I’ve been planning this build for quite a while now, but needed some motivation and additional reference and parts to begin. I can’t remember why I decided that I wanted to build this exact Huey. I think I was actually looking for Cobra decals and stumbled upon the Fireball Models website where I began looking at all their 1/35 scale decal offerings. This scheme and design really stood out and looked like it’d be fun to build.

The decals are alps printed and look very nicely done. There’s enough decals that I could do several copters and still have a lot of nice markings leftover for other stuff. Plus it came with some very nice color-printed decal and color/marking guides. I’m planning to do the Navy NAS FALLON version from the sheets.

Now before I get the inevitable “that’s wrong” or “that was never used in that particular helo”, or “there’s 182 rivets on that panel, not 123 and you suck for not having fixed that” comments, I should say that this is my first ‘real’ aircraft build and don’t expect it to be 100% accurate. Frankly that sort of stuff doesn’t interest me as I really want something that looks cool. If it happens to look close to correct in the process, well all the better! If I’m not having fun doing this then it’s not worth doing, right?

Back to the kit, this is the Dragon/Panda 1/35 scale UH-1N Gunship kit. It’s a rerelease of the old Panda kit with added detail and 2 sheets of PE, one prepainted for consoles and seatbelts. I’m working on the interior first so havent even worried too much about the exterior. I plan to have the side doors open so there’s a good but of detailing that needs to be done.

^ First Aid packs on floor will later be hung on interior walls. ^

Looking through my refs, these SAR copters are chock-full of stowage goodies. Bags, coolers, hoist, First Aid packs and kits, etc… I’ve sculpted a lot of packs using Aves Apoxie Sculpt and others are from various 1/35 armor kits. A few are from the 1/35 Gundam kits, but shhh! I won’t tell if you don’t. The hoist was ‘borrowed’ from my Acaremy/MRC 1/35 MH-60G Pavehawk kit. I was going to use the hoist from the UH-1D HEER kit, but it’s awful. The pack suspended from the roof is also Aves and lead foil and I use my Wire Wrapping tool to make the headset cords to be hanging from the roof as well.

I also have been using some PE parts from the Eduard UH-1C interior set. Again, probably incorrect, but it helps me fill in details like the sidewalls and door panels. Stuff that isn’t really all that noticible, but makes it more visually interesting by having added it.

Anyway, that’s all for now. More on this once I start priming and painting. The interior needs to be completed first so that I can glue the exterior halves together and detail/mask/paint them after.

I also began work on the Mig Productions Burned Out Modern Car kit which arrived a few days ago. After cleaning the resin and constructing the wire seats using the supplied jig and a soldering iron, cleaning up the kit and painting has been a fun and relatively quick process. I used an SBS at the Mig forum by vsuarez666 seen here. It was a great tool for getting great results quickly. I’ve still a bit to go on it, but here’s where I’m at so far.

After priming the kit with self-etching primer I followed up with a coat of flat black spraypaint. Over that I sprayed a dark overall rust tone using the black base as shadows to show through, followed up by two lighter rust coats mottled on with my airbrush.

Over this base coat I used cheapie acrylics and stippled on yellow, brown, gray, blue and red with a damp sponge. This adds more color and variety to the rust and will add more depth in the next steps.

Over this stippled coat I sprayed a flat layer of FFA to seal the base coats. I let that cure overnight and the next day I sprayed the kit down with hairspray and generously sprinkled kosher and table salt over it.

After the hairspray dried I sprayed on some neutral gray, white, then a light mint color for that “classic” car feel.

I removed the salt by rubbing and with water and a brush removing some of the hairspray layer as well to re-expose the rust. Rubbing the salt off took some of the base coat with it resulting in some dark spots, but those actually add to the overall rustiness and look great IMO.

Then I took some rust-colored oils, some dark brown and some ocher and blended them into the surface to enhance the color. I then took some white and Faded German Gray which is a very light bluish color and enhanced the leftover paint spots of the vehicle.

Once this layer of oils dry I plan to go back with some grays and whites and dirty the car up as it’ll be sitting in a pile of building debris.

And speaking of debris, here’s the start of my base for the Berge. The Berge will be plowing some debris off a road and into an open crater. There will be corrugated steel, barrels, building rubble, the car, a fridge, chair and vacuum, girders, pipes, bricks and more.  The base is foam and thin plywood for now, but all that will be covered. The exterior in basswood and the foam in Bondo, Celluclay, and a Sculpey road surface (made, but not pictured)

Since my last post I’ve pained additional details such as caution stripes and the rubber feet parts and applied more chipping effects. First I went through and used a butter color to create false chip highlights next to some of the paint chips as well as scrapes that didn’t go through to the metal. This same color was sponged on for more of the effect on random places… wherever it looked good. Unfortunately the color looks too white to me now, but a few filters of yellow or German Ocher will fix that. After the light yellow I went back and added yellow back to some of the larger chipped areas. This is known as “negative chips” IIRC. Works well and helps when I’ve removed too much paint with the hairspray technique.

Lastly I added finer chips using two methods. First I flicked spots of dark gray Vallejo paint onto the model to make fine little chips. A little goes a loooooong way so don’t overdo it. Then I sponged on Dark Rust and Dark Gray Vallejo to create more worn areas of rust where there would be more wear and tear. Feet, shovel, lower legs/shovel arm, etc… Then I clear-coated and added a few decals followed by a satin coat to prepare for the weathering steps.

I included a few more of my reference pics I’m using to depict a well-worn construction mecha. Here’s all the pics!

The potentially hard part was the legs which come in halves to incorporate the joint movement, however it was fairly simple. I used regular liquid super glue along the edges before joining the parts and that not only glued them together, but acted as a gap/seam filler as well. All I needed was a little Tamiya putty here and there and the legs went together very nicely.

I read a lot of feedback from modelers on my KV-X2 kit and one of the comments that enlightened me the most was concerning the pistons and hydraulic lines. Since the BergeLuther has quite a few visible pistons I wanted to add the various pipes and hoses one would see on normal construction equipment hydraulics. Very small brass rod and tube was used to create the piping and later I’ll add black wire for the tubing. Luckily there are plenty of reference images available online for this.

Once construction was (easily) completed, I moved on to painting. First I primed the parts with dark gray Duplicolor primer. Once cured everything received a coat of a dark warm gray. That was mixed using Tamiya Acrylics Nato Brown, German Gray and Black.

Next I sprayed some Neutral Gray on parts of the shovel as this will help with the large rusty bare metalness later and light mottled random sprays of a rust mix over everything.

This is then followed up with a light thinned coat of Future to seal it all up before applying the hairspray.

Next I’ve sprayed all the parts with hairspray and sprinkled crushed kosher salt over the wet hairspray for additional chipping.

I forgot to photograph a few steps, but after the hairspray I sprayed the entire kit first with a very light gray as a base to brighten the yellow, then as seen below a nice construction yellow mix.

Then I let the yellow cure for an hour or so then begin the chipping. This is done by wetting the surface which loosens the hairspray and salt, Then with a soft brush and sharp plastic bits scrapes, chips and whatnot can be made. A great side effect of the hairspray over my rusty base (not sure if this happens to others) is that it mottles the base colors making a great realistic worn look. Note the differences of the inside of the shovel between the above pics and the pic below.

Next up is painting other colors then a clearcoat and decals.

All of the pics show these guys with their tails on the ground when moving. That seems odd to me given what’s known about dinosaur movement these days. (probably a necessary evil on the part of the model makers to get it to move neatly) Since they have the same basic shape I decided I would modify the pose a bit to show it running a little harder than seen before in the film with the tail in the air.

I started out with a wire armature and bulked the chest area up with a small ball of foil and then covered that in some wire mesh. Over that I started applying sculpey to get the basic shape down. I started by sculpting and detailing the head since that would be the hardest part. I figured I could hold the body if necessary for extra support while sculpting. Glad I did! After that I started applying the rest of the shape and arms.

I think this is as far as I can go for now before I need to bake it to add more details and the other leg. The leg will need to be removable for casting. I’ll also sculpt the saddle and straps then. After another bake I’ll do the rider and it’ll be ready to go!

EDIT: Couldn’t resist so I added the saddle. You can also see the start of the left leg and where it will be cut off.

I applied the paint chips using neutral gray with a very fine brush then afterwards added more with some sponge to get the finer masses of chips and scrapes.

After the chips I added an warm buff colored filter in order to warm up the cool gray of the initial painting. After that I applied the discoloration with oil paints. This is done by adding small dabs of oil paint (I use and love the 502 Abteilung brand… very fine and smooth!) then blending them and streaking them with clean odorless turpenoid. For this I used Dark Mud, Navy Blue, Buff, and Dark Rust colors. Below you can see the difference between the discolored speeder (left) and the one with just a filter applied (right). Notice that it gives you subtle variations in the surface color making it appear more worn.

Once that dried overnight I went back and added more Dark Mud oils to the gun crevasses and engine parts. I also applied slightly thicker filters of either Dark Rust or Snow White 502 oils to further accentuate panels.

Next I’ll use some thinned 502 oils and apply a thin wash to just the panel lines. No need to get sloppy with a thick wash covering all the color variations. After that I’ll apply another flat coat and then do the soot-streaks, rust, and grime with Mig pigment powders.

Here you can see Luke’s speeder in gray and the standard orange model.

Look close and only one is gray. (hint: largest in foreground)

This I found interesting… looks like they used the same model a LOT. Were there more than one model used for the filming?

Here’s a shot of the large set pieces. Man these things were dirty!

And here’s more shots:

I opened the 4 boxes and started construction on this quartet on Sunday morning. By Monday evening I was priming the kits. They’re very simple and straight forward to build with only a few easy areas needing seams fixed or gaps filled.

Once the primer had cured I sprayed the interiors with Tamiya Neutral Gray then using a small brush painted in the details. After a quick spray of Future Floor Acrylic to seal it I applied a wash of thin 502 Abteilung blue + black oil paint to pop the control details. After that I applied tape to the insides of the canopy frames to mask the interior and set about painting the exterior.

At first I was going to use the hairspray technique, but after looking at references of the studio models I decided that level of chipping would be excessive. Instead I started by painting all four speeders in Tamiya Neutral gray then painted over that with a very light gray… almost white, but not quite. When that cured I went about painting on the markings instead of using the provided decals. While I love orange on the speeder, nothing I’ve seen, studio models or film shots seem as orange as Fine Molds decals do.  If anything it’s red-orange (to me) so that’s what I did for two of them.  The other two I mimicked the gray scheme of Luke’s speeder as seen on the Master Replica version which I had lots of pics of in an old issue of TMMI since I couldn’t find shots of the actual model used.

To paint the markings and chips I first masked everything with Tamiya tape. Then using Mig’s Liquid Mask and a sponge I dabbed on what would be the chips after painting. Then I painted the markings, rubbed off the mask, and repeated as needed for the different colors. It was a LOT of work! LOL!

Next up, airbrushed dark soot and darker chipping.

Slacking again… I had actually almost finished these months ago, but due to other commitments I had put them aside for a bit. Today I spent 20 minutes finishing them up and now they’re ready to be shown and shipped to my client. Eventually these two 1/72 scale Tie Interceptors  by Fine Molds will be paired with my Y-Wing for a chase-scene diorama. For now though they’ll be enjoyed sitting on my client’s shelf until I’m ready to tackle the project.

Because I did these a few months ago and didn’t do an in-prog report I can’t recal much of what I did, paint-mixes, etc… I know I used some Tie Fighter canopy masks I purchased at Starship Modeler. They were decent, but left way too much residue on the canopies. To keep them from ebing a boring solid color I used oils for discoloration and to highlight panels.