Hasegawa SH-3 Sea King

A long build for sure doing extra work 3d designing and printing the blade fold support red gear and a tail fold to look a little more complete than the empty void of the kit. Overall learned a lot. For an older kit, this one gets a pretty big thumbs up from me. Good sunken panel lines and detail. Black Dog avionics bay and engine fit in pretty easily too without too complicated of surgery. Obviously had a few issues here and there, a couple struggles with the directions not giving quite enough guidance. But that's just the nature of it. For as affordable as this one is id definitely recommend it. Would I build it twice?...Well in all fairness, if I made another Sea King, I'd try my hand at the Airfix one and modify it from the Westland to a USN Sikorski version, but who knows, maybe by then they will have release that one. One note on the red gear, the USN didn't actually utilize the red gear for carrier operations like they do on some other helicopters like the h-60 platforms. They just used a rope system to tighten them down. But there are pictures of multiple countries Sea Kings including US with it installed so I thought it would be a good challenge to figure it out and I couldn't be happier with it. The geometry adds so much visual interest. No weight added as it balances out. Trouble area would be not cutting the struts on the wings to make them fit flush. they are not supposed to. Thus why the wings on mine are anhedral vs flat like they were supposed to be. Thus requiring landing gear work so they would sit plumb. But if I hadn't mentioned it, would you have known? I also went pretty heavy on the engine exhaust streak but these helos got pretty nasty according to references. Let me know how you thing I did, hope you enjoyed this build!

Fusion 360 Links to my 3D designed Blade supports and Tail fold if you're interested. All I ask is that if you use them you post pictures.

Blade Supports:
a360.co/3E1E0Bv
Tail Fold:
a360.co/40D6Elb

If these links don't work for you, DM me and i can email you the Supported STL/PM5 files