UH-1D ‘SAR’

[Paul A H]

UH-1D ‘SAR’

1:72 Revell

The legendary Bell UH-1 Iroquois was designed to fulfil a 1952 US Army requirement for a utility and medivac helicopter. Although it gained fame serving with US forces during the Vietnam War, the UH-1 has also seen service with an almost endless list of nations around the world. Dozens of variants have been produced and more than 16000 examples have been built. The UH1-D entered service with the German armed forces in 1966. The vast majority of German examples were produced under licence by Dornier Flugzeugwerke.

Revell are a prolific producer of gift sets, and this is one of their latest. Included in the set is their UH-1D kit, a small container/applicator of Revell’s excellent Contacta polystyrene cement, a double ended paintbrush and three pots of acrylic paint; Bronze Green, Light Grey and Dark Green. The whole package is safely enclosed in a large blister pack. The kit itself arrives in the usual end-opening box. Inside are 4 sprues of dark green plastic, one sprue of clear plastic, decals and instructions. Although the kit is a reissue, the quality of mouldings is pretty good. Surface detail is a mixture of recessed and raised panel lines. As might be expected of an older kit, there is a little flash present on some of the parts.

The first stage in construction deals with the interior. From the outset, the builder has to decide whether to build the transport version (with seats) or the ambulance version (with stretchers) and drill the appropriate locating holes in the nicely textured cockpit floor. Happily, this kit has plenty of interior detail. The three-part crew seats feature a very nice fabric texture, as do the passenger benches and stretchers. The instrument panel and centre console also feature some very nice raised detail. Unusually for a helicopter, a little nose weight has to be added to prevent the model from sitting on its tail. The rotor head assembly must also be completed before the fuselage halves can be joined together.

Once the interior and fuselage is complete, the glazing can be added. The transparent parts are acceptably thin and nice and clear. Happily for those of us who have experienced the sinking feeling of clear parts popping out of window frames and rattling around inside the fuselage, all of the clear parts are added from the outside.

The tail rotor, skids and various lumps and bumps have to be added next. The final stage of the build deals with the doors, which can be posed open to show off all of the interior detail, and the main rotor.

Four colour schemes are provided:

• UH-1D of Lufttransportgeschwader 62 at Schönewalder/Holzdorf;

• UH-1D of HFlgRgt. 30, Niederstetten, Germany;

• UH-1D of Lufttransportgeschwader LTG 61, Penzing, Germany; and

• UH-1D of Lufttransportgeschwader 63 Hohn, Germany.

All of the schemes are pretty much identical, with the exception of the decals for codes and badges. The Niederstetten machine is the only one of the four to feature a camouflaged door in place of the high visibility orange door depicted on the box artwork. Decals are nicely printed and based on prior experience of Revell kits they should settle down without too many problems.

Conclusion

Although this is a rerelease of a kit that has been around for a while, it still looks nice on the sprue. The level of interior detail is very good, and it should build up into a decent representation of a Huey.

Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For further information visit

[Paul J]

A very useful look at this kit. I have an old ESCi kit but it looks different in qualty. Is this kit any relation to Italeri?

[Paul A H]

A very useful look at this kit. I have an old ESCi kit but it looks different in qualty. Is this kit any relation to Italeri?

I don't think it's related to the Italeri kit. I may well be wrong, but I think this may have its origins in the Hasegawa kit. Hopefully someone with the Hasegawa kit can confirm or deny this?

[daz greenwood]

Yes it is based on the Hasegawa kit.

[Paul J]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback. Having taken another closer look at the images, it does look like the Hasegawa kit. It has the hall marks of their 70's vintage kits.

Cheers

[WARDOG]

Nice review of a nice kit. I have built quite afew of these kits from Hasegawa and they turned out pretty well. I am glad to see RoG update these kits and wished they would have added rudder pedals and collective pitch levers but still a good show.

Cheers,

WARDOG

[Luis Alfonso]

Hi There Friends:

I have watched this until today, and really liked a lot the review you did here and the positive opinions about this kit.

The origins of this kit are in the Hasegawa, and the first incarnation of this one was with the ACE brand and the transparencies were a little bad. After that, the guys in Korea worked for Revell and boxed the US ARMY version previously released ( I missed this one, maybe in Ebay), I think the transparencies were reworked or remade and the moulds genearlly cleaned. Then the second incarnation with a picture little different from the one here (I have bought two), and the this one of which I bought three.

Many people sez the ESCI/ERTL/Italeri is better, but really, this one liked me A HUGE LOT!!!

Cheers,

[heloman1]

Hi Guy's, I'm with Daz on this one, it is a re-boxong of the Hasegawa kit. Non-the-less it's worth purchasing just for the decal sheet which has an instrument panel within it. Consign the rest to the spares box or better still give it to a youngster, see if you can get 'em hooked on plastic modelling!

Colin on the Africa Station

[Luis Alfonso]

Hi Guy's, I'm with Daz on this one, it is a re-boxong of the Hasegawa kit. Non-the-less it's worth purchasing just for the decal sheet which has an instrument panel within it. Consign the rest to the spares box or better still give it to a youngster, see if you can get 'em hooked on plastic modelling!

Colin on the Africa Station

Hi Heloman:

Poncho From Guatemala greets you. This one is based on the old Hasegawa mould but not are the same kit.

This Revell offering differs from the Hasegawa current offer in that the latter have deleted all the armament and substitute those items for some other pieces dealing with stairs steps. The Revell Germany current offer has some more exterior detail and keeps the armament pieces in the trees but marked in the instructions plan as not for use so there would be nice to have the Hasegawa Old kit instructions in hand or the old Revell Vietnam offering for know what pieces you have to place where. Also the Vietnam offering has the long boom antenna peculiar to the german variant but don't know if there is another version dealing with this one.

BTW, I remember a Scale Rotors Thai Guy post who did a nearly perfect UH1D/H by crosskitting this one or a Hasegawa one with the Italeri UH1B front part cutting, so I personally think this one is not too bad kits to keep only the decal sheet, so if anyone couldn't afford the Italeri/ESCI/ERTL one, just try this one and maybe with a little more work could obtain a pleasent and acceptable replica.

BTW its nice to find good old friends from other places in this one.

Best regards,