Group;

I was at the local Michaels Craft store the other day, picking up some new brushes and some stuff for the wife. I had a 50% off cupon that I downloaded. I have plenty of projects going on and my stash with keep me busy for the next year or two.

I came across the Revell Mi 24 Hind. With the coupon I walked out the door paying $10.70. I'm not one to buy my kits from Michaels, but I saw some reviews on the kit and what others on line have done to improve the kit.

To my surprise.........its a pretty good. Nice detail, crisp molding, no flash. Along the same quality as the 1/48 Helldiver by Revell / Pro Modeler. I'm very happy with this purchase. I already started putting together the plan on how I would work this project. It wont be till well after the first of the year. I just started the Helldiver.

I'm up for lots of scratch building to improve it. I would like recommendations about any and all after market PE or detail sets. If I could avoid it, I would like to do it all myself with the detail work and not by any aftermarkit parts. One of my goals for the past few years was to improve on my scratch building skills.

Any advice from the master scratchbuilders would be great.

Sam

If this is the 1/48th scale kit, it is pretty good considering they used videotape of a Nicaraguan Hind that landed in Honduras along with photos of a Polish one.

For detailing. I have bought the PART (of Poland) and Eduard sets for it. This was done as some items look better and saves me time. Of course, make your own cabling, ductwork, weapons, etcetera.

One thing you may want to try, to challenge your skills, is to impart the missing twist from the fuselage when viewed head on.



I highly recommend some books such as Wings & Wheels Hind book to help you sort out the differences.

[edited to correct spelling.]

Regards,

Saul has given you some good advice. Be sure to check out Aeroscale's Rotary Wing Forum as you start to build it and need some more advice.

One of the easiest (and inexpensive) upgrades you can do is sand all of those raised panel lines off of it. I built this beast about 18 years ago, and although scribed panel lines are also a bit much at that scale, decided to do it anyway. I actually made two kits from the one, by doing two half kits and placing it in a shadow box. The right fuselage half became an F variant. I used the flash hiders from a Sgt. York kit for the cannons. It may have been a tad out of scale but the guy I did it for loved it.
You can actually feel the fuselage torquing when you ride in these and the Mi-17. Since I've never built the entire kit I couldn't tell you how to get the twist in the frame, but I'd bet submersing the whole assembly in hot water and twisting it might work.
I have both the 1/35 Hind and Hip from Trumpeter, but I'll probably never get around to the Hind, and I'm not sure I'd try to tweak that frame, even if it was a free kit. But for a $10 kit it might be worth a try.

The flexing is true. However, this method to impart the twist won't work. The fuselage side panel heights are different on the port than starboard in the engine/troop compartment areas imparting the 2 degrees, 30 minute, angle. Please see station C here:



Regards,