Tuesday, 5 March 2013

Naval Aviation? HMM-163 "Evil Eyes" CH-46E

Ages ago Andy gave me a heads up on a cool aircraft model at the toy store. He thought a Chinook would be good for an aircraft wreckage or something. I had a run to the DIY store next door so I popped in. After finding out that they had already cleared out all FoW models and paints I took a wander. I finally found the helicopters he was talking about, a Chinook an Apache and a , be still my heart, Phrog.
A Phrog you say? What on earth!
Well if you must know, one of my favorite rides was the CH-46E Sea Knight, which ferried me to numerous field ex's, and occasionally out of them. I also have a couple hard landings in them as well as jumping from too high, rappelling, SPIE rigging, and heli-casting from these bitches.
The smell, the noise(loud!), the leaking hydraulic fluids and angry crew chiefs. It just screams home. Or at least a ride home with my psycho cousins.
One problem, it was painted in Navy colors...

Navy?

Ahem, no problem sez I. We are in fact the Navy-Marine Corps Team.
Nah, I want a jarhead air wing pogue crew dammit! I'll just find some decals and repaint!
That was a few months ago...
I did find some awesome decals, done by a serving Marine infantryman no less. Not expensive either and they come with a DVD walk-around of all four aircraft the set covers. (MAW Decals thanks a lot bro! Also thanks to Spruebrothers who got me my stuff quickly and without errors!)

Andy found the perfect color spray paint, I did some masking and voila!
A bit more than that really, but not a lot. The decals are awesome and now I have a perfect HMG platform. Well, two M2HB and a M240 ramp gun probably as well as 16 hard chargers on board. Plus the 5 aircrew of course.;-) Love you guys really.

"Lady Ace" of the "Evil Eyes" HMM-163

A learning curve for sure, one damp decal sucked in the panel wash.

A bit heavy panel wash on the USMC markings as well as not sure if I like my window highlighting.

Looks good from here

3 comments:

  1. That has come out brilliantly!

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  2. Thanks guys. Fun project really.
    Also in the end I get an objective, a crew served weapon, an evacuator a forward observer...
    The only down side is it may fall over and crush my minis. Thanks for that Stephen. :-P

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