1/48 Academy CH-46E

by Maurizio Bressan

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Academy released this nice kit more than one year ago filling  part of the gap regarding
USMC/USN helis in 1/48 scale.  The kit has a good plastic quality, but suffers from recessed panels lines that are too large, lack of interiors details and lack of exterior rivets.  A good quality kit anyway.  I started the job with the rotor heads adding cables, nuts, bolts and devices.

I would have a detailed kit, so I improved the interior, adding cables, pipes and boxes. I also added holes on the floor and seat belts.  The cockpit was superdetailed adding the correct instruments made of styrene sheets and the seats were improved with new armour plates and a suspension system.

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 I knew the details were not visible when the model was finished, but I wanted tp make them anyway....

All the exhausts were drilled and the protection nets were added looking more realistic.
Tiny nets are made from old PC monitors.

The external job consisted of making all the rivets (unfortunately not more visible after the coats of paint and Futurewere applied...) new armour plates on the tail and filling some panels not present on the real heli.  Landing gears received some more work, too (add the retention rings!!!!)  

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I painted the kit using the Life Colors paints finding them very nice. I add a non-salts water since there are some rumors that acrylic paints are suffering of chlorine present in drinking water.

Decals are not very nice since they were not so thin. As usual I used water + some drops of vinegar in order to soften the decals.

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A particular nice job was made by Xtracolor matt over the Future coats: I found it very nice!
Many thanks to Mr Menden (ARC member) for the interest he gave to my project, to Mr. Maurizio Stolfa of
www.tergestemodel.com, to Mr. Carlo Zivec for the reference pics and some tips and to my friend-job collegue-webmaster Mr. Roberto Sauro.  For some more pics of real helis please refer to my web site dedicated to Military Aviation and Models: www.ma-files.it

Maurizio Italy

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Photos and text © by Maurizio Bressan