Sikorsky HH-60J Jayhawk - Hobby Boss - Full build

Off you go, you dull piece of uninteresting plastic! 

That's much better. Now there's a command panel where there was nothing... 

Had to cut a panel from a sheet of styrene to fill the gap. 

I modeled the rescue bag from Tamiya Putty. Will add a strap later. 

I outlined the mold lines that will need to be taken care of. Some re-riveting work ahead! 

One more ugly mold line. 

Ready for paint: outside... 

and inside! 

There will be some priming and painting action in the near future... 

Decided I would not use some of the decals and paint instead. So I made some masks using a sheet of clear acetate and a light table. This is a method I replicated from one of Metodi Metodiev's video tutorial. 

The external tanks are masked and ready for painting. 

And we're ready for black! 

I even decided I'd rather not use the decal on the tail and use paint instead. I will elaborate on decals later (because they're shitty). 

Made a mess when painting... 

And this is the result of a session of careful retouching my not-so-clean paintjob. 

Pretty neat, innit? 

So glad I could get my hands on this Model Alliance decal sheet! 

I considered drawing and printing my own decals for a moment but the result was quite unsatisfactory. 

Hobby Boss' decals are garbage: poorly represented, badly printed and dramatically out of register. 

In retrospect, I realize I didn't even have to do some of the markings with paint. 

There are markings for 5 different choppers! I chose to do #6008, Coast Guard Air Station Astoria, Oregon, Oct. 2005 

This braided wire comes from a discarded USB cable. I thought it would fit, but it's a bit too thick.ca 

I finally used some 6A fusible wire and it looks good enough. 

Once the superglue has set, the wire got brush painted white. 

Good enough! Now it's time for some satin/mat varnish all around. 

Aaaaaand it's finally done! The rear view mirrors look so nice: