1/48 Italeri AH-1W Super Cobra

Gallery Article by Emre Tuzun on July 20 2016

 

      

This is my Turkish Army AH-1W Super Cobra from the Italeri's 1/48 scale.

The build was for a very close friend of mine, -better to say brother in arms-, who flew with the W in the Army more than 15 years and retired with the rank of Colonel. 

I tried to depict the early version of the Turkish Whiskey before the NTS upgrade along with the ASELSAN avionics & ECM upgrades.

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The project was pretty straight forward and the kit was not super hard to build apart from the main rotor blades.

Had the blades been glued according to the plan, the outcome would be a main rotor rotating in the false direction. The original W blades rotate counter-clockwise, however the kit provided rotor rotates clockwise. So, I had to cut the main blades and glue, fill, sand several times in order to achieve the desired effect. This is my sole notice to the fellow future builders of this specific kit.

I used Cobra Company's resin cockpit set and Werner's Wings 2-tube TOW launchers.

Just like almost any other time with my rotary wing kits; mesh and wires were used to enhance the realism.

After priming and pre-shading, I painted the kit with Gunze acrylics, finished with Future+Tamiya Flat Base mix.

Apart from the downside of the blades, I would recommend the kit for its size and engraved panel lines.

Enjoy.

Emre Tuzun

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Photos and text © by Emre Tuzun