1:48 Hughes AH-6J - PE Guns Set (for ICM Kits)

The weapons fit of the AH-6J Little Bird

The Little Bird is a civilian helicopter that the army turned into an attack machine. It fits into the cargo hold of a transport aircraft, it can land on a roof and its crew sits practically out in the open. The AH-6J version carries machine gun pods and unguided rocket pods on side racks and became famous with a special operations aviation unit, among other things during operations in Somalia in the early 1990s.

What the set holds: the weight of it lies in the weapons racks. The racks themselves, their struts, brackets and small covers are metal, that is the items that in reality are a couple of millimeters thick and in injection-molded plastic come out several times thicker. It is precisely on an open airframe, where the racks stand out against the sky, that the difference is immediately visible.

How to proceed: cut the parts out first and dry-fit them so that you know how they go together. Bend the struts in a bender, because the exact angle decides whether the rack will be parallel to the fuselage. Glue with cyanoacrylate glue applied a drop at a time and let the assembly cure in the position you want it in.

Before painting: degrease the metal with alcohol and apply a primer for metals. Without it, oil washes and lacquer paints hold poorly on smooth sheet metal.

The package holds a photo-etched fret, not a model of the helicopter and not the rockets and machine guns in plastic.

One more word on the real machine: special forces aircraft differ from one airframe to the next, because the units modified them to suit the task. So it pays to find a photograph of the particular machine before you glue the racks on for good.