1/72 Dragon Westland Seaking HC.4

Gallery Article by Karl Wenk on Mar 26 2020

 

      

In the early 90ies I bought No. 22 of the famous Osprey-Series SUPERBASE 22 "Yeovilton – Defenders of the Fleet". Very interesting were pages 83 – 99 about one of Yeovilton´s major and regular commitments to support NATO´s Northern Flank. The Royal Marines spend serveral months in the harsh Norwegian winters. A snow camouflagued Seaking HC.4 looked like a sibirian tiger. The once pristine finish has suffered much from the effects of weather, exhaust and oil generated by the turboshaft engines. 

So I looked for a kit of this Seaking, only available kit was the expensive kit by dragon. In the box I found not the quality of other dragon kits (Ar 234, Do 335 etc.). The manual was partially faulty, a part was missing, the manual-paintings were so tiny (esp. by the indoor details and the rotor-head), no good colour guide (esp. Cockpit and freightroom), no decals for the panels, no side-antenna etc. Disappointed the kit was put into storage. When the new Airfix Seaking HC.4 entered the market in his clean "jubilee-camo" I remembered my project and the dragon kit was activated.

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Especially the weathered camo made the Seaking look like a winter-tiger. So I finished the weathering effects with colours and with Tamiyas weathering masters.

Thanks to Mr. Uwe Jack from German aircraft magazine FLIEGERREVUE, who give me the links for cockpit and freightroom colours. The missing side antenna and other details were made by myself. The enlargement of the instruction sheet was very helpful for indoor and rotor details.

Very good the open freightroom door. The Kit-machinegun was not used.  Very positive was the choice to build the rotor section in flying, standing or parking position. 

Sometimes during building I would scrap the kit, but now there is a worth seeing Royal Marine.

Karl Wenk

Photos and text © by Karl Wenk