The Little World

In scale model building the two most common colours are Thewrong Green and Thewrong Grey.

I have elected to use the first of these as the interior shade for the Sikorsky. It is related to the inside colour of USAAF planes and is likely to have carried over to Army and Marines aviation after the war. This helicopter is early 50’s so the choice is logical. I have also decided to dedicate the build to the USMC so it need not be pristine in there. I doubt the Marines would have gone for the fashionable red webbing…

The rotor assembly for thus Italeri kit is somewhat complex, but done very well. I assembled it and painted it as one structure, remembering to set the blades so they droop naturally at rest. In another build – I hope to locate Royal Canadian Navy decals – I will fold them at rest along the tail boom. The moulding would make this easy to do. Kudos to Italeri.

I puzzled at the round bottom shape behind the cargo compartment but eventually located a builder’s diagram and a US Army training film that showed it to be a cargo and radio compartment.

The peculiar decision to make a separate tail boom is explained by the fact that there were some versions of the aircraft where it inclined. Presumably you get one of them with those kits.