Hi. I have a good friend who is retired army. In the course of his 27-year career, he flew the following aircraft:

UH-1H - Huey
OH58A and C - Kiowa
AH1S - Cobra
UH60A/L - Blackhawk

I would love to build one of these for him for Christmas. Any suggestions on a good kit that fits well and is not too difficult (i am an intermediate modeler at best)?

Thanks in advance!
Ricky

A friend of mine built this one, and I don't know if it was a one off (as Revell are usually good?!) but the front of it just didn't fit well at all...



Like I said, could have been a one off but thought I'd say.

Italeri does a UH-1H and an OH-58A in /48th scale, no model of a OH-58C is avialable from my knowledge, Monogram does an AH-1S but is OOP at the moment. Check Academy or Minicraft for the UH-60

Try the Academy brand 1/35 Huey. Academy, in my opinion, usually goes together rather well and their detail is pretty good. It is not a difficult model to put together as well.

Regards,
Mike

There are a few kits out there to choose from. Hasegawa 1/72 Blackhawk, 1/48 Italeri OH-58A, 1/48 Fujimi AH-1S, and Monograms 1/48 Huey. Then there are the 1/35 offerings. I'd suggest staying with something in 1/72 or 1/48 scale as it would be easier for him to find some place to display it, and you could do multiples if you thuoght you wanted to and not take up a lot of space doing it. And they can look just as good as their larger brethren. You might try checking on E-bay. You could probably find any one of the birds he flew on there and in a scale you are looking for. Just my .0178 cents worth. Hope it helps. "Q";)

He is looking for a UH-1H, Academy doesn't have an H model. Theirs is the C model, very different aircraft.


If you want to go with 1/35 or 1/32 , they will be much larger, but offer more opportunity for details.


Dragon has the H, an ex-Panda model with added PE. The older Panda offering is OK too.
Revell has a 1/32 UH-1H that is pretty nice.

There is an OH-58A by Revell sort of, its a civilian Bell 206. It would require quite a bit of conversion to make it into either an Army A or C model.

No AH-1S in a large scale. You could convert the Revell 1/32 G model, but again, it would take a lot of work. I know, I did one. It was a pain.

For the Blackhawk, Academy's 1/35 models are very nice.

Good luck.

Best bet is to stay away from this kit. This is one of the worst UH-1 kits out there. It it a reboxing of the old Italeri kit. It has a mix of UH-1B and UH-1C model parts. It has Army weapons and Marine decals, further, the USMC did not use B or C model Hueys. The USMC used the E model, which was slightly different. Fit is pretty bad too.

Also, its not a UH-1H. He is asking for a UH-1H, not a B or C model.

Thanks for the help, folks. The Dragon UH-1H ... I keep seeing it referred to on the one hand as a D, on the other as an H, even over at Dragon's website. Is that the German one? Are there two kits or one that can be built as either a D or an H?

Thanks again,
Ricky

If we're talking about this one then at least from the box art it appears to be a mix of UH-1D and UH-1H features, most notably the pitot tubes. I can't tell if the pitot in the nose has been removed, but it looks like in the closer aircraft it might still be there. The nose pitot was replaced with the roof pitot on the UH-1H (the aircraft appears to possibly have both). Otherwise the differences are the location of the roof radar aerial and internal changes in avionics and engine, which did not change the profile. UH-1Hs also later received the wire strike guards and were sometimes fitted with the "sugar scoop" exhaust deflector.

On the Revell UH-1 kit, I dunno if that's a reboxing of an old Italeri kit, but its definitely a reboxing of an old Monogram kit (The one I built as a kid was a Monogram kit). With the exception of the roof mounted pitot (a definite UH-1C feature), it has all the features of "transitional" UH-1Bs, which occurred when damaged UH-1Bs were refitted with UH-1C tail parts, a product of there not immediately being enough UH-1Cs to go around, but more than enough parts. What you get is UH-1Bs with UH-1C tails.

Still, the detail on the kit is really poor (the ammo feed for the guns look incorrect even in the box art), and the markings completely wrong. The only short fuselage UH-1 the USMC ever used was the UH-1E. Army and Navy used UH-1B/C/M, while the Army also used A/D/H/U/V/X and the Navy also used K/L/N. The USMC also used the N and now Y. The USAF used F/P/N.

The Dragon (ex-Panda) UH-1 can be built either as a D or an H, all the parts are in the box. Both the US Army D model from Vietnam and the German SAR H model are the same on the inside except for a few extra pieces on the H for a resue hoist, and the additional figure sets and decals differ in each. Dragon doesn't tell you which parts to use for each version though (nor did Panda), so you'll have to know what parts to use. It also has some parts that were only used on civilian Bell 205s as well.

Check here for a listing of differences.





Sorry, yup, I meant Monogram. Don't know what I was thinking with Italeri. I guess I was thinking about the Panda-come-Dragon 1/35 ones. They are scaled up from Italeri 1/48 kits.

Thanks, guys! I think i'm going to build the Dragon kit.

Cheers,
Ricky