Search the Community

Revells IX converted to VIII. Kagero Decals for "Hava Go Jo!" plane. Nice kit, fast to build, but needs some adjustments and corrections. Wobbly landing gear requires metal replacement or needle inside.

G'day Guys! So here we go again. This is going to be a commission build of the Italeri 1/48 CH-47D for a bloke at work. Seeing as the last time I built a chook took me six years I was more than a little hesitant to take on a build like this, but eventually I changed my mind. There were a few reasons for this: 1) the guy I'm building it for said price was no object, 2) I'm using the Italeri kit this time not the 1/35 trumpeter, so it's a much better starting point and doesn't require as much detail and 3) Chooks are cool and there's never enough of them being built! Anyway, here's the obligatory box art... For those of you not familiar with the kit it does include the standard short D nose as well….. Bit of bling for the interior, might help speed up the project a little... And so it begins…. The first port of call was seeing what needed to be done to the cabin. Firstly, when the aircraft is ready for flight, the avionics compartment and the heater closet are hidden away behind sound proofing, so that bulkhead is pretty much flat. For some reason, both Italeri and trumpeter persist on adding these weird bump things on the the back of the flight control closet. I'm not sure if it was on the A-C models, but they sure aren't there on the D or F, so they got sanded off too. I like the approach Italeri have taken with the interior being essentially a shell that gets inserted into the fuselage halves when it is complete, negating a lot of the issues of the trumpeter kit as far as detailing the interior goes, but the instructions were a little vague on the exact placement of the end of it where it buts up to the bulkhead. At the moment I'm not sure whether the bulkhead sits underneath it, like I have it in the pics or if the whole section butts up to the bulkhead. Anyone have any ideas? I need to know so I can size the soundproofing on the bulkhead appropriately….. Here's the shell all taped together for a test fit.. Nicely represented soundproofing = less work for me! The back looks pretty good too, although some of that detail is a little questionable... Not sure about this though…. there is a large gap around where the rear landing gear sits. Not an issue if it is, just not sure if this is how it's supposed to be? Once again any thoughts would be much appreciated. So that's it so far, hopefully this won't take 6 years. (I think the customer is hoping not even 6 months!) Cheers, Craig