CH-46-D Sea Knight

Steven Van Dyck
The model has no rotor retraction joint details, so I drilled the hole for it and added scratch detail. Some of the PE was hammered with a ball bearing.

Steven Van Dyck
The second rotor is finished and a start on the interior is made with a lot of ejector marks to be filled in.

Steven Van Dyck
The front engine nacelle is adapted to the Blackdog replacement parts. The fit is well but care had to be taken not to bend the leftover kit parts.

Steven Van Dyck
The rear rotor nacelle interior is easily installed. For the instrument panel I chose a combination of the resin front part (be it referenced on a CH-46E example - this I could expect from the Blackdog set name) and the Eduard instruments, being flatter but very realistically painted. A PE sunscreen must be added too, so the instruments are a dry-fit. I found an error in the reference book, showing the details of the CH46-D front hatch under the CH46-E chapter.

Steven Van Dyck
The interior painting instructions are quite confusing on the left side, so I did a bit of guessing. I added shadows and then a lot of decals, which were great. The Blackdog nose resin and Eduard PE instruments are fixed.

Nathan Dempsey
Very nice work 🙂

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Nathan. Now the cockpit interior is assembled from the Eduard set.

Steven Van Dyck
All seats are now belted on the red seats and parts of the interior are painted grey. The loading floor is not perfectly scaled, it needs more rollers.

Steven Van Dyck
I didn't like the loading ramp and floor details, so I scratched a new roller rail. This has taken me half a week extra, but the result is pleasing me better than the kit part.

Steven Van Dyck
I closed up the chopper today. The fit is quite well but not perfect on the bottom. The hard part is that the worst seams are close to the windows. You also have to introduce the engine resin before uniting the halves, so I had to force it in afterward. There is one large Eduard part at the loading ramp I had to trim.

Daniel
Awesome job so far, taking a seat for the second half

Dietmar Bogatzki
Great job so far Steven 👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks! I started with masking the clearparts. The nose hatch had to be cut out for the Black Dog replacement. Again an Eduard part for the munition collector is not fitting to the fuselage and has to be trimmed.

Steven Van Dyck
Some nasty crevices are filled up, like the sponson part had been warped a bit there was room for some Evergreen in the middle. This was also close to the window line, so the sanding had to happen very carefully. The PE FOD-covers are shaped on a pencil point.

Steven Van Dyck
Apparently I need to correct the shape of the Blackdog cowlings. The Reskit wheels are also not easy to make fit perfectly in the tyres, they're just not completely round. One I had to remove again and refit.

Steven Van Dyck
The chopper is painted Gunze Navy gray. After some modulation the green paint wil follow.

Hans-Jürgen Haag
Extrem awesom detailwork 👍👍👍

ice
Looking great so far - I take a seat! 🙂

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, gents. Today the grey camo was modulated and the rotor was painted black. Next step will be the green camo.

Steven Van Dyck
The camo is completed with olive green and NATO black. Even on the resin cowling parts the camo had to laid out correctly.

Steven Van Dyck
The cowlings are painted in Tamiya XF-4 to be Interior Yellow. The transmission parts are painted with metallics. The MAW decals are applied now, though care must be taken observing the instructions. Unnumbered parts (red), different parts with identical numbers (orange) and some spelling mistakes occur. But the fit of the decals is good, and they are Cartograf.

Steven Van Dyck
The rotors are assembled after color signs are added to the blades. This was not provided in any decals but I was able to scratch this out of spare decals with green and yellow fields. The red was already in the Academy logo. I l made these rotors so they are removable, like that the chopper takes half the space if it will visit some fairs. No idea yet what kind of base I will provide. Also, the UHF antenna was replaced with scratch because of the thickness, and the winch got some cabling.

Steven Van Dyck
Some antennas are added, and I made the Brassin .50 set. Might have the wrong barrels but it's a lot better than the kit parts, that seem rather like 1/24 .30's. The white decal roundels I'm making are for the static points.

Alexander
Amazing detail work, and great progress anywhere else as well! 👍
Looking forward to the rest of the build.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks everybody for the attention! In today's update: using Tamiya panelline wash and removing the stains with a cloth damp with thinner. Then doing a matt cote with Vallejo, but that gave a lot of "scabs". This is the stuff that's dissolved in Vallejo's varnish, but if there's an overflow then you get white dots. These can be removed with a scalpel point, sometimes causing the gloss to reappear. In this case it didn't bother me, some was on the masking anyway. Now the tape could be removed and the Blackdog cowlings added. This gave the chopper a peculiar look. I replaced the M2 barrels with scratch built ones using an old Eduard B-25 leftover, so I'd get the correct AN/M3 with cooling sleeve. Also, the loading doors could be added. I am casting a base for the chopper to stand on, now there's a second attempt at this and I think this one will work.

Steven Van Dyck
The dio base is now painted. I used yellow dyed plaster on a styropor base for lightness. Then AK concrete paste was applied with a ruler and plates were engraved. I wanted to copy a picture of an airfield and made a mask for that. I made an error in the colors but this seems not problematic.

Steven Van Dyck
The last details added are the windscreen wipers and a wire to the antenna. Some stuff I wanted to scratch didn't materialize, like two subframes at the front rotor cowlings and two hinge arms under the nose hatch. These could have been included in the Blackdog set, but a manual would have been nice too; the result of it is really worth the money because of all the small details in it. The nameplate came with the Eduard set. The Seaknight is finished, it's now fixed to the base with three fine wires. The rotors I left loose so in some pictures they are not aligned. It might be necessary to strengthen the axles, somebody might lob one off at an event by moving the base. I intend to present it at Plastic and Steel.

Rui S
Great work and paint job 👍

Alexander
Agreed, all the effort was well worth it! Awesome result! 👍

Neuling
You done it again: unsurpassable work on details. A great build!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks everybody fir the compliments. The CH46 won its first silver medal at Plastic & Steel today. There were a lot of helis in the contest!

Neuling
Congrats! Well deserved!