History

The Bell UH-1Y Venom also called Super Huey is a twin-engine medium size utility helicopter, part of the United States Marine Corps' H-1 upgrade program. The helicopter is also called Yankee for its variant letter, Y.
The UH-1Y is currently in full-rate production to replace the USMC's aging fleet of UH-1N Twin Huey light utility helicopters first introduced in the early 1970s. The UH-1Y was to have been remanufactured from UH-1Ns, but in 2005 it was approved for the aircraft to be built as new.
Info from Wikipedia

In the box

Packed in a top opening box with artwork of one of the marking options available in the kit, the seven light grey sprues, instruction booklet, two decal sheets, a small PE sheet and one clear sprue, which is packed in its own little box to protect the parts, fill the box to bursting.
The injected plastic parts are well cast with a little flash around the main rotor blades. Ejector pin marks, as usual from Kitty Hawk do abound, with some marks, such as the side plates for the cockpit seats, and internal door facing, to name two, in places that will be seen and will have to be worked on.
Sprues A and B are the same as the earlier Bell AH-1Z Viper kit, as it shares the same tail boom, tail rotor, main rotor, engines and some of the external weapons.
Starting with the interior, the detail for the floor is quite excellent with the floor having several panel lines engraved along with recessed rivets dotted along the edge of the panel lines. The cockpit although not massively detailed does include P.E belts for the two pilot seats, and three decals are supplied for the instrument panels. The IPs do have recessed and raised detail on them if you fancy painting them yourself. The rear compartment has nine seats attached to the various bulkheads, and do look quite close in detail too pictures I have seen of the real seats. The one drawback is none of the seats have harnesses. The interior ceiling has raised detail for the numerous consoles and switches. Although the interior is sparse, the basics are there for detailing it more if you so wish.
The interior is basically black, but a quick internet search shows a lot of wear to the floor, so with some careful chipping, and the use of dark greys instead of black will add a bit more interest to this area.
As with the earlier Viper release the two General Electric T700 engines can be built to show them off in the engine compartments. each center section of the engines are made up of four parts each and do have some nice moulded detail on them. Adding wiring and pipework will improve the detail. The bays have some detail for the interior with raised areas. The mesh grills have been supplied as Photo etch parts and would be an improvement over injected plastic parts. The exhausts are nice and deep, with moulded detail inside the rear facing.
The exterior has some very nice recessed panel and rivets adorning the fuselage.
The nose is a separate part to the main fuselage and is made up of 14 parts including the nose mounted sensor.
The side and pilots doors. although not shown in the instructions, but are shown on Kitty Hawks website, can be modelled open.
The rotors are the same as the Viper model Rowan has already reviewed here, but unlike Rowans sample the rotors don't seem to be damaged in any way other than a little flash along the main rotor blades.
Construction of the rotors looks to be easy with the whole assembly having 14 parts to attach. The rotor blades sit on a cnetral cross shaped spar so it should all be quite strong. The tail rotor is made up of three parts and like the main rotors should be pretty stable.
The kit is built up as several modules, with the main fuselage, nose, engine housing and tail as all separate parts, which hopefully bodes well for different versions in the future.
External weapons for the Venom are two Hydra 70 rocket launchers, with the option of having either two pintle mounts for GAU-16 .50 caliber machine guns
or 7.62 mm GAU-17/A Gatling guns. The weapons are optional. so they don't have to be installed.
The clear parts are packed in their own box, and are very well cast with no imperfections in the parts. The parts are clear and distortion free and have some very nice raised canopy framing.

Instructions

The instruction booklet is 20 pages and consists of the part tree map, and a 29 part construction sequence. The construction sequence for Kitty Hawk kits is normally confusing at best, but in this release the build is logical and pretty easy to follow.
The build starts out with the interior, followed by the engines, with the fuselage being closed up with all the internal parts in.
The main engine cover, doors, canopy, exhaust and various grab handles, mesh screens and other smaller parts being glued into position.
The build then moves onto the tail section, followed by the tail and main rotor assemblys. All of this is then fixed to the main fuselage body.
The last step is the building and mounting of the external stores, which are optional extras.
Interior colours are given along the way for the Gunze Sangyo range of paints (although this isn't actually stated in the instructions).

Decals and markings

Four marking options are available, which are
UH-1Y, 168402, HMLA-169, SN/06 , grey with black engine caseing and upper tail boom camoflage.
UH-1Y, 168406, HMLA-167, TV/00 , grey camoflage.
UH-1Y, 168427, HMLA-269, HF/44 , grey camoflage.
UH-1Y, 168088, grey and green camoflage.
All the markings are for US Marine Corp helicopters, which isn't surprising as they are the only air arm operating this version.
The painting and marking guide is on a pullout full colour sheet with all four profiles shown. paints for the Gunze Sangyo range of paints and FS numbers are supplied.
Two sheets of decals are supplied with the smaller sheet having the instrument panels decals on it. This sheet is printed well and has a matt finish. The larger sheet has the main airframe and stencil decals attached and they are printed well, are in register and have a more glossy appearance.

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