Kit: No. 066
Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: Italeri, distributed by Testor, 620 Buckbee St., Rockford, IL 61104-4891, phone 815-962-6654
Price: $12
Comments: Injection molded, 78 parts, decals.
Italeri’s line of 1/72 scale American helicopters continues to grow with the addition of the Sikorsky S-58 family, otherwise known as the H-34 Choctaw, Sea Bat, or Sea Horse (U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines respectively).
The Sea Horse kit is finely detailed, and includes cabin seats, choice of three gunner’s machine guns, and alternate left nose halves reflecting different exhaust arrangements. Panel lines are recessed, but a bit heavy for the scale. The thin main-rotor blades have molded-in sag, and decals are provided for U.S. Marine, German army, and French navy helicopters.
Construction is straightforward but slowed by poor fit. The recessed lips of the cabin windows are not deep enough to allow the windows to sit flush in the fuselage halves. You must install them from the inside before closing the fuselage. The molded-in positioning corners for the cabin and cockpit floors are shallow, and it’s easy to misalign the interior. Glue the cabin to the cockpit floor and align them as a unit. The cockpit has no collective pitch controls.
Dry-fitting the fuselage reveals the left half sits about .5mm aft of the right and the panel lines won’t line up. The alignment pins are the culprits here; all is fine after you cut them off. Leave the prominent seam down the middle of the nose: It represents the separation of the clamshell engine cover.
I found the directions vague on the placement of small parts on the tail. Once you mask the windows and cabin hatch, you can paint. I used Testor Model Master field green (FS 34097) overall.
The instructions would have you paint the transmission cover “1595 Model Master” orange, but that doesn’t jibe with any paint in Testor’s line. According to Squadron/Signal’s H-34 Choctaw in Action (which has a picture of this exact airframe), the color should be “orange yellow,” which is bright yellow FS 33538.
Another coloring error is the main rotor blades; instead of black overall, they should be flat light gray on top, flat black underneath, and have yellow tips.
The decals are beautifully printed and went on perfectly with a little setting solution. The white and yellow markings are opaque, but the red stripes in the national insignias are too thin.
The finished model looks right and scales accurately with the dimensions in my reference. It took me only 12 hours to finish the model.
Paul Boyer