1/48 Academy Hughes 500MD ASW

Gallery Article by Thomas Brückelt on June 5 2019

 

      

Here is my Hughes 500MD ASW from Academy. A very interesting helicopter as I find, especially because of its high skids.

Click on images below to see larger images

I gave some more details to the swash plate and the tail rotor, as I did on my AH-6F and the MH-6, shown here on ARC.

To make the figures fit into the cockpit, I had to shorten the legs and move the seats a bit to the middle, otherwise their helmets would collide with the inner sides of the fuselage halves.

The cylindrical stabilizer of the torpedo was also build from scratch.

I compared it to pictures of other ASW-500´s and saw that all of them have longer landing gear skid tubes and the inflatable floats.

I used the tubes from the base-kit and added segments of them to the skids for the ASW-version.

The inflatable floats were made out of balsa wood. With a grinder I made it looking a bit wrinkled. After that I covered it with epoxy resin to get a harder surface. I glued thin strings on the floats with CA glue to imitate the ropes on the upper side.

For the painting I used enamels from Humbrol and Revell. The model is painted with brush, just the clear varnish is sprayed on it.

Enjoy the pictures!

Greetings from Germany!

Thomas Brückelt

Click on images below to see larger images

 

Photos and text © by Thomas Brückelt