Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

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iggie
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Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

Post by iggie »

Hot off the delivery van! :-D

Immediate impressions? It needs to be in a bigger box! There is a fair bit of plastic, with a lot of delicate and/or slender parts, and when opened my box seemed a bit crammed (ooh Matron :-D ) and one of the two supplied tail rotors has a bent blade....nothing major but a niggle none the less.
Moving on though, the mouldings are well up to Airfix' usual standard; neat and restrained panel lines, delicate fine parts and reasonable sprue gates. There are 5 grey plastic sprues and one of clear parts. The clear parts are crystal clear (Dammit, I'm going to have to do a proper job inside now :ha:) and the opening doors on both sides are moulded clear, leaving you to mask off the window parts before painting; this will avoid a potentially ugly join between window and door, a nice touch.
Decals are very sharp, nice bold colours and in register. There are no decals for the 'Junglie' camouflage scheme, this will need to be masked and painted in the time honoured fashion :grin:
Very impressive kit overall, and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in; it's build slot is currently 2035 :twisted: :shock:

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Best wishes

Jim
If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing
"Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow"
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Kitaholic
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Re: Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

Post by Kitaholic »

looks great, is that an option for folded rotors?
Regards

Gord

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PaulBradley
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Re: Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

Post by PaulBradley »

Thanks for this, iggie! Its a huge advance on their old mould Sea King!

Yes, that is a folded blades option - note there are 9 blades in all.

I'll be doing mine as one of the helos assigned to SFOR and based in Split, Croatia - I have a lovely photo of one flying over Omiš, just down the coast, a place I visited a couple of years ago.
Paul

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splash
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Re: Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

Post by splash »

It's now official I'm a Happy Bunny :bounce: at last it's out. I have two on order the first will be done as ZA313 VZ my personal War Bird during the Falklands the second probably a first Gulf War bird.

The nine blades will be correct as one blade faces aft when folded, only four actually fold. One thing Airfix have missed out on the later Mk4's had modified blades that like the Merlin/Lynx bend back at the blade tips, if you want to build a vary late Afghanistan conflict a/c it will need the new blades.

Regards Splash
My work bench is starting to look like Portsmouth Naval Dockyard.
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jssel
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Re: Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

Post by jssel »

Wonderful. Very Excited. Hope Airfix/USA gets them in quickly.
Besting 60 years of mediocre building of average kits in the stand off scale
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splash
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Re: Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

Post by splash »

Mine have now arrived and I agree with all that Iggie has said. It looks like a splendid kit worlds apart from the old version it replaces.
My work bench is starting to look like Portsmouth Naval Dockyard.
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splash
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Re: Airfix New Tool Westland Sea King HC4 1/72 A04056

Post by splash »

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My work bench is starting to look like Portsmouth Naval Dockyard.
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