Airfix 1/72 Aerospatiale SA.341 Gazelle

AIRFIX 1:72 SA.341 GAZELLE

Reviewer: Jon Hudak (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 18 April 2004

Aircraft History:

My reference material on the Gazelle helicopter is nil, so I'll just have to quote from the kit instructions:-

Under an Anglo-French agreement signed in 1967, the Gazelle is being developed and produced jointly by Westland Helicopters and Aerospatiale for service with the British Army, RAF, Royal Navy and French Army. The type is also being built for civilian operators. A total of 99 Gazelle AH1s have been ordered by the British Army. Also quoted from the Heller kit's instructions........This light helicopter was designed for passenger transport and reconnaissance missions. An anti-tank model with missiles followed. It's strength gave rise to a surprising feat: a Gazelle on the ground, hit by an aircraft in flight both withstood the impact and deadened the aircraft's landing without suffering any serious damage. It also featured the use of the Fennestron tail rotor design which safely enclosed the tail rotor within the fuselage preventing fatal accidents to personnel and also from damage to the helicopter itself during landings. It's also a very fast helicopter with a top speed reported to be between 150-160 mph and is also used by the Blue Eagles helicopter acrobatics team in Europe due to it's nimbleness and manoeuvrability.

The Kit:

Airfix's kit of the Gazelle has been around with us for a long time and is the only one produced in this scale as an injection molded kit. The Heller kit is basically a reboxing of the Airfix one. What you get are two sprues for the main parts while the fuselage halves and rotor blades are packaged loosely and a separate sprue containing the clear parts. The clear parts are pretty good overall but the small rear windows are a little thick and distorted and one of the large "front door" windows has a large circular ejector pin mark in it.

boxart from the original blister pack

The kit is classic Airfix with raised rivet detail and minimum number of parts, some of which will benefit from a cleaning up with a fresh Xacto #11 blade to remove some of the minor flash that's present. My particular example was molded in a rather loud red plastic giving it a toy-like appearance. Don't let it's age fool you though, this is still a pretty nice kit and will look good right out of the box, even better with some detailing done to it. Eventually I even managed to find the Heller kit which was a temptation all along because it's boxart showed it with the two missile launchers, sighting mechanism and nose antenna. This coupled with the fact that it might possibly be a different tooling made me want it something fierce. Alas, it is nothing more than the Airfix kit reboxed and molded in tan plastic with different markings, but it does come with the tow missile launchers and overhead roof transparency with the sight thingy molded in plus the antennae for the nose, so there is some hope!

Instructions:

Instructions consist of a single page folded in three with six assembly steps and are printed in three languages, English, German and I believe French. As mentioned above there is a brief history of the type and some performance figures and dimensions.

Markings:

Markings are provided for two different versions, both RAF and both from 1988. The first one being a military AH.1 model in green and gray camouflage serving with No. 670 Squadron, Army Air Corps, Middle Wallop and the other being an HT.3 version from No. 2 Flying Training School, RAF Shawbury in red and white. While all the decals are in register, they could benefit from some improvements when it comes to their printing as some of the markings have "fuzzy" edges and some of the fine print is kind of blown out. The fact that you get decals for two different schemes is a nice touch though.

Construction:

Construction started with the cockpit, (where else?) which is pretty much all there. It consists of a floor, seats, rear bulkhead, a console, a collective for the left seat and what looks like a central single cyclic for both seats. I would think that there should be a pair of cyclics and collectives as in most helicopters, but just left mine as is. The cyclic is rather crude and looks more like a short handled, large headed sledgehammer! In the end I ended up damaging mine beyond repair while trying to file it down and replaced it with a piece of stretched sprue. I then dipped all the clear parts in Future and set them aside to dry on top of a piece of paper towel underneath a bowl to set for at least 24 hours before touching them. For a small touch of realism I decided to hollow out the little "vents" on either side of the body by first drilling the areas out with a pin-vise and then filing out the rest with some micro-files. I don't know if this is correct or not but it does give the model a little more dimension. With the cockpit all glued together I airbrushed it and the insides of the fuselage halves in Model Master Medium Gray enamel and when that was dry I glued in the rear windows with white glue.

It is important to do this before gluing the cockpit tub in and fuselage halves together as once it's all glued together you'll have an almost impossible time trying to get those little rear windows in. I am amazed that the white glue held up during the masking process and all. Looking back on it now, I wished I'd have sent in for replacement parts for these as one of mine had a bubble in it that I wouldn't let slip away next time! These are small enough that they could almost be replaced with some Crystal Clear after the model is all done and painted. Please note that there is almost no room under the floor of the cockpit for weight and this model will need it as otherwise it'll definitely be a tailsitter!

This being my first helicopter I totally forgot, but experience immediately after this one shows that lead fishing weights in the form of "split-shots" work perfectly when smashed in a vice and flattened with a hammer. You'd be surprised how incredibly thin you can get them with the hammer and no matter how thin, they still weigh the same. Superglue will hold them in place also.

With that done I then glued together the exhaust assembly halves as in step three, saving the "cone" part to be added on later. I then went to work on puttying the seams for this and the fuselage. I used Miliput for the first time on this model, and it worked rather well but I still feel I haven't mastered it. The shape of the boom and the exhaust part as well as the intake area above the rear of the cockpit presented some tricky sanding and you have to be careful so you don't get any flat spots. When this was done I then glued on the control surfaces and landing skids as well as the blade antennae on the bottom of the boom. I then added the exhaust assembly as one whole unit so that it could be blended in before painting. I first painted the "cone" part with Model Master Steel and then masked it off by wrapping strips of masking tape around it to prevent any overspray from creeping in when painting the whole airframe. By now the model was almost ready for painting and one of the most time consuming parts was masking off the cockpit as I added all the other transparencies afterwords. I used regular masking tape for this and was quite pleased with the results.

Accuracy:

With the airframe now ready for painting I sprayed the base color first which was Model Master French Dark Blue-Gray. When that was dry I then freehanded the green color which was Medium Green FS 34102 also from Model Master with my Paasche H airbrush. Any fine tuning of the demarcation lines were touched up again using the airbrush. All in all the freehanded airbrush scheme came out pretty well, but a single action external mix airbrush can have it's limitations. Nextime I'll try using some Silly Putty or masking tape for a tighter, less "hazy" edge. With the camouflage scheme complete I airbrushed the entire model with Testor's pink label glosscote before applying the decals. Somewhere during all this I sprayed the rotor blades with Model Master Flat Black. I'd also cleaned up the rotor head assembly, tail rotor/Fennestron and driveshaft so they could be painted. These along with the rotorhead cap were brush painted with Model Master Steel enamel paint. Afterwards I applied some masking tape to the already painted rotor blades to give myself a nice clean edge and also brushpainted the inner ends with the steel, they came out nice. With the majority of the painting done and the model now starting to look like a real Gazelle, it was time to apply the decals.

Decals:

This was my first Airfix kit and therefore my first try with their decals. With a nice glossy surface to put them on I applied them with MicroSet decal setting solution first underneath and then repeated coats on top of them where necessary. I have heard horrible things about Airfix decals and seen ones in other kits of theirs that are worse than this one, but these went on with no problems. I was also surprised at how the Microset all by itself was able to pull the decals down over some of the complex humps and bumps like the day-glo panel on the right side of the fuselage, it looks almost as if it were painted on! So I was quite happy with how the decals turned out. After drying overnight I wiped the areas down with a damp cloth, let it air dry and then sprayed on another coat of gloss and then the next day, some Testor's Dullcote, also the pink label stuff.

Final Details:

With mostly everything done I peeled off all the masking tape from the cockpit areas and from the nose and other transparencies. Just to be safe I had sprayed the interior color on the framing first, using the Medium Gray and then hitting them with the Medium Green. They all came out fine. I then painted the exhaust pipe's inside and the other tube beneath it along with the blade antennae on the bottom of the tailboom with flat black and the exterior of the main pipe with some Testor's copper. The Fennestron rotor was press fitted into place and the cap over it was glued on. Some seat belts made from masking tape that was painted in a tan/beige color with a bit of silver applied to the ends to simulate buckles were added. I then glued in the remaining transparencies and the nose with Elmer's white glue and added the driveshaft. Cleaning up the driveshaft requires a little care so you don't get any flat spots and nextime I'd consider swapping it out with a fine piece of tubing or wire for some realism. The rotor shaft was then glued in and the rotor blades were bent a little to give them that drooped look and then attached to the rotor head. Then the formation lights were picked out with some Tamiya Clear Blue & Red acrylic over a basecoat of Model Master Chrome Silver enamel. For transporting purposes the rotor blade assembly wasn't glued on and it just slides over the rotor shaft topped off by the cover cap. A little weathering was added by drybrushing the skids with a little bit of silver or steel and some pastel was tamped on to the exhaust pipe to tone it down a bit and with that, woila! The model was now complete.

Conclusion, Recommendation & Accuracy:

I had never built a helicopter before and this was my first one. I'm not one for comparing dimensions, but it looks like a Gazelle helicopter to me. When I saw this little Airfix kit in a local hobby shop I immediately was taken by it and in those famous words..."just had to have it!". Despite it's age and simplicity it still builds into a nice little model and the raised rivet detail isn't all that bad. I really enjoyed building it and seeing it transform from a little red toy-like thingy into a nice little representation of the real helicopter. Since then I have picked up another one and this time it was molded in gray plastic and not red. Darn! I also managed to find a set of decals from Max Decals mainly for Irish Alouettes but there is a set of markings for a Gazelle in Irish markings in overall light gray with some red or dayglo sections so eventually I'll be doing another one.

I really liked the looks of this cool chopper and didn't know a thing about it or what the kit would be like, but that's what we need to do sometimes is just try a different venue and let loose. You never know, you might like it! Recommended.

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