painting of the Long Bow System.





Last thing I did today was start on the foil application on the engine doors. This all needs to be done before I mask it up for the exterior painting. I''m using Bare Metal Foil bright chrome. I measure the spacing with dividers and cut the foil with a brand new #11 blade. I'm also going to add textured ChartPak tape to simulate the anti-slip stripes on the doors.



Onward and upward.

Great work and detail.

Finished the foiling of the engine covers. For the last two concave sections I had to pre-coat the spaces with some pressure sensitve adhesive since the foil wasn't adhering as I would ahve liked.



With some very old black, textured Chartpak tape, I added the anti-slip strips on the flat part of the door.



I started working on the Maverick missiles. Some folks are happy that they slide molded the missiles as a single part. I guess that's good… But the PE fins, while nice and thin, are supposed to engage with some very narrow slots in the missile body, but didn't seem to fit right and getting them CA'd in was making a big mess. The front fins are very small and getting them to settle in and not fly off into the great beyond was a pain in the posterior. It didn't help that the fins were fractionally longer than the slots they were supposed to go into. It caused me to use more force than necessary to try and get them to seat. For fhe next one I'm going to elongate the slots just a bit. I think that it's easier to do that than trim the brass.

The accelerator was eating into the plastic, which did not help. I have a dental tool that I then used to deepen and widen the slots a bit. After gluing in the front four and one rear fin, I found out that I was doing all this to the wrong body. I wanted to use the one where the clear dome was on the front. I didn't realize that there were three different body types. I pulled the fins off the wrong one and built the first correct one. I changed my routine…Instead of using gel CA and then applying accelerator to the finished joint, I switched to medium CA and applied a thin coat of accelerator to the widened slot. This worked better… not perfect, but better. This one is a bit sloppy and it will be on the bottom inside on the rack. I'll get better as I go on.





I'll paint these and decal them and the put on the clear lenses. Not sure what to paint that hemisphere inside. Any ideas?

BTW: if you get the chance, ask you dentist if he has any tools that are being scrapped. They get dropped and damaged, but they're pefect for us modelers. They can be resharpened to use for panel scribing, micro-scraping, glue application, etc. I use them all the time.

Good and patient work Myles and thanks for the dental tool tip.

Lovely work so far!