Amodel Mi-12 (v-12) in 1/72 - Work In Progress, Part 2

Hello Fellow Rotorheads,

I don't get to spend much time modeling during the week, and two out of the last four weekends have found me out of town at my daughter's soccer tournaments.

But I have worked on the Mi-12 over the past few weeks, and made many mistakes -- the biggest one yet is having to rip out the cargo bay floor (I placed it too high), and re-do the door sills.  The model has an extra personnel door on the right front side of the fuselage (behind the cockpit door). I cannot find one on the real thing, so mine will have an extra door.

It is difficult for me to keep this model in perspective as I work on it. I keep thinking it is in 1/48 scale and it is not, it is 1/72.  When you review the photos, look at the cutting mat behind them. These squares are 1" (2.54cm), which of course is 72" scale. The negine nacelles alone would house two large 1/72 scale cars.

This kit is the the typical limited-run type injection kit in it's quality, but for the money, I really expected more. Compared to new injection molded kits produced today, it's junk. It is on-par with some of the worse Mach2 kits, if you have ever seen any. Not much flash, but fit is horrible, especially those parts with multiple compound curves.

Here's a special bonus for those of you that love to clean up parts after cutting them from sprue. You have to not only sand the edge of the parts as you would on typical injection-moulded parts, but you have to sand the TOP and BOTTOM of the part as well. I tried to illustrate this in a crude drawing of a part (dark grey) and the sprue (light grey) shown below.

There are pits in the injection moulds, which come out to be bumps on the parts. This is Ok on sections that can be sanded smooth, but in sections where there is raised detail, it is almost impossible to fix. An example is shown below. These are some louvers that make up the back end of the engine nacelles. I have cut one out already to make way for a set of scratch-built louvers that I have not yet figured out how to make just yet. Notice that part that I have cut has little to no sinkholes, but the other part that I have not yet worked has numerous and pronounced sinkholes.

The nacelles have the worst I fit I have yet withnessed in 40 years of building models. A real pain in the ass to be completely honest. Here are a few photos of them. twenty-something parts overall, alot of dry-fitting (or should I say (dry-fiddling), cutting sanding, etc before gluing it all together.  The Chinese could have done this with half the parts with 10x the quality.

Extra styrene was added in many areas to fill in large gaps, as well ad inside the nacelles, as "tabs" to keep the parts aligned.

The black lines show the joints that have to be ground down, sanded puttied and sanded again. All panel lines will need to be re-scribed.  :^ (

You can see how bad the fit is between the bottom of the nacelle and the sides. Note white styrene filler chunks behind the inlets. Also, the transmission floor does not fit to the correct depth in the rectangular access hatches. This will require some ssssort of correction or closure of the panels.

A close up of the nacelle . . .

Turbine inlets are shown below. The actual turbines came out nicely, done in Testors gloss black with an overspray of Alclad Chrome.

I am waiting until the very end of construction and assembly to add the turbine-exhausts.

I threw the tail section and wheels together while in Dallas a few weeks ago, they sill need alot of sanding. The wheel halves needed alot of sanding as well down the center line of the tire. This is my first model with both tires and wheels injection molded separately from one another. I am hoping I can make the wheel hubs fit nicely into the tires AFTER they are all painted.  They should appear to be very crisp IF the fit is correct.

Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10, this kit so far is about a 4 in my book. But it is THE ONLY example of this unbelieveably huge Soviet-era helicopter that can be bought as a kit. I will finish it, hopefully before the new year, as soccer season is over for the kids.

--Jon from Texas