Jakko's TC’s Hughes 500 from Magnum, P.I. Italeri 1/72

[Guest]

I had left the seats off so I could paint them separately, but after I found some seats for the back in my small-scale vehicle spares box, that just needed their legs shortened by about a millimetre, I decided to stick them all in already:

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Now I just need to wait for the glue to dry and I can paint all of this white followed by the details. I wish I had a good figure to represent TC, though …

Oh, to give an idea of size: that whole thing is just under 3 cm long and about 1.5 cm wide.

[Guest]

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I first sprayed the whole interior with Games Workshop “Corax White” from an aerosol can, which is actually a very light grey. I followed this up with a wash made from a light-medium grey Vallejo acrylic and once dry, heavily drybrushed all of it with white before painting the details.

I now need to fit the windows in the doors, as they go in from the inside, but that means masking them first so I won’t accidentally push them in again trying to get masking tape on them.

[outrunner]

I now need to fit the windows in the doors, as they go in from the inside, but that means masking them first so I won’t accidentally push them in again trying to get masking tape on them.

Been there, done that, I wish all kit manufactures would make the windows fit from the outside.

Andy.

[Guest]

Masking the front windshield was fun, what with it curving in all directions. I still need to cut out the frames, but I can’t see them through the tape because the lines have been moulded so finely … great

[langy71]

Looking good so far Jakko,

any chance you could 'scratch' a figure of T.C. ?

[Guest]

Scratchbuilding him is out of the question — way beyond my skills. I looked through my spares boxes and couldn’t find any suitable figure, whether lightly enough dressed for Hawaiʻi or not, so I think the helicopter will have to do without

[Guest]

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Fuselage halves with the windows and the cockpit together, but not the windscreen yet — masking that is proving very tricky mostly because you can’t see where most of the framing is once the tape is on The windows that are in also don’t fit overly great, and neither do the fuselage halves, but it’ll have to do.

[adt70hk]

Looking good Jakko!

Hope you sort out windscreen masking ok.

Andrew

[Jim R]

Much smaller than I imagined, Jakko. That will make it very fiddly. Good call with the rear seats. Masking is often awkward but the shapes and the curve of the screen makes thing worse.

[Guest]

Hope you sort out windscreen masking ok.

I will, but I had had enough of it again this afternoon when I had redone about a third of it and still got it wrong. Will try again later

Much smaller than I imagined, Jakko.

I’ve built a couple of these over the years, but I feel like I had forgotten quite how small a Hughes 500 actually is in 1:72

[Guest]

It’s an uncomplicated little kit but still took me rather long to actually build:

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Much of that is due to the not-stellar fit of the very small (see the Tamiya paint jar for scale) fuselage and clear parts and because it took a while before I felt like giving the masking of the windscreen a third go … but it’s done now The main rotor is still loose, and the tail rotor also hasn’t been attached yet, but otherwise, I just need to wait for the glue to dry so I can put a coat of white over this, then paint it yellow and start making those stripes. At least the tape I purchased for that seems to be exactly the right width for most of them

[adt70hk]

It's almost as small as 1/100 Huey I did last year

[papa 695]

Just seen this one Jakko, and it’s nearly finished, some very nice work going on. Looking very good indeed.

[Mickc1440]

That is tiny, looks really good

[Guest]

Thanks, the fit of the side windows isn’t great, but the only way to fix that would have been a lot of work carefully scraping or filing out their frames, and the fuselage halves were also tricky to get to line up with each other. But a little care and it goes together well enough. Still, I think that if I were to do this again, I would buy a 1:48 or 1:35 scale kit instead