A Little(bird) project

[Spudkopf]

G’day All

It been a long while since I put a knife to anything and I have many an uncompleted project languishing on the shelf just waiting for that certain little bit of inspiration to reignite the completion process, so I hardly need to start on anything else, however back on April 15 of this year I stated “The civilian style tall skids of the Littlebird are also something that I have learned to live with but at the same time have always planned to rectify”.

Well…..

I picked up Mike Durant’s recent release “The Night Stalkers” the other day and got all re-enthused about one of me favourite Helicopters the AH-6 Littlebird.

I have two of the original S1 (MD530 style) Defenders and one of the recently released retooled S3 MH-6’s (by the way I’m on the hunt for another MH-6 to convert to a AH-6, so if anybody has got one for sale then please drop me a PM). Anyway I donated (or should that be lend leased) one of the S1s to my son and whilst it was in his care one of the set of skids was broken and repaired several times and at least one of the cockpit doors went missing. Since it’s return to this sad S1 has been sitting on my shelf with one collapsed skid and a missing front door for some time.

Using this forlorn example of the S1 as a proof of concept test bed I decided the follow through with my “have always planned to rectify” statement and try and make the skids more or less AH/MH-6 like, as it was the skids needing repairing anyway!

My initial intention was just to experiment with the skids on this example and use what I learned to perhaps apply the fix to MH-6 leaving the other S1 set up as a Defender.

Then I thought to myself well since one of the cockpit doors is already missing why not remove the other, then it looked a tad silly having the front door off and the rear ones on, then the TOWs looked out of place, then the FLIR was in the wrong place and then the engine exhausts stacks………………………..

Well an hour or two later (but still in the very early stages).....







My biggest concern with the this custom is the Defender style targeting FLIR pod, it is easily removed but leaves two whopping big holes and unsightly location pins in the bubble, ideally a re-tooled MH-6 bubble would solve the issue, but I do not wish to make that kind of sacrifice for what is mainly a proof of concept hack but if anyone out there has a trashed MH-6 that could be used as a donor vehicle then I'd gladly use it’s bubble and ariels to finish of this mod.

My ultimate plan is to get hold another MH-6 (again I ask for some assistance in finding one) and covert this to an AH-6 with short skids and to also shorten the skids on my existing MH-6, my remaining S1 may get some South Korean markings or some maybe some fictitious Taiwanese or an Arab nations markings.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/South-Ko ... id=1328031

[vmf214]

Gonna look cool!!

[Spudkopf]

Gonna look cool!!

I hope so.....

I just ordered four miniguns with ammo' cans from Marauder GR. Two will be held in reserve to utilise on a future MH-6 conversion. As I am leaving the other S1 in a Defender format I have a spare weapons platform that I will be able to use as well.

In regards to the weapons platform, BBI made it way to wide so I shortened the span by about 40mm or so. Curiously it would appear that BBI may have originally intended to fit miniguns, as there is a location pin hole right next to each of the ammo' feed slots, well at least this will save me the hassle of having to put these in myself.

I’m also thinking of remodelling the leftover TOW hard point mounts from the above AH-6 conversion (I used the location pin parts of these mounts to plug the holes on the above) for use on my Defender so that they can be mounted in the rear cabin area as this seems to be a far more common arrangement for Defenders, I will then also cut some slots into the spare set of rear doors (as seen on the SK bird in the link above) to accommodate the new mounts, this also seems to be very common practise on Defender images found on the web.

Some time back I added new rudder pedals to the Defender and while I had the bubble off I added a FLIR monitor to the left hand seat (I have since seen pictures of a Defender cockpit with dual FLIR monitors and am now thinking of adding one for the right hand seat as well), I’ll see if I can takes some pictures of my Defender's minor cockpit mod's and post them over the weekend.

The saddest thing is that I’ve been so busy researching and customising (filled all the holes once and after rubbing them back once have re- filled them again for the final rub back) the AH-6 that I’ve not read anymore of Mike’s book which is what started on all this in the first place, so much to do and so little time, eating, sleeping and showering aren’t really necessary are they?

[Spudkopf]

Plan B.....

I was going to show you a picture or two of my FLIR MFD mod' on the S1 Defender so I removed the bubble to make the picture taking a little easier, a quick cruise of the web before I broke out the camera revealed that the sighting system in the left hand seat is a far more complex arrangement than I first envisaged and the bubble was already off so.....

I removed the MFD and I am now about 70% the way through a complete rebuild of the left hand seat position.

The sighting system consists of parts from a spare 21stCT Hummer TOW sight, some goggles, plastic card, lot of Super (Crazy) glue and various other bits and pieces from the spares box.

I hope to finish it today (it the weekend here already woohoo) and post some pic's later today or tomorrow.

The AH-6 is all rubbed back and should see some paint today fingers crossed.

[Spudkopf]

More of that plan B diversion.....

Well for what it’s worth here is my finished defender sighting system, it’s not a totally accurate piece, but it more or less loosely resembles that of an Israeli Defender that I Googled, here’s the link to that site for those who are interested http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/isaac ... php?Page=1 .







I will take some more shots after I have reassembled the chopper so you can see how it sits in the cockpit, currently I’m just waiting for some glue to fully cure on one set of the rudder pedals that was inadvertently knocked off during a previous test assembly, I had to use quite a lot of glue and I wish to avoid any frosting, so sadly I just have to wait.

[Spudkopf]

Plan B, all back together now.....



Here are a few externals. Note the new Anti-torque pedals and modified sight window.





Here are a couple of internals, you may notice that I have shortened the both the cyclics by about 7mm to make the cabin a little less cramed and have shortened and remodelled the collectives, in the second of the following images you can also see my beefed up seats.





The sight system is a one piece affair designed to simply slot over the existing top location pin of the external sight housing, and is installed with the bubble in place, for the best fit I also had to remove the bottom left hand 'steam gauge" and square off that part of the panel, but once in place it all looks good. As it is a single piece that is held in place by friction and not glued I could in theory it cast and make copies.

Still debating moving the hard points to the rear cargo area, but will leave it as is for now, but then again.....

As for the AH-6 conversion, no new images yet, the first coat of paint revealed the need for more filling and sanding.

Stay tuned.....

[Spudkopf]

G'day All

As I said from the start much of this project is as proof of concept for my planned ultimate MH-6 and AH-6 conversions, so as I was waiting for yet another batch of filler to set, I decided to pursue an idea to make customising the shortened skid more robust and neater.

With this in mind I had been eying off some aerofoil shaped aluminium extrusion while at the hobby shop the other day a have now decided that this may be the way to go.

After several attempts to cut 4 pieces of aluminium consistently with a 75° cut and all to the same length I soon realised that to do it properly I would need a mitre box, however I do not own one......... so I built one, you can see the mitre rig to the left in the first image. In the zoomed image you can see that I have test fitted a piece of the off cut from my already shortened skid to see how it might look and I'm quite happy with the initial results.





Should be getting my miniguns soon so stay tunned.....