1/48 MRC Academy CH-46E

 Sea Knight 

by Gavin Rees

--------------------

 

This is the MRC Academy kit.  It has been sitting in the collection for about 2 years before I decided to get it built.  I was intimidated by the interior, but I found that it was a dream to build.  It went together without any problems at all.  The design of the kit allows the interior to be assembled and the body to be assembled and then the interior to be slid into the exterior.  I spent a fair amount of time weathering the interior but once I slid it in I discovered that you couldn't see much of it at all.  With this in mind I skipped the decals for the interior.  The biggest disappointment were the 50cal machine guns you get to go in the windows.  These are horrible and have no detail on them.  I was originally going to leave it without any weapons but then discovered the mini guns from the Heller Bell 212.  I had two of these kits, one to be a USMC version and the other to be converted into a Griffon SAR unit.  I took three miniguns from those kits to go into the Sea Knight.  Scott M has a CH-53 Jolly Green Giant hanging in his shop that he mounted the minigun on the rear ramp, I liked how this looked and decided to do this to my Sea Knight.  Some modification of the mounts was needed to get them to fit into the Seaknight.  All I used were the pintle mount and the "Y" bracket.

Click on images below to see larger images

I painted it with Modelmaster paints and post shaded with pastel chalks.  The decals went on with no problems and a bit of decal set.  It would have been nice to have the rotors fold like they do on the CH-53E Super Stallion (soon to be finished and then submitted) but that isn't an option.  Overall I think this is an amazing kit to builds and a eagerly awaiting the release of the Canadian SAR version.

Gavin

Photos and text © by Gavin Rees