Kit: No. SH 72016
Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: Special Hobby (Czech Republic), available from Squadron Mail Order, 1115 Crowley Drive, Carrollton, TX 75011-5010, 972-242-8663.
Price: $10.98
Comments: Mixed media, 50 parts (28 injection-molded plastic, 20 resin, two-piece vacuum-formed canopy), decals.
Pros: Good detail in resin parts, good decals, interesting subject.
Cons: Difficult assembly, lots of cleanup needed on plastic parts, several parts must be scratchbuilt.
Perhaps the smallest helicopter to see unit service in the U.S. Army, the tiny TH-55A is a two-seat training chopper that entered service in 1964. Nearly 800 were procured by the Army, and many are still in service with police forces around the world.
Special Hobby has produced several kits with a mix of limited-run injection-molded parts, resin details by CMK, and vacuum-formed transparencies. This is a good formula for this little chopper. The "bubble" canopy is formed in left and right halves with doors molded in place. The plastic parts include most frame members, tail boom, rotor blades, fuel tanks and stabilizers, and all needed cleanup. The cockpit interior, engine (including another set of fuel tanks - better than the plastic ones), and main rotor head are formed in resin. Decals are provided for U.S. Army, Swedish, Japanese, and two civilian helicopters.
Removing the resin parts from the robust plank is a hair-raising job. Many of the parts are lying on their sides and have little depth. I carefully scored around them with a knife and razor saw, then cleaned up the rough edges with sanding sticks. I broke both control sticks and the exhaust manifold removing them from the plank.
The instructions are mostly easy to figure out, but some of the drawings include many parts, and a lot of these must be made from strip and rod styrene (you provide). Paint numbers are for Gunze Sangyo Aqueous Colors, but the paint list also includes names.
Assembly of the mostly resin cockpit comes first, and right off, you must fashion the collective controls from styrene stock. Next comes adding the cockpit, resin engine, tail boom, and rotor shaft to the frame - and you make some more pieces from plastic rod.
Watch out in steps 8 and 9; there are a lot of optional parts depending on which machine you are modeling, and it's easy to get confused.
Perhaps the trickiest part of the project is dealing with the bubble canopy. The parts are formed well and after being cut from the vacuum-formed sheet, must be sanded carefully to get the edges to line up. Since the plastic is so thin, I carefully super glued a thin strip of styrene to the inside of the edge of one half, then attached the other half. The strip provides extra surface area to bond the joint.
With the bubble, rotor, and fuel tanks off, I painted the model. I used a medium gray for the frame, engine, and interior parts, olive green on the seats, and flat aluminum for the rotor shaft. Next came the red. Helicopter models are tricky to paint because of the expanse of "glass" and the open structure. I masked the bubble framework with Bare-Metal Foil, covered the inside of the bubble with tape, then airbrushed flat black (the color of the interior framework), then flat white, then gloss red. The white undercoat keeps the red nice and bright. The instructions indicate the landing skids are blue, so I painted them that way. The taxi wheels shown on the illustrations on the box and the instructions are not included in the kit.
The Propagteam decals are well printed, but every one of them is tiny - well, it is a tiny model! They went on fine and settled well with a little Micro Sol.
The last steps were assembling the main rotor and attaching the bubble. The rotor has a resin head and plastic blades, so super glue is in order here. I gently bent the blades to give them a little droop (not much, as they aren't very long). I held my breath and added the bubble - it fit over the resin cockpit perfectly!
The finished model is as cute as a bug - and only a little bigger! The rotor diameter measures right on the money with the data in Gordon Swanborough and Peter Bowers' United States Military Aircraft since 1908.
I spent close to 20 hours on my Osage, most on cleaning parts, making parts, and painting parts. It is not a kit for beginners, and could be a challenge even for experienced builders who are not used to such small parts.
- Paul Boyer