Nardi-Hughes NH-500M

Helicopters are my job, my hobby and my passion. Although I am a great enthusiast of Italian and german fighters during WWII, I turn my model passion over helicopters too, years before becoming a flying crew chief for Italian custom police air service. I now live in Rome, and work on Pratica di Mare AB, on the seaside. I currently work on NH-500s, Agusta A-109s and Bell 412; but I did my training on the vintage Agusta Bell 47 G-2.

I had also the occasion to restore to static condition one of them, the sole survivor, and this caused me to turn my activity of author specialized in writing wartime books, to start a great work that last January, after 5 years of work, became a 200 pages book named "Aviatori e mezzi aerei della Guardia di Finanza 1913-1978", sold all over the world, and written in both Italian and English language. All this work, especially over 70's helos, let me begin the building of an overall yellow Nardi-Hughes NH-500, Volpe 49 (Fox, its radio call), when delivered to Guardia di Finanza in 1973.

The kit

I choose the Fujimi kit because after some accurate measurements of the real helo, I discovered that it is a little bit better than the Hasegawa and Academy's one. I started from the interior that has been a little detailed. Not so much as usual, because this time I would like to represent a helicopter with its all four doors closed. The interior has been painted in Gunze's H-336, seats in Fsc 34102, cyclic and collective sticks together with the instrument panel in flat black. Harnesses and belts are some segment of tape painted in Fsc.34227, with buckles made from scratch.

The rear doors have been enlarged in their bottom part, because the Guardia di Finanza has the enlarged windows fitted with fast-screws. Two pieces of acetate have been shaped and cut. Then all the glazing has been painted with two strokes of Gunze H-95 smoke gray, except for the over-head transparent panel of the bubble and the trapezoidal glazing on top of the rear cargo compartment, which has been sprayed with a mixture of Future floor wax (85%) mixed with a 15% of gloss black.

Now a little cut is needed, the tail boom of OH-6A and NH-500C is a little shorter that MD one, and considering that we are converting a 500D, we'll cut a slice of 1,2 mm. close to the tail rotor 90° gear box. Then I turned my attention to the landing gear legs, because I wanted to use the resin kit I realized that comprises a new tail, tail rotor, pontoons, minigun and legs. The original legs have been cut, and fitted with a 1,5mm in diameter brass rod, to fit the pontoons. A new "V" shaped tail was also added.

Painting

Before painting I tried to solve the problem with the bubble fitting, because I didn't wanted to putty and sand it to the fuselage, as is required with every Hughes 500 in every scale. So I warped with my hands the two fuselage sides at the front side glazing, dry fitting the bubble until it fix perfectly. After masking all glazing part already fitted (rear windows, top rear windows), I sprayed the entire model with flat white thinned with 20% of alcohol.

This will be the base for the yellow that is a real problem for me. After many attempts during the years, I found the right way. Onto the white base, I spray a strong thinned (55%) hand of Testor's Gloss yellow. After 20 minutes, a further hand was sprayed and so the main color is finished. After 20 hours the model could be painted with the red panel near the exhausts, and the white band over the tail boom. Separately, I painted the pontoons flat black and then added two hands of Future before applying the stencils. The pontoons have been weathered a little with gray/white oil paint thinned with turpentine, and made satin with Vallejo Air satin.

Decals and finishing

The decals are mainly from the Tauromodel range, except for the side and top roundels that are wrong. I choose other ones from my spare decals box, 6 mm in diameter. After that stage, the model has been washed with fresh water to eliminate the residual of Micro Set and Sol decals liquid. I now carefully dry fitted the pontoons, to check also the diedhral that is very important. A good gluing has been achieved with 6 minutes epoxy glue, which gives us the time to check their position. Once found the correct position, we leave the whole drying. The many antennas were added and the tail rotor (coming from my resin set because of the early type, different in shape and diameter from the kit's one). With the adding of pitot tube (a little electrical wire segment) the model is finished, nice in appearance and fun to build.