Small Scale Military Headquarters

has anyone come up with any slick customs (pun intended) to modify the 21c Huey to look more like a troop carrying D model?

I was puzzling over it last evening and it would be an extremely complicated custom to make it truley look like a 'D'. You'd virtually have to rebuild it from behind the cockpit to in front of the seperate tail boom.

However, i was thinking a 'quick and dirty' way of creating the illusion of a D, might be to open the crew compartment up by cutting it open about 2 inches behind the current opening. This would create an opening a little over 4 inches long and there would be an opening of about 1 1/2 inches behind the bench seat, where you could put door gunners. By gluing the sliding doors behind this opening it will help make the fuselage look longer as well.

It doesn't look that hard to do, with a bit of care. It won't stretch the length of the Huey but it will at least create a larger opening for the crew compartment which may create the illusion of a D model, as i said.

Has anyone tried something like this or have better ideas?

I doubt we'll ever see a 1/18 D model, so something needs to be done.

It's a big undertaking. I have one that I never finished, because it just didn't wasn't accurate enough for me. I left the engine cowling of the C on it and lengthened the fuselage, then scraped the project. The new one I started will have the accurate engine cowling and everything. I hope to have this as a kit or even a complete model to offer some day.

If you want some pointers let me know. I ran into about every problem you can with this project.
momaw nadon

i know, it's a lot tougher than it looks. I was originally just going to stretch the fuselage, in front of the engine but i realized it would look very odd if i did that plus the rotor would not even reach the nose of the Huey, after i was finished and that would look ridiculous.

So, i came up with the quick and dirty 'optical illusion' solution; just enlarge the opening to the existing crew compartment by cutting it aft of the opening. I think when i put a bunch of troops in there (going to use some modified xd marines), door gunners etc it will look alright, unless you compare it to photos but otherwise will create a decent look. That is my hope anyway...

I am just finishing up making a Loach out of an old chap mei little bird i bought years ago and i'm going to modify one of my xd cobras into a vietnam era cobra, again with a fair bit of compromise but it too, will look the part, when finished.

Then i'll have my whole LZ ready to go. With a pink team to cover blue team's insertion.

Good luck with the conversion Aferg - assuming you decide to go ahead with it.

With most people, if it looks right, they assume it is right. It's only picky whatsits like us that say "ooh no, the blade's half-inch too short and the rotor mast is to wide and the tail boom's too fat and the pilot's wearing the wrong hat..." and so on.

What about if you gat a bit of dark card the size of the door and a bit of light card (or paper), cut the light card to the size of hole you're going to make, then tape the light card at the back of the cabin and the dark card where you're going to stick the door, then hold it against a light wall and see what it looks like from the side... sounds complicated but it'll give you a (very) rough idea of how it'll look once you chop plastic (but without the heartache of cutting it and then finding it looks awful! Been there, done that, couldn't replace it. )

that's a brilliant idea.......i know, because i came up with it myself...lol.

Yes i plan to try a few things to get a sense of what it will look like before blundering in. The problem now is that the more i stare at pictures of Huey D's the more inaccurate this is starting to look to me.

If i'd just blundered in without all the detailed examination it would probably have looked just fine to me.

Ah well...

aferguson,
You are having the same problems I had with my first run. Also sent you a pm if you are interested let me know.
momaw nadon

yes it's a frustrating little devil. The more i think about it, the more i'm convinced the way to go is to simply englarge the cabin opening, rearwards. This will also create the look of the rotor being more centred over the cabin, like on the Huey D.

It will still be too short of course (i think the D model was stretched by 30 inches or so) but the overall 'at a glance' look won't be too bad and it's a relatively simple mod.

As i said before, i doubt we'll ever see a proper D model...so we may have to rewrite history a bit to compensate. Wouldn't be my first time.