Special Hobby 1/48 Mil Mi-1 Hare

SPECIAL HOBBY 1:48 MIL MI-1 HARE

Reviewer: James Garnett (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 15 January 2003

Kit Details:

Special Hobby SH 48001 – Mil Mi-1

Aircraft History:

Mikhail Leontyevich Mil was made head of his own design bureau in 1947, and the first product of this bureau was the GM-1 helicopter. This was authorised for construction with the designation Mi-1, and was the first single-rotor helicopter to enter full scale production in the USSR. The type first flew in September 1948 with a pod-and-boom fuselage of light allow construction (except for a welded steel tube central fuselage structure), fixed tricycle landing gear, and a main rotor with three wooden blades.

The Mi-1 was an effective utility type for its period, and comparatively large-scale production was undertaken in the USSR for civil as well as military use. Several hundred Mi-1s were made in the USSR, and the type was also built in Poland as the WSK-Swidnik SM-1, of which more than 1,700 were produced up to 1965. NATO allocated the reporting name "Hare" to the type.

The Kit:

The boxart features a Hare in East German markings banking away ‘from the camera’ and looks attractive. To my knowledge there is no other Hare in this scale, at least in injection molded plastic form, so this is the only game in town. Inside the box you will find fairly typical short run plastic from Special Hobby with prominent ejector pin marks, nasty seam lines and some flash, so cleaning up will be required. It’s molded in light grey and totals about 40. The surface detail is mainly engraved, with some raised in places and is very finely done. In a separate bag there is resin for the engine and cockpit, totalling 16 parts that are beautifully cast and detailed. There is also an etched fret containing 8 parts, consisting of mainly small external detail bits. Finally you are also supplied with two clear vacform parts for the glazing.

Instructions:

A series of A4 sheets are folded to make a 10-page A5 booklet comprising of the standard Special Hobby layout and features. This includes a brief history on the front page, sprue map showing where to find all the parts [since they are not numbered on the sprues themselves] on the inside page, six stage assembly steps in exploded view format for the next series of pages and then the colour and marking details for all the versions on the final few pages. Humbrol colours are quoted through the assembly and final marking stages.

Construction:

The cockpit is where the assembly process begins, which is mainly catered for from the resin parts. These are really nice, and just benefit from a small bit of cleaning up as well as separation from the casting block. As usual I used super glue when putting these parts together. Everything just about conceivable is supplied, right down to resin seat belts and switches for the instrumentation console. As you would expect, affixing the resin to each other is not a problem, and it all fits quite well.

Fitting the resin inside the fuselage is, however, a completely different matter. This is probably my only real gripe when doing short run kits, I just wished the resin and plastic would be much more compatible without major surgery! The fuselage halves finish before the nose, which is separately supplied as a vacform part, which means that the front of the cockpit floor juts out past the end of the fuselage, so cutting out and test fitting the nose is a must or you will have problems later. The bulkhead also does not fit, and the top of it needs a curved in section cut out so it matches the shape of the roof. Basically most of the parts in the cockpit area needs some sort of trimming or adjustment to fit. Nose weight is needed in this model as even with the resin cockpit, it will still be a tail sitter. Research suggested that the interior was painted in a light blue-green colour but the instructions say light grey. I followed the instructions assuming that Special Hobby had done the proper research on this model.

Once the work had been done to get the cockpit interior properly fitted into the fuselage the halves were brought together. A bit of cleaning up on the surface areas is required to aid in the adhesion process. Next the glazing parts were tackled, which required careful trimming and fitting accordingly. The nose had already been cut out as discussed above, so the main canopy which fits inside the fuselage was prepared here. The frame lines are well defined, allowing for fairly straight forward cutting and subsequent painting, obviously don’t forget to paint the internal frames with the interior colour. Filler was needed around the nose section to blend it into the fuselage but otherwise the glazing fit rather well.

The main rotor parts need a thorough clean up and are not as detailed as they could be. Some stretched sprue was used to depict hydraulic wires around the main rotor shaft. The etched set also supplies some external parts for the rotor area as well as boarding steps. An external fuel tank for each fuselage side is supplied which I left off, and the mounting struts for these are catered for in the etched set which makes this sub assembly very fiddly. If you do fix these, you might wish to apply the national insignia fuselage decals first.

The fixed landing gear was added as the final part and the plastic struts for these need very careful removal from the sprue and a good clean before they are test fitted and affixed to the aircraft. As with the cockpit, which I didn’t mention above, there are no real locating points or lines to assist you here, so it is in the main a lot of test fitting before you can affix into place.

Colour Schemes:

The kit allows for one of five possible options to be reproduced, all bar one in “Russian Green” and Light Blue undersides and in Soviet, Czech (x2) or East German markings. That fifth scheme is a two tone Dark Green upper camouflage also in East German markings as featured on the boxart. The quoted Humbrol colours were used for painting since I had them in my collection, although the Russian Green is actually no longer available from hobby stores as it is deleted.

Decals:

Printed by Propagteam the sheet is in excellent colour register with thin, sharply printed decals. The national insignia of the above mentioned air forces are provided, along with the serials and fuselage codes for each of the five options covered. It was only at this point that I realised that the external fuel tank would have obscured the fuselage insignia, so in hindsight I was happy these were left off. The decals went on very well, with only the usual gripe of wanting to stay put where they are placed being the negative point, if any of their application.

Accuracy:

I am sure there are many modellers out there like myself who have very little reference material of this unique and first Soviet mass produced helicopter. The two main sources I have, Encyclopedia of Soviet aircraft and Encyclopedia of Civil and Military Helicopters, quoted the same measurements of length 12.1 m and rotor span of 14.35 m for the real aircraft. I was hard pressed to find the model being even a millimetre out in either dimension! I only have a couple of sideview drawings, photos and the boxart to compare the look of the finished chopper by and in this regard it looked as convincing to me as it should.

Overall Recommendation:

While my construction notes may not have really covered it in great depth, there was certainly an amount of filling, sanding and filing required to get a good finish with the old statement of ‘treating this like a real limited run kit’ certainly being very true. However, the effort was certainly worthwhile with a convincing replica and I would certainly highly recommend this kit to any reasonably accomplished modeller who is experienced at putting limited run kits together. It could not really be recommended for those who are not experienced.

Related Reviews:-

Amodel 1/72 Mil Mi-1MG Hare

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