1/48 Hasegawa Sea King

Gallery Article by Michael Jack on July 9 2021

 

      

Sea King "Royal Norwegian Air Force MK.43B 074 of 330 Skvadron"
Model: This is the Westland Sea King MK.43B, Kit: HSS-2B 07202 1992 Re boxing release.

Paints: I chose to use Tamiya rattle cans to paint my 074 Norwegian Sea King. I painted her overall Pure white TS-26, after which I then taped her up and then applied TS-96 Fluorescent orange. I used Canopy masks, which are great tool I have discovered. With the TS-96 it advises to be applied in several light coats, over the TS-26. Be careful with this colour, it’s a punish. If you apply the coats to quickly, it melts on to the model and looks bad, so have practice parts on hand.

Main rotor: The five blades on the main rotor head, needed to be modified to the new lighter style blades. I glued Evergreen plastic wedges in and sanded smooth. 

Tail rotor: Also the five bladed tail rotor, needed a sixth blade added. They also have Prop Blur brass blades added, like most of my Sea Kings.

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Resin parts: The resin parts I used, are moulded from my other kits. Which are the large radar dome behind main rotor, the Shorter tail boom, along with underside Sonar cover and lastly the small bubble on port side engine cover.

Photo etch: There are a few included Photo etched items in this kit, being the two small flap covers on the stbd side of the nose. There are two vents on the nose and again two vent covers on the tail.

Scratch built: I also had to add over 100 scratch built parts to the RNoAF bird, as there are many unique items on them. Allot of the Antennas and other raised objects are just made from Evergreen plastic. These items included the FLIR camera and mount, Large nose bulb radar fairing, Cargo door hand rails, spot lights, cable guard on hull under the cargo door, port side tail strake, the under cargo winch and cables (The hook came from a 1/48 Huey). The landing gears also needed extending for in flight configuration. The two winches needed to be mounted several millimetres from original, I had a spare winch from a previous attempt at this model (which failed due to terrible white paint I used). I also used that kits wheel sponsons, which are the AEW Mk.2A (Kit 09863). 

Decals: I did purchase the very Fantastic aftermarket decals from Vingtor, Sea King Mk.43/43B, RNoAF (48-129). These have allots of detail and options for several helo’s of two variants. I chose WA-755, (074) they had been easy to apply and I highly recommend them.

Weathering: I added a simple black wash (Acrylic paint mixed with water) to the whole bird and when that was dry, I wiped away what I did not want or like.

Build: I love these basic Sea King kits, I only wish they could add all the various parts Sea Kings have. Maybe create a Westland MK.3 and Mk.5 into the original Sikorsky SH-3H kit, that would be Fantastic. 

Base: The base is a picture frame, with the bird held up with a bent aluminium bar screwed to it. The other end, slots into the fuselage. I used a few layers of packing foam, to make a snow mound, then drizzled on PVA. Brushed it on with some more watered down PVA. Then applied damp tissue paper over the foam. Once dry it left ripples like a snow effect. Finally giving it a light coat of clear and a dusting of Bi-Carb soda. Later I used Christmas foam spray from a can, that shrunk over time, so I peeled most off, which then left a nice snow effect again. 

Real aircraft: The Norwegian Air Force first received 12 of these beauties in 1973. Carrying out Thousands of rescues over there 45 plus years of service. Only a handful are still flying, including 074. They are to be retired with the new AW101 Merlin fleet as replacement. 

Long live the King 

Michael Jack

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Photos and text © by Michael Jack