Hi Everyone

I was in my local hobby store on the weekend and came accross the Hobby Boss Eurocopter Tiger HAP in 1/72. Saw that it came with Aussie decals and thought I'd give it a go.

The kit doesn't come with figures but I "salvaged" two pilots from an old hh-60g kit I did about 12 years ago. After some cutting and tamiya epoxy putty they had the rough shape of Aussie tiger pilots





After some painting a quick black wash they would look the part under the canopy glass





The parts for the kit are nicely molded and some nice panel lines/rivets are very visible straight out of the box - I scored these just for the sake of it. The pieces fit together snugly and only had to gap fill some very minor sections











More of the hull is to be added, as are the intake covers, landing gear etc. Will work on either a tarmac base with the tiger taking off, or dirt/grass with it landing. Hope to get the landing gear on tomorrow night

haha, stupid me put the weapon pylon/ "wings" on back to front, had to cut them off and put them on properly, thought they looked different from all the reference pics I have haha

Have started painting the chassis, using humbrol enamels, no pics as yet was running late for work so couldn't get any online.

To try and make it as accurate as an "air" model noob like me can, I have decided to purchase the 1/72 hobby boss Apache kit, so I can kit bash it for the FFAR and Hellfire launchers, had a go at scratch building these but all attempts looked pretty bad and out of scale.

I need to scratch an X shaped aerial towards the rear of the helo and run a length of wire from the midsection to the tail of which I assume is a LF or similar aerial like the ones pictured below

Thanks for posting your progress on this unusual 'bird'. I sure haven't seen to many builds of these on the internet. It looks like you are off to a good start. For 1/72nd, the kit looks like it has good detail overall.

Don't let being a 'air' noob discourage you. I just recently have ventured into aircraft after having been doing armor for several years. I'm having a lot of fun with it so far. I feel like getting me out of my comfort zone (armor) is helping me progress as a modeler.

Please update this as you progress.

Time for some more progress shots, nearly done the painting, just have to touch up a few areas, apply washes etc and started to add the weapons, have attached the FFAR launcher from the hobby boss apache kit, and am still painting the the hellfire's.

The first few shots show my scratch built aerials, haven't affixed the long wire one yet as still working on the struts that support it, used styrene strip for the base and "+ "section on the aerial at the rear of the helo

Another quick update

Have converted the rocket pods from the kit into the smaller 7 port launcher seen on the Tiger ARH, My Trusty scalpel and some styrene strip saw it converted without issue.







The last photo also shows the kit bashed Hellfire 2 missiles