New project, Dragons UH-1D. Building it as Maj. Bruce Crandall’s Ancient Serpent Six from the battle of Ia Drang which was a very early D model. So the big thing is to make sure that the proper antenna array is shown on it. Dragon has antenna in the box for everything from early 63-64 D models to 80’s H models. I’m going to need to make so custom decals to get the proper door markings.
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Nice start and great subject. I’ll be following along.
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Thanks Gino, I’ve used many of your great tips on building Hueys over the years to build a few other Panda/Dragon UH-1D’s including several years ago when I built Robert Mason’s 229th B Company bird from Chickenhawk.
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Very nice. It looks great.
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By the way, one of the latest boxings of the old Monogram/Revell 1/32 UH-1D comes with markings for “Ancient Serpent 6”. Ignore the incorrect gunship parts and the C model on the box art.
Not mine, from the web.
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Yes, I know about the Revell decals, my son built that kit a few years ago, so I measured the door markings, and the 1/32 decals are just too big to fit on the 1/35 door without looking odd. Luckily, I have a set of the old Fireball Huey slick’s decals that I got a couple years ago just before he closed and it has all the proper markings for 229th Hueys except for Crandall’s snake door markings. So I will just have to size and print those on some decal paper.
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Very nice. That image looks perfect.
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More progress on Ancient Serpent Six as we finish up the cabin.
And once completed buttoning up the fuselage and getting ready to prime and paint the body.
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Coming along great.
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how are you finding the fit, the one I had was terrible and ended up in the bin.
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I don’t find the fit to be too terribly bad. It just takes some patients to make sure everything lines up and fits together well. The biggest thing is making sure you only use the antennas for the era you are representing because the instructions don’t show which ones are for which. And once you figure that out you need to fill all the open holes from them. I’ve built several of these kits over the years, so I don’t find them too bad to build.
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Also make sure you use the tailboom piece w/o the luggage door (B13). The door (B23) was only used on civilian Hueys.
^^Ditto^^
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I get it - Huey rivets aren’t flush. But damn, those might be a tad out of scale. And those doors are awful. I wonder if we’ll ever see a good kit of this model. That said, there’s something new for the 1/32 Revell kit, which is also decidedly not good, TLC or not. Since it’s been mentioned in this thread - if you have a few in your stash…
1/32 Scale Battleground XM23 M-60D Door Gun - for Revell Bell Huey Helicopter | eBay
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Here is part 1 of the build video on the UH-1D Ancient Serpent Six from my YouTube channel, Green Iron TV. I’m trying to build it from several period photos to try and make it as accurate as possible. Plus I’ll show you all the tips and tricks to build an accurate UH-1D from the Dragon kit, fixing some of the errors and pointing out what is correct for an early D model.
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Got the helicopter primed and painted and then went back in with the airbrush to accent panel lines and features.
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Working on the gunners, after do a little research, it turns out that during the battle of Ia Drang that the helicopters from the 229th didn’t have the M23 gun mounts yet so they were just free handing the M60’s. So I used a combo of resin figures with arms from the Dragon gunners to make some unique figures.
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The gunners look great, Good job. I used the same resin gunners on my UH-60A Grenada build.
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A couple of vets I know were in Helicopter Attack Companies. (Fort Wolters is not too far from me, where many Huey pilots trained for Vietnam) Even free handing the guns often meant hanging them from bungies. Do you plan on doing that?
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In the research I’ve done, it shows that during the battle of Ia Drang, they didn’t hang them with bungies or straps. There is a picture of Ed Freeman’s helicopter taken by Joe Galloway during the battle that shows they were not using bungies.
But from the book Chickenhawk in which they were in B company of the 229th there is a picture of them using just a simple rifle sling to hold the M60’s.
So I think I’m just going to show them free handing them.
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I saw this and I thought it might be of use
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