Love at the first sight. Maybe that was my first impression when I saw some Sea Stallions at Juanda Naval Air Base in Surabaya City in East Java, Indonesia. These chopers visited Surabaya for a joint exercise with the Indonesian Navy or TNI-AL. Although I could only saw them from a distance, these huge helicopters looked awesome. 

Frankly, I have only two helicopter kits (one of them was Italeri 1/72 MH-53E Sea Dragon) because I didn’t really like to built a kit with those space consuming rotors. I made this kit for the Helicopter Challenge 2003 event (thank you guys, for forcing me to make this kit). 

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I almost didn’t have any difficulties in building this kit. Filing and sanding are required at the top of the vertical tail, horizontal tail joint, upper front fuselage and lower part of sponsons. The cockpit clear part has almost crystal clear quality, and I didn’t have to submerged it into Future. This cockpit part didn’t fit well to the body and the gap had to be filled with plastic sheets. 

Since I already made quite a lot of Italeri kits, I just didn’t believe that the MH-53 should be painted Gunship Gray as instructed. I painted my MH-53 with FS 36231 Dark Gull Gray from Model Master instead. 

Italeri provided two decals, US Navy and Japan maritime Self Defence Force. The decal fit well and I applied the walkway decal at the upper fuselage before installing the engines. Otherwise it will difficult to trim the decal from tail to front fuselage. 

Overall, an enjoyable build.

Regards,

Rahman

Jakarta, Indonesia

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