Revell Hughes OH-6A Cayuse

One of my all-time favorite model kits: the Revell 1/32 scale Hughes OH-6A Cayuse helicopter. This is my fourth build of this kit since 1975. The first time I saw this model was at a toy store in a San Fernando Valley mall. The box art really appealed to me (it still does) and the sleek, but egg-shaped look of the OH-6A has made this helicopter my favorite over all others.

I don't remember painting my first one, but I bought another one a couple years later - 1977 perhaps, and painted it according to the directions. I built a third one about two years ago, straight from the box, and it looked exactly like the fourth one pictured here. I enjoy building this model a little bit more each time. Perhaps I'll build another one; but next time I'll do the civilian Hughes 500 version with red seats and tan interior.
What I've always liked about this model is the detailed interior. The military version has drop down canvas seat packs moulded into the rear bulkhead piece. An ammo box is glued to the rear floor, and some sort of fake-looking gun sight is glued onto the center bulkhead, between the two pilot seats. I don't know if this model was based on an early concept or prototype drawing of the OH-6A. It wouldn't surprise me since the 1/72 scale OV-10A Bronco kit, released the same year of 1970, is based on the early Marine version. I searched for photos of early OH-6As on the Internet, and I did see a few showing the external Gatling gun in an aerodynamic enclosure, but I couldn't see any large sighting devices between the pilot and gunner's seats. At any rate, I chose to glue it on, since I was sticking to the directions as closely as possible.
One liberty I did take was to paint to canopy framework olive drab, where the directions give no guidance on this. The Hughes 500 and OH-6A have a large panel on the front windshield bubble, with what looks like an air vent and a landing light mounted into it. To leave this large panel clear on the model just doesn't look right. I left the rest of the model in its correctly moulded olive green color - although the plastic is glossy. Color pictures of early OH-6As reveal a semi-gloss olive finish, so leaving the model glossy isn't that big a deal.
The decals are original to the kit, and went on nicely using the Microscale system. MicroSol is necessary to get the "U.S. Army" decal to conform to the plethora of rivets on the tail boom. This is the dilemma one faces when building model kits straight from the box, without any super-detailing.
The parts fit together pretty well on this model; but the biggest weaknesses are the clear window pieces. They are crazed pretty badly from the injection moulding process, and distort the interior when viewing any closer than one foot from the model. They do not fit well either. There are no alignment pins or grooves - they just lay into the window hole from the inside, and the builder is expected to glue them in somehow. Although I'm sure I used tube cement on these windows for my first two models, I used liquid cement on the later two. This works much better, but one has to be careful not to get one iota of glue on the clear pieces, or else the error sticks out like a sore thumb. One could also use Micro Krystal Klear to cement them in, but I would be afraid of accidentally punching them in with the thumb or fingers during handling of the model.
The kit comes with a pilot figure, but he is terrible looking no matter how well you are at painting figures. His arms are moulded along his side, and there is a huge seam that runs around him that must be filled after gluing his two halves together. It ain't worth it! On all but the last three kits I've built of this one, I let the pilot figure go into the trash can still affixed to the runner.
This is a great companion model to Revell's other 1/32 Vietnam U.S. Army helicopter kits such as the Huey and Huey Cobra. Too bad Revell didn't just carry on and release the whole set of Army choppers in 1/32 such as the Chinook, Sioux, Skycrane, and Choctaw, among others.

Revell OV-10A Bronco

I think my Dad picked this model out for me when we were at Gemco or Peterson's Hobby & Crafts. He probably liked it because the box said "North American-Rockwell" on it. Dad was working for Rockwell at the time on the space shuttle Enterprise.
This is a frustrating little model to build, especially if you want to paint the wing and undersurfaces white. The wing is moulded in two pieces which, according to the instructions, look like you can paint them white, glue it to the fuselage, and you're done. If you do that however, you discover a small area forward of the wing, centered on top the fuselage, which needs to be filled in with white. To do that requires a lot of precision masking to get it right. The undersurfaces also need to be carefully masked to replicate the wavy demarcation lines. Being a 1/72 scale model, I chose a sharp, masked line against the moulded olive green surface. It looks good from at least a foot away or more. Closer examination however reveals a lot of uneven joining surfaces. The wing fits horribly onto the fuselage, and most of the other parts don't fit that well either. This is typical Revell quality from the 1970s. Good subject, excellent packaging, but poor fitting parts.
My original try at this model revealed a lot of glue smudges and decals that flaked off days after completion. I may have had one or two colors of paint to use as well. I think the first bottle of model paint I ever bought was Testors gloss gray, and the OV-10A was one of the first kits I tried painting a few pieces on. I distinctly remember painting the interior gray as per the directions.
On this rebuild, I chose to stick by the plans, but with a lot more precision. The wings and undersurfaces were spray painted with Tamiya gloss white. Everything else was hand painted. Not enough nose weight can be added to the tiny front section to keep the model sitting on all three wheels, so Revell included a spike to prop it up. The problem is, the spike is not long enough, so the front wheel sits up off the ground. Serious modelers would have passed this one up in the early 70s and prefered Airfix's OV-10A. At any rate, this one was fun to build again, and brought back some good memories of my early collection of model airplanes.

Revell B-52C Stratofortress

Next in the series of Revell model airplane kits I've built is this odd-scale Boeing B-52C Stratofortress. I originally bought this kit at Gemco, probably because it was cheap. This is Revell's 1970 reissue of their B-52 kit from the 1950s. Revell updated it in Vietnam era Strategic Air Command colors. It's a very basic little model, with no landing gear, sparse detail, and a couple of decals for the top wing. The parts are moulded in black, which makes painting easy.

The box shows the factory display model painted in some odd colors, while the instruction manual says to paint the camoflage scheme with dark green, medium green, and tan. I chose to use Testors dark green, SAC camo green, and SAC camo tan. While these colors were not available in stores when I first built this kit in 1975, I chose to use them on this rebuild for improved appearance. The camoflage pattern is hand painted, using the picture on the box as a guide. To help hide the brush stroke pattern, and minimize decal silvering, I sprayed the top of the plane with Testors gloss, then flat after the two decals dried. This went a little above and beyond the "out of the box" method of construction, but I felt it was necessary to give the model a much more improved look over the first one I did 35 years ago.
When I built this kit back in '75, I didn't paint it. It was all black with some glue smudges and lots of greasy fingerprints. This new one looks much better, and while it's not exactly an accurate model of the B-52C, it looks nice on the shelf. After all, this was one of Revell's early model kits, intended for young boys of the 1950s to slap together with glue in short order, and build up a collection of current USAF bombers and fighters Revell had to offer.

SR-71 Gone But Not Forgotten!

There are no more SR-71s flying, but one can still enjoy building a model of it, even if it is forty years old. This is the Revell 1/72 scale Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. This kit was originally produced in 1967, just one year after Revell released the 1/72 scale YF-12 interceptor. Most SR-71 kit boxes have the year 1969 printed on them, however Revell continued to produce the kit with the same box art well into the 70s.
Straight from the box, the Revell SR-71 is pretty rough looking. It's as if the engineers at Revell were in a hurry to get this kit on dime store shelves. The fuselage and wings are basically two large flat pieces that fit together, rather poorly. A large gap runs around the bottom fuselage edge. The engine cowlings fit poorly as well. The verticle fins don't fit too well either. It's sparse on detail, although there isn't much detail to see on the real plane either unless you get real close to it.
Revell made the obvious choice to mould the kit in black styrene; that way inexperienced modelers could built it without painting. I didn't paint my original one back in '76, so I left this rebuild in the original black as well. This time however I ran a Dremel tool with a polishing wheel over it to rub out scrathches and marks. The orginal decals went on well using the Microscale system. Micro Sol was necessary for the wing markings to conform to the ribbing on the wing panel.
This is a pretty simple model - not much to it. Interestingly, the YF-12 kit is of much higher quality.

Revell SR-71 Blackbird!

In the backyard of our new home on J-5 in Lancaster, we had a redwood fence surrounding it. The back part of the fence faced directly towards Palmdale Air Force Facility to the South. I could stand on the lower cross brace of the fence, look over the top of it with my arms hanging over, and watch the various airplanes take off, make a right turn, fly right over our house, and make another right turn to land back at Palmdale for another go-around. It was truly amazing as a 9-year-old kid to see this going on all day long. One day, I saw a strange black airplane take off from Palmdale, and when it made it's right turn towards my house, it looked like a bat, or a kind of strange winged creature. I was actually a bit frightened by it, at the same time amazed by it. It flew by with a loud jet noise, and I ran into my house to tell my Dad about it. He said it was the SR-71.
A few weeks went by, and I saw the Revell SR-71 model at a toy store in some mall we were at in L.A. I had to have it. The box art reminded me of that day when I first caught glimpse of this amazing airplane.

Eye Candy! Revell DC-7 Completed

When I built this model the first time in 1975, I did a pretty good job on the assembly, but a horrible job on the decals. The decals are what really make this kit shine, and credit must go to Revell for producing such high-quality, colorful decals for both this kit, and the TWA Connie. Thankfully, the decal sheet in this old kit was still usable; I only had a couple break on me during application. Revell included all the decals necessary to "paint" the aircraft with the deep blue parts. All one has to do is paint the upper fuselage gloss white, and everything looks good. As a kid, wrapping these blue decal panels around the nose was a fruitless endeavour; it was totally beyond my skill level. This time however, I used the Microscale decal system. Micro Sol was the key element to get these decals to form around the curvatures of the airframe for that 'painted on' look. The stuff really works good, and I'm thankful such a product exists for modelers.

I left the natural metal parts of the aircraft in its original moulded silver-gray. Dark gray was used on the area behind the nacelles, and part of the cowlings as per the instructions. That's about it. The decal application is what took the most time on this one. I applied them slowly over time, putting a few on, letting them completely dry, then applying some more. This prevented over-wrinkling and movement, since many of the blue panels overlap.
This DC-7 was more fun to build than my first one. Painting the top white and applying the decals properly sure made a difference.

Revell United Airlines DC-7

I decided to build this 1974 reissue of Revell's old DC-7 on the heels of the TWA Super-G Connie. 1973, and 1974 were golden years of reissuing old kits for Revell, Monogram, Lindberg, and Airfix. In '74, Revell chose to update and rebox the old Eastern Airlines Constellation, and the American Airlines DC-7. This was a surprising move by Revell, since commercial airliner model kits were dipping in sales by the early 70s (according to Thomas Graham's REMEMBERING REVELL MODELS.) At any rate, the TWA Connie and United DC-7 appeared in the 1974-75 and 1977 kit catalogs. Were they good sellers? Who knows; there are still lots of them, even sealed ones available on Ebay. I bought both of them in 1975 at Gemco, in Lancaster, and they are still two of my favorite model airplane kits.