1/72 Italeri VNAF UH-34G

Gallery Article by Lou Anatrella on Jan 25 2011

 

History: 
I took this H-34 photo at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in 1963, just after having flown it with VNAF Capt. Nguyen Huy Anh. Through ARC I got connected with several VNAFophiles.  About a year ago, I had sent a copy of this H-34 to ARCer Danny Dinh and received back the photo of this same helicopter in the bone yard at Davis-Monthan.  It was probably taken sometime in the 1980’s.  It remains a total mystery to me how it got from Vietnam to the U.S. I would have assumed that the VNAF had long before the war’s end upgraded to all turbine powered choppers like the Huey and CH-47.  So why would anyone bother to ship an old H-34 back to the U.S.? Anyway, this mystery got me interested enough to try modeling it.

The Model: 
This is the Italeri UH-34J. It comes with an interesting option for the exhaust layout, consisting of two different left side clam shell doors, with the exhaust ports in different positions, depending on the model chosen. Although miniscule, due to the scale, the parts are well molded and well fitting, with good detail. They are firmly attached to the sprue, and care is needed to detach them. After having built three H-19’s and cursed while trying to get the rotor head assembled, I was pleasantly surprised at the thought that went into this model. The rotor head assembly went together in ten minutes and could be the last thing installed, after all painting and decaling was done.

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Decals: 
I was excited in anticipating creating my own inkjet decals. I had previously worked only with clear decal paper on light colored surfaces. I had never realized how transparent inkjet decals would be. Even white decal paper proved to be quite translucent. So that darker than normal printing would be required. 

The paint was flat olive drab and looked pretty good. But when I applied the decals, I was shocked. They looked like shiny labels. The other problem with white decal paper on a dark surface is that the decal edges are white, still giving that label look. I wound up painting the edges with thinned paint before wetting them. 

What to do? After checking ARC Tools & Tips, I decided that I needed Future. I checked all our local stores with no success. I decided to Google Future. There was an amazing find. Clicking on a link called “The Complete Future”, was the most amazing treatise one could imagine, enabling one to find the product anywhere in the world. I found that it is called Pledge here in NY.

So after removing the decals, I coated the entire model with a small artists brush. It truly is an amazing product. Then I reapplied the decals. Lookin’ good, but now all glossy. Recommendations for dulling down were either a mix of Future with Tamiya X-21 Flat Base or Dulcote. I experimented on an old model with both, and found that Dulcote worked better for my purpose, since I was too impatient to try different Future- X-21 ratios.

Weathering: 
I’m not a huge fan of weathering on aircraft. When I decided to model this H-34, I put the jpg up as my PC wallpaper. After staring at it for months, I concluded that I couldn’t honestly model this machine without weathering it. This was no air show aircraft. It was a working machine that routinely flew ARVN troops into harms way. I believe that most of the weathering on the helicopter was due to engine exhaust. The R 1820 engine put out 1525 HP. The same basic engine was used in the WW II B-17 and the Vietnam era T-28B/D and H-21C. So I decided to weather the left side by dry brushing chalk dust and leave the right side alone.

Scratch: 
Several minor items were scratch added, seatbelts, shoulder harnesses & collective pitch levers in the cockpit, the cutout under the exhaust stacks, the horizontal bar between the left main gear top and the forward cabin window, cargo sling, under fuselage antennae and tail rotor pylon whip antenna.

Lou Anatrella

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Photos and text © by Lou Anatrella