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Basically this kit is a dog
very little detail and with what you get, most it seems wrong. Externally, the
main rotor gearbox looks nothing like the real thing. Thankfully you can't see
much of it when the kit is assembled. The seats don't resemble any Seahawk seats I've seen. And these not much else in there that is of use if you want to build a RAN S-70B2. You could buy the Hawkeye interior set I guess but I'm to tight. I'm not going to get to carried away with the interior considering with the doors closed you won't be able to see much. I'm just going to add the big stuff. For this reason I've used the decals for the centre console and instrument panel. Italeri give the same decal for the centre console as for the overhead console  And
that decal is only 2/3s the width of the inter-seat console.
I used a combination of both decals to fill the inter-seat console so I'll have
to work something out for the overhead console.
 I've
also added some card around the back of the cockpit as there should be some
structure. |
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I've added the Acoustic data bay , modified the kit seats so the Pilot and Tacco's seats look similar to the actual seats. I have modify the kit the seats for the Senso to look like our Sensos seats (which are the same as the Pilots). I'm also going to work on the Senso's rack to make it at least resemble what it should look like. Along with the Sonar Buoy rack Hawkeye set also doesn't have the "towel rails" by the Cockpit doors. |
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| The next series of shots the finished cabin interior. It's pretty rough but no-one will really see to much with the doors on etc. The the centre console is just the kit decals and doesn't actually resemble our aircraft, but again no one will know.After a bit of fiddling about I've realised the cabin is to big, Confirmed this with my memory and some drawings. The pic below shows the cabin wall in the correct place and a Scratch built RAST. |
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The next shot shows up some
dimensional inaccuracies of the kit. These are dimensions/locations of the tail
rotor pedals/cyclic stick and basically the cockpit in general. I'm wondering if
Italeri actually ever looked at real Seahawk of any type
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| Next thing was getting the fuselage together, now I'm no modeling guru but man this kit is a struggle. |
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After "fixing the cabin roof
alignment and moving the Main rotor gearbox (MRGB) even more out of position I
ready to toss the thing against the wall. If I hadn't glued the gearbox to roof
I could have moved it back on the roof to realign with the hole in the top
fairing.The main rotor gearbox looks way to forward on the kit anyway. From my
memory the centreline of the MRGB should be just aft of the centreline of the
cabin door. The MRGB supplied in the kit doesn't actually resemble a Seahawk
MRGB. Thankfully before launching it against the wall my wife pointed out that
with swash plate on you'd be luck to see the MRGB. I knew there was reason why
we got married
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| Now to tackle the exhausts.... Fitting the round exhaust into a oval hole.... |
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