SAS Helicopter - Modified 1/48 Trumpeter Aerospatiale AS365N Dauphin 2

[Guest]

Another first for me, never done a helicopter before. A fairly small kit 92 Parts, the kit is dated 2002, and the panels look well detailed with subtle rivets and panel lines.

8 Flight Army Air Corps is a little known branch of the British Army which provided transport for SAS operations. The Helicopters are painted in commercial colours so they do not raise any eyebrows at civilian airports. As well as providing covert transport, they also fly the SAS into action. The link below shows one such Helicopter, which I will be basing my model on.

Photo Search Results | Airliners.net

A quick review shows that the tail rotor on the kit is too small diameter, there is nothing I can do about that. I can however modify the tail and extend the nose, and of course change the colour.

Cheers Derek

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[Guest]

nice choice... I like helicopters...

will following this build with interest

Roman

[Guest]

Look forward to this..

[Ian M]

Good choice. Not enough choppers on here. I am hoping to follow this one.

The coming flood of 1/48 goodies from airfix, revell and a few others as well will hopefully put that right.

Ian M

[Guest]

Thanks Chaps, Ian I got interested in this one after being given the 'Ultimate Force' DVD Box set at X-mas. The series did not feature the actual Helicopter the SAS use, but I found it with a little research. I also have the 1/48 Hasagawa RAF SAR's Seaking in my stash, got this at 33% off from Amazon, strangely enough the seller turned out to be Modelzone. Bought this last one as I watch Highland Rescue on Freeview 5Star. Cheers Derek

[mossiepilot]

This will be an interesting build to follow.

Don't see too much of covert op's aircraft, for obvious reasons I suppose.

I'll enjoy watching this.

Tony.

[Guest]

Finally got round to this one. Was going to break away from my Trawler to do this one but never got round to it.

This will be an out of the box build. The kit is obviously aimed for the Japanese market, with the instructions in their language, but its a simple kit, so no one should have a problem with it.

Just a couple of shots of the work so far, the colours are based on those when viewing photos on the airliners.net website. The top pane of the cockpit canopy was tinted blue on the inside using Tamiya Clear Blue X-23 with a drop of Tamiya thinner.

There were no decals for the instrument panel, this had me confused for a while until I realized you had to cut out the paper panel printed on the assembly instructions - pretty crude, but I doubt if you will see much of it when the model is closed up.

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Cheers Derek

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[Guest]

Have added an open bulkhead behind the pilots seats as shown on the photos. Used scrap plasticard, evergreen and decals. Have also assembled the gearbox and engine cowling at the rotors. The fuselage seams are pretty bad so will need several passes of filler before a satisfactory finish can be achieved.

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Have also started to construct the extended nose, as can be seen in the photo. For this I used the mouldings from the rescue winch, which is not needed, and cut off its tapered end. A lot of filling and blending in will be needed.

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Cheers Derek

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[mossiepilot]

Coming along nicely Derek.

Tony.

[Guest]

Nice work so far Derek!

[Guest]

I agree with all others... nice work so far

Roman

[Guest]

Tony,Trey and Roman, Thanks for your support.

Some time ago I bought some Vallejo Plastic Putty in a local model shop, never used it before so thought I would try it out in filling the new nose. I applied three layers, allowing it to dry 24 hours between each. It dries nice and hard and can be filled and sanded no problem; I preferred sanding as the file clogged up very quickly. I noticed it shrunk quite a bit, so for me personally I will not use it as a seam filler, but it is great for larger shape changing mods.

For the housing on the underside of the nose I shaped some scrap plastic, and sandwiched it between layers of the above putty. Going to give the mod a coat of Mr Surfacer 500 and do some fine grain sanding before priming. Cheers Derek

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[Guest]

Must admit I am finding it hard to get back into modelling since my Trawler and my holiday. Anyway, the fitting of the canopy is a real nighmare on this kit. This is the first layer filler applied.

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After some cleaning up there was a pronounced lip at the front of the canopy, so added some more filler.

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Cheers Derek

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[Ian M]

Glad to see you back and I hope you had a nice holiday.

Looks like a filler monster you got there.

Ian M

[Guest]

Finally got the nose shaped and smoothed off. Been adding the various antenna as per the SAS Helicoptes; have left off the whip antenna until after painting. Trumpeter have done a pretty tidy job of representing the Rotor mechanism and Rotors. Last photo shows a dry fit of the Main and Tail rotor. One or two small bits to add before painting. Plan to use a white primer, but am going to wait until the Sea Vixen is at the primer stage, and will prime them both at the same time also with white. Derek

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