I have been wanting a Jayhawk in
my collection for a long, long time. The striking paint scheme and very
nature of the mission of this machine has always appealed to me. When
Italeri finally released the SH-60 kit, I knew I was getting close.
Then, sure enough Cobra Company came out with an excellent conversion set for
the HH-60J. My dreams were answered!
The biggest part of the conversion
requires you to cut out the port side window and sonobouy launcher from the
kit. You just cut along the scribed lines on the inside of the fuselage.
Then you add the window plug that Cobra Co. provides. There is an
exhaust port of some sort on the SH-60's on the port side (right below the
main exhaust) that the Jayhawk does not have, so I filled it in with resin and
sanded it smooth. Other conversion parts are a full interior, complete
with equipment rack, seats, cockpit consoles, doors, etc. I added a few
more detail items like First Aid bags, COM cables, control boxes and grab
handles.
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The rest of the conversion
parts give you drop tanks, pylons, nose radar assembly, tires, and strip
styrene to construct the window rails and drip shield. I added some
detail to the back of the resin seats. The Eduard PE set for the SH-60
was not available at the time of this build, but I did have some spare H-60
frets laying around and utilized some parts from those to help dress up the
kit.
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The paint job proved to be quite a
challenge! It required a lot of very careful masking and spraying.
I used Model Master enamels for the entire job. I added a few drops of
Chevy Engine Red to the International Orange color to more closely match the
decals.
The decals came from Hawkeye
Models in Australia. They went on with no problems, but one thing that
irritated me is that they used the orange color for the bar in the "Star
& Bars" and for the intake warning decals, instead of the correct red
color. I replaced the S & B's with decals from my stash, and just
went ahead and used the intake decals, though I wasn't happy about it.
I had a spare FLIR pod in my parts
box, and I have seen the Jayhawk equipped with these, so I added that to my
model. Landing lights were replaced with MV lenses.
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images below to see larger images
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I'm happy to finally have this
model sitting amongst my other choppers! It certainly stands out in the
display case.
Kelly
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