"Black" Littlebird

[John1]

This is going to be long project primarily because I build at a slow rate and am easily distracted.  So bear with me!  The subject is a very unique US special operations helicopter.  I refer to it in the title as a "littlebird" but it's got some significant differences from your run of the mill US Army Nightstalker AH-6 / MH-6 Littlebird.  The subject is a "civil" MD500, that was photographed in 1987 in Frankfurt, West Germany.  It's the only photo ever found of this type of helicopter and the consensus from most folks who appear to be "in the know" is that this helo was assigned to a very classified covert unit that at one time was known as "Project Seaspray".   This unit has changed designations often and may or may not still exist.  It's role was to provide aviation support for the most classified (black) missions assigned to the US military and civilian agencies.  Unlike the Army's special operations aviation unit (the 160th Night Stalkers), Seaspray typically used aircraft in civilian markings but often heavily modified with custom avionics and other gear to allow them to accomplish their missions.   The flight crews were supposedly pulled out of elite military units and had their military records "scrubbed" to remove any info on them.  At that point, they were considered civilians.  Plenty of info on this subject out there in books and online.  Well worth reading up on!

Anyway, here's the subject of my build.

It's a Hughes / McDonald MD500 with a bunch of unique modifications, including an early FLIR, three very large white antennas under the nose, large external personnel seats (similar to those used by MH-6 assault transports but with large "fuel cells" underneath), radar warning receivers, low viz IR formation lights, mounts for a fast-rope rig, and an early SATCOM antenna housing on the tailboom.   It also appears that it's civilian registration number (N1111U) is mounted on a placard, presumably for easy removal!  Quite the interesting helo.   Lots of discussion about this over on ARC if anyone wants to read up on all the details.  

That's it for tonight, just wanted to get the background info out of the way.   I've started building the interior (using the older Dragon MD500 TOW Defender as the basis for this project).  I'll post some updates on my progress soon.

Regards,

John

 

 

[Guest Clunkmeister]

John, now this will be one cool project. I have a couple of the new KH Littlebird kits, but I’m not sure they’d work here either.

im going to pay very close attention to your build, Sir. This is bound to be epic.

i love these cloak and dagger birds.

[Shawn M]

very cool!

I recall reading about this on ARC as well

[KiwiZac]

Me too, I remember how excited folks were to see this photo! I'm keen to see it built so I'll follow along.

[John1]

  

So, as mentioned, I've started work on the cockpit interior. I should have taken some earlier pics but I'm a bit lazy on this build.  Best I can tell from the pics, it's pretty much the same color scheme as the AH-6C above, ie overall black for NVG compatibility and light grey stretched nylon seats.   When I get finished, it should look something like my AH-6C, with a few detail differences. 

 

 

Starting with the kit cockpit, I've made the following changes / upgrades:

• Hollowed out the external power receptical under the pilot's seat and added two electrical prongs.  EDIT - in looking at the prongs in the pic below, not happy with them.  I'll replace them with something smaller.  
• Carved away the sides of the crappy kit seats to better replicate the steel tube / stretched nylon pilot's seats.  Added mouting tubes out of streched sprue.  Only have the co-pilot's seat mounted so far.  Will be adding another coating of grey paint to it.  
• Added PE rudder pedal adjustment brackets from Eduard's OH-6A PE set.   This is a really nice set, getting a bit tough to find these days.  
• Added Cobra's rotor brake behind the co-pilot's position
• Added Cobra's avionics rack behind the pilot's head.   In the cargo compartment, I added some supports for the rack and some additional wiring.   The supports were noted in some pics I had of an early model Littlebird.   Given that many of the interior details of N1111U are unknown, I added this avionics rack since it was present on Littlebirds flying in the same time frame as N1111U and it stands to reason that to some extent, this helo would have had similar layout to AH/MH-6's flying at the same time.  To this rack, I added a couple of red "zeroize" switches.   These were also present on the AH-6C, but in a different spot.  Their purpose was to wipe out all radio frequencies and secure communication codes in the event that the helo was forced down and about to be captured.  EDIT - in looking at the pics I just posted, noted that both of these switches have apparently fallen off.   I'll get them back on at some point.....
• I added slots in the housings of the collectives.   The kit part is just a solid box with the collective sticking out of it.   I've only added the co-pilot's collective (still not fully painted), the pilot's collective housing is much different.  Dragon provides two identical units, so I'm working on scratchbuilding the pilot's housing. 
• Added the cables for the pilot's inertial reel shoulder harness locks.  These run down to levers on each side of the center bulkead, close to the inner side of each seat.  They connect to tiny PE harness locking levers that come with the Eduard set. 
• Added the Cobra center console.  Again, I assume that 1111Uniform would have similar bits and pieces to what the Littlebirds had.  Added the wider floor mounted instrument panel that came with the Dragon kit.  I figured with the SATCOM and all those extra antennas, this helo would need larger instrument panels to house all the special gear.   This panel also comes with a small display screen, maybe used for it's long range navigation system or to operate the SATCOM?  Who knows....
• I added the Cobra AH-6 ammo box to the rear compartment.   I know it's not appropriate for the unarmed 1111U but I'm trying to "busy up" the rear compartment which undoubtedly had a good amount of gear in the back, either avionics or maybe a fuel cell.   It really doesn't matter that much, the real thing had heavily smoked glass on the aft doors, which I intend to replicate.   Just want to be able to see some rough shapes through the glass. 
• I shot everything with Testors acrylic Aircraft Interior Black.   I really like this stuff, don't know how it's possible but it's a different shade of black than normal flat or gloss black.  After that, I picked out all the instruments and switches/knobs with gloss black with a few items in red or silver to add some variety.    Also added some very fine squiggles in white to replicate some labeling.    Not sure I'm thrilled with the bare metal weathering on the cockpit floor.   I'll probably touch this up a bit. 
• I painted the pilot's inertial reel housings silver to brighten things up a bit. Don't mind the gouges in them, those slots will be filled with the PE harnesses and will look fine when I'm done - trust me!

Anyway, that's it for now.  Here are a few pics, note that everything looks pretty rough.  I'm still in the early stages, I think it will look better down the road.     Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 19, 2018 by John1

[John1]

 

Got a bit more progress to report -    Completed the installation of the seats and controls.  Added harnesses from the Eduard OH-6A set.  These would be appropriate for a late 80's vintage an MD500 helo (and as far as I know, are still current for today's AH-6M's).    To me, harnesses are pretty key on a model.  They attract a great deal of attention and can either help the build or hurt it.  Nothing looks worse than belts uniformly hanging off seats, with no variation.  PE is the worst because it's so hard to position them in a way that looks realistic.  I'm a big fan of resin seats with molded on belts but since there is nothing out there, I had to get by with PE.   I tried to position them to look natural, like the pilots just tossed them aside as they exited the helo.  Hopefully I've succeeded.   Next step will be to add a dark wash to the seat belts to break up the uniform paint work. 

 

Aside from that, I added the cyclics, fire extinguisher (with PE strap) and touched up some paintwork.   Still got some additional touchup work to do.   Tough dealing with an overall black cockpit, it all tends to blur together.  

 

Disregard the rear compartment, with with the tinted windows, not much will be visible.  Just wanted to add some lumps and bumps to make it look "busy" back there.

 

Anyway, some pics:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking!

[Uncarina]

Great work so far! You’ve managed to bring a dark interior to life, and I love your build choice. Would adding a Flory wash or equivalent add the appropriate level of weathering to the seats and belts?

 

Cheers,  Tom

[KiwiZac]

The centre console really stands out to me - I love your detail painting there.

[John1]

If anyone's interested, there is a pretty in-depth article on this extremely camera-shy helo here:

 

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22879/this-ghost-of-a-helicopter-likely-had-a-secret-role-in-reagans-tear-down-this-wall-speech

 

It's 90% just a compilation of all the info from the various threads on ARC but there is some new data as well.    Makes for an interesting read, regardless.