so i bought a chap mei sea knight

Post by **aferguson** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 5:47 pm

i don't know what made me do it but they were on sale and i've wanted a new helicopter for ages, especially a tandem rotor helicopter. Scale-wise it's really not that bad except that it's way too short but height, width, cockpit size etc are pretty scale. The engines are too small but otherwise it's not bad. My best idea right now is to cut it in half, put a ten inch plug in it to stretch it to proper length and pretend it's landing a bunch of marines in a dust storm, obscuring the middle with clouds of sand made from cotton.

I was thinking about repainting it but i like the camo scheme it comes with, so i'm not going to bother, even though it's not very representative. Just glad to have a new helicopter of some kind in the collection. I doubt we'll be seeing any new 1/18 ones ever, unless BBI finally releases the Hind they've been sitting on for years.

chunks · Post by **chunks** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 6:05 pm

One of the folks here, I don't recall who, used two of these to do just exactly what you've suggested. They used the second to provide the pieces to make this more in scale. Great work as I recall.

B-29 · Post by **B-29** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 6:07 pm

Hmm.. I'll have to get one andctry this. A 1/18 sea knight would be awesome!
As for the bbi hind, we'll never see it. Bbi proposed the idea to the major american distributer. They said no to the idea because helicopters have tended to sell worse than aircraft, much less a Russian copter..

Post by **aferguson** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 7:48 pm

it was tdespiro who spliced to chap mei sea knights together.....a really difficult task as i recall. I'm not going to go to that extreme, i'm actually going to hide the middle secton under a fake cloud of kicked up sand so that only the front and rear are protruding. I've done this trick a few times on other projects and it works remarkably well. Not much use if you want to play with the helicopter but works fine for a display piece.

As for the Hind; never say never. Was a time when we would 'never' see german aircraft from bbi, they would 'never' release a new plane unless it was going to be sold at mass retail (which the 109 clearly isn't) etc.

They made the Hind years ago, so the development money has already been spent. It is always mentioned and popular in polls and when they released the toyish version in their Target Combat Command line it was very popular and even fetched good prices on Ebay. It would be a good seller; i think it is very possible we could still see it one day. It would be an awesome sight in 1/18.

However, aside from that we won't be seeing any new helicopters in 1/18.

pickelhaube · Post by **pickelhaube** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 9:28 pm

I would love a Hind . I had grand thoughts of making one. But you scared me about the BBI. I would hate to go through the trouble and have a production Hind show up.

Grilledcheese · Post by **Grilledcheese** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 7:59 am

Dude, build the Hind.
I'd seriously consider selling a family member for a 1/18 Hind...

Okay, maybe not sell, but I'd definitely consider leasing 'em out...

Jeffrey