Aerospatialle SA365N Dauphin 2 – Part 2 - interior

First look at the interior of the original Icelandic Dauphin shows that the SAR compartment certainly doesn't have 6 comfortable coach-styled chairs. To keep up with the 'out of the box' premise I decided to simply remove the rear set of 3 chairs, and keep just the front row. It's hard to get rid of the scratch-building habits.

To kick off I decided to try to replicat e the seat texture using Surfacer 500 undercoat (applied by stiff brush), and them dabbing it with stiff wire brush. The effect is satisfactory, but it's just purely academic exercise. The glazing in this model is so thick, that this level of finesse certainly won't be visible.

Inside of the fuselage was slightly sanded to remove injection mould marks, and glazing was glued with Revell's Contacta Clear glue. It's reasonably long drying time, doesn't leave permanent marks if smeared by accident, and dries transparenly. Downside is that it can't be sanded. Edges of glazing were masked with small pieces of Tamiya masking tape, and the rest masked with Maskol masking fluid.

Location marks for the rear set of seats were filled, and sanded. The whole cockpit was primed and painted in uniform gray.

 Controls were brush-painted with ever so subtle amount of dry brushing (using light grey oil paint) and coated with clear gloss. Decals for the clocks proved to be almost complete disaster. They are very brittle, and even very liberal application of Misroscale Set fluid under the decal didn't help much. I don't really look forward to application of the external decals. It has a great potential for complete failure.

Seats were painted with Tamiya Medium Grey, and highlights were drybrushed with oils (mix of buff and white). Texture and crevices were emphasized using Citadel's black wash (Nuln Oil in gamer's lingo).

Aerospatialle SA365N Dauphin 2 – Introduction

The blog is back!
This time - back to basics. Pure craftsmanship. No dioramas, no storytellling. Just good, honest modelmaking.
The idea came from the IMSS club's The Tony Foley's memorial kit challenge.
Any model, and scale, as long as it's 'out of the box'. With just over one month to complete the build - chances are I never make it on time (5th December 2016).
The victim is Trumpeter's 1/48th scale Aerospatialle SA365N Dauphin 2 in Icelandic Coast Guard livery.
Nice, sleek helicopter with reasonably straightforward colour scheme. I'm hoping to test some colour modulation techniques, as there isn't much scope for the extensive weathering.


Here’s the Iceland’s Dauphin in full glory.


And here after an engine mishap during 2007 exercise.
Today the helicopter is on display in Icelandic Aviation Museum (Flugvallarvegur, Akureyri, Iceland)


Box. With a box art.


Compulsory shot with newspaper heading to prove that the model was started after the competition's announcement. As clearly visible - it took me almost a week from taking this photograph to blog upload. This does not promise a speedy build.

Kit’s contents. Manual, two grey plastic sprues, one clear plastic sprue and a small sheet of decals.
This kit allows for two colour schemes: Iceland’s Coast Guard and Chinese People’s Republic Harbin Z-9A (build under licence in China).
No surprises there – Trumpeter is after all a Chinese company.

Close-up of fuselage details. Looks promising.