Since I have 5 of this kits minus 3 reserved for SA 341 Gazelle project I decided to built 1 straight from the box and maybe super detailing the other one for my next project. You can review the kit content on my Gazelle write up.
Hmm... surprise surprise. Building this kit out of the box seems to be more difficult than converting it to a Gazelle. Seat cushion doesn't fit into the sea bucket, the pedals doesn't fit to the column, etc.. etc...
It seems Kitech kits actually longer than the actual Blue Thunder helo's. The cockpit need to be shortened. The skid should be lowered. I compare this from the drawing produce by Arthur and Andy above and the kit itself. The fuselage need to be cut by roughly about 0.5mm -1cm. this require major surgery and careful calculation before cutting the fuselage.
The other problems would be the clear part (canopy). Since the cockpit to be shortened therefore the canopy need to be cut to fit the new cockpit. I remembered an article on stretching a C-130 and maybe i could use the methodology of resizing a model.
Let's do some cutting...
Alright... there is old saying "measure twice, cut once" and to make sure my helo's is not looking too weird it's time for some measurement... first I enlarge the drawing above to desired scale (in this case 1/32th) and compare to the kits halves. The cockpit need to be shortened by 0.8mm in length.
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| Top is the original kit and bottom is the shortened fuselage. I decided to cut at the highlighted area (bold line) to avoid extra work when joining the halves together later on. |
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| The cockpit - 0.8mm measured in between both lines. |
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| Cut and shortened... |
As it goes along... it seems my itchy hands and thoughts pursue me to detail this chopper... as matter in fact, i already thinking to correct many defects on this kit compared to the real chopper... so more cutting and sanding to do...
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| with both doors opened... in the movies only port side door is used. starboard only for maintenance purposes |
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| camera mounted... opss... only for filming purposes! |
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| The office was simple... It was cramp in the real helo's but the kit was spacious and need to be corrected.. |
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| nice side view... |
