Tamiya (Italeri) 1/72 Sikorsky S-58T HSS-1 (H-34 Seabat)

TAMIYA (ITALERI) 1:72 JMSDF HSS-1
(SIKORSKY S-58T/H-34 SEABAT)

Reviewer: Johan De Wolf (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 8 August 2006

Kit Details

Aircraft: Sikorsky S-58T
Kit used: HSS-1
Scale: 1/72
Kit: Tamiya war bird collection #36 (which is a reboxing of the Italeri H-34 Seabat)
Parts: 71 dark grey + 9 transparent injection molded
Surface detail: engraved
Decals: 1 option
Accuracy: very good
Price: 12,95 euro

Additional items used:

Unmarked Thai resin conversion kit for the S-58T (copy of Cobra Company)
Siamscale decal set #72002 for H-34 and S-58T (5 options)

History

The Sikorsky S-58 was a demilitarized version of the excellent H-34 series. It was intended for use by commercial companies. While being an excellent helicopter the H-34 lacked power somewhat to be fully effective in hot/high conditions. There for Sikorsky developed the turbine powered S-58T. This version first flew on 19 august 1970. No production followed though. Instead Sikorsky offered the S-58T as an upgrade kit that fitted on all H-34 models. The Argentinean air force operated two and during the Falkland war impressed another two civil S-58ET’s into service. Haiti had two H-34 converted to S-58T’s. Nicaragua had atleast two T’s with one being operated by the Sandinistas. Thailand had atleast 18 of its H-34’s converted and Indonesia also operates 12 S-58T’s. As all S-58T’s are conversions from H-34 versions hardly one is exactly the same as the next. There is a large variety in cabin window placement and antenna fit. Although the S-58T is not the most well known version in the H-34 family some of you might remember the one used in the TV series Riptide where two private detectives use it on their exploits. This machine was painted pink all over with a large mouth with a huge tongue on the nose. I don’t know how many S-58T’s are still in military service, but there are several on the civil register more than 40 years after they started life as a H-34.

The kit

As the Italeri H-34 kit sold out in my local hobby shop I bought the Tamiya HSS-1 kit which has exactly the same plastic as the Italeri kit. Only the decals are different. The Tamiya kit comes in a sturdy box. Inside it you will find two sprues of soft dark grey plastic and one with very clear transparent parts all packed together in the same bag… sigh.. There are a few small sink marks but flash is minimal. The parts are finely detailed with a mix of raised and engraved details. Part fit is ok but could be better. In my kit the right fuselage half was warped and the tail wheel mount was a short shot. Instructions are in Japanese only. They comprise of a short history, a parts location diagram, 8 easy to follow construction drawings and a 4-view drawing for the colour scheme. The tiny decal sheet offers the basic markings for one machine (no stenciling at all). It is sharply printed and in register. Colours are given throughout construction and, surprise surprise, are only given in Tamiya paint numbers.

Accuracy

Rotor diameter, fuselage length and height are all within 1mm of what they should be. The finished kit compares very well with photographs. As mentioned earlier H-34’s had various cabin window arrangements and system fits so you’ll need a good reference for the particular machine you are wanting to replicate, so you can adapt the kit to what you need. While fiddling with the decals, I did notice that not all external details are in the right place. Notably the steps and vents on the forward fuselage seem to have drifted a bit from the right spot.

Construction

On one of my family visit trips to Thailand I had bought a resin conversion set for the S-58T. It turned out to be a copy of the Cobra Company set, but came without instructions. I had also picked up a Siam scale decal set for Thai air force H-34’s and S-58T’s. Expecting a straight forward conversion (the nose in the kit is already a separate part) I set to work.

I took the fuselage halves from the sprues and immediately hit the first problem. The right fuselage half was warped and the tail wheel yoke was short shot. No matter how much I bent the fuselage half, I couldn’t get it to settle straight. Fearing it would break under increased torture I gave up on it (for now).

Not disturbed by the lack of instructions in the conversion kit, I chopped of the tail rotor gear housing at the obvious panel line… my mistake, as I would find out later. Studying the excellent instructions of the Siam scale decals I found that there two types of landing gear on the H-34 series, a V-type and an L-type. The kit only includes the V-type. I did not fancy scratch building a new landing gear so I opted for a machine with the V-type gear. However this meant that I had to cut an additional cabin window and replace the single window in the door by a double window. Can you already see where this is going?

After making the extra window openings I turned my attention to the interior. While the cockpit area is pretty detailed the cargo hold is totally bare. To prevent see-through I figured I had to, at least, fit a cabin roof. I started with gluing the cockpit floor and rear bulkhead into the left fuselage half. Then I added the front and rear bulkheads of the cargo hold, together with the floor. I then scratch built a cabin roof. All interior structures were glued with super-glue so the left fuselage half would be stiff enough to stay straight after adding the warped right half. While putting in the cabin roof I noticed that the space up to the roof behind the cockpit seats was filled. This should be open. From the cargo hold you can not only see the seat bottom but a large part of the seat back as well. As I had used super-glue on the cockpit parts as well, there was no way I could take them out again, without major damage, to rectify this problem. So I just left it figuring that as long as you don’t pick up the model you can’t see it.

With the interior structures finished I painted the interior light grey and gave it a wash with black and brown aquarelle paints to break up the evenness of the finish. By this time I decided I would keep the cabin door closed so I could get away with the lack of detail in the cargo hold. The fuselage bottom was added and secured into place by a few spacers made from left over sprue.

Now it was time to add the right fuselage half. With copious amounts of super-glue I finally beat it into submission, and the left fuselage half proved stiff enough to keep things straight. The resin nose section needed to be hollowed in the cockpit area so the floor and dashboard would fit into it. This was easier said than done as the resin is rock hard. The forward part of the fuselage bottom needed to be cut of as well as the rim on the fuselage halves. After doing this the nose fitted pretty well with only a little filler needed to fair it in. The massive nose is so heavy that it almost turns the model into a nose sitter.

The stabilizer wing and the new tail rotor gear housing were fitted to the tail. When I was dry fitting the tail rotor I noticed that it would strike the tail wing if it would be turning. That meant I had cut off the original gear housing at the wrong place. I should have cut it off right under the housing and not at the panel line. I now had to saw off the new housing, add 2 mm and then fit it again to give the tail rotor enough clearance. Live and learn they say….

The cockpit is reasonably detailed but there is one glaring omission. As noted by all other reviewers of the Italeri H-34 (and derivatives) kits, the collective levers are missing. While no helicopter can fly without them, I can understand why Italeri skipped molding them. There is hardly any space beside the seats to put them. I dry fitted the side windows to see how much would be visible. As the windows are quite bulged they distort the few of the cockpit quite a bit so, like Italeri probably concluded before me, I could skip fitting collective levers as they would hardly be visible, if at all. Pavla makes a resin replacement for the Italeri cockpit and it does include collective levers but the seats look somewhat narrow and they made the same mistake with the cockpit rear wall as Italeri made, probably because they used the Italeri part as a base. One thing I don’t understand in the Italeri kit is that while providing the cockpit side windows as separate parts, their frames are fixed to the fuselage halves. This makes it practically impossible to display them open. I would say that, without opening the side windows, fitting a more detailed cockpit is a waste of time. Because the S-58T displayed in the excellent Thai air force museum has a winch fitted above the cabin door, I decided I would fit one too, even though the Siam scale instructions say nothing about this.

With major construction out of the way, I now added all the lumps bumps, pipes, lights and other fittings on the outside of the model. Note that the navigation lights (parts B40/41) are typical for naval helicopters. Land based machines had much smaller fairings. I scratchbuilt these as well as a host of other external details. If you are wondering if I had put the cabin windows in already I will tell you that I didn’t but probably should have. I figured that I could put these windows in through the cabin door opening after painting. I didn’t even bother to dry fit them. I know… I know… not the brightest idea! I glued in the cockpit side windows and canopy and they fitted very well, with only a little putty needed to fair the back of the canopy into the fuselage. The cabin windows proved to be a challenge. First I found that they wouldn’t fit at all because the structures on the fuselage walls interfered with the rims on the windows. As I couldn’t reach the interior anymore, the only thing I could do was to trim down the rims on the windows. This meant that they could easy fall through their opening when I tried to fit them. Anyways many moons and blasphemous insults later, the windows in place.

Early on I had decided I would use the 4 windows provided in the kit for the fuselage, and I would make the windows in the door with crystal cleer. This sounds good in theory and separately the windows in the door look quite acceptable. But when seen next to the very clear Italeri transparent parts they look decidedly cloudy. Maybe I’ll replace them someday in the future with clear plastic, I’ll probably add a cargo hook then too. After I had finished the model I noticed that on pictures there was a whip antenna on the nose and the wire antenna on the right side of the tail. These missing on the museum example that’s why I didn’t fit them.

On closer inspection of my pictures of this machine I could see that attachment fairings were there so this machine must have had these antennas too. Something else to be added in future. Another thing I noted but didn’t see described anywhere is that on S-58T’s the tail rotor turns clockwise, while on H-34’s it turns anti clockwise. This I did alter on my model. Even though the kit rotor heads are a bit simple I didn’t have the stomach to detail them further. One thing I did alter though, and that is the rotor blade droop. In this kit, as in many other kits, the droop seems to increase towards the tip. This is wrong. As the whole weight of a rotor blade is pushing down on the attachment point to the rotor head, the droop (down ward curve) will be most pronounced there. On a point more to the tip of the rotor only the weight of the rotor from that point to the tip is pushing down on it, and the downward curve will be less pronounced. The further you move to the tip the less weight will be pushing on it and the straighter the rotor will be. In short a rotor blade is curved at the rotor head but straight at the tip.

Painting and Decals

The machine I chose to build was painted in the early olive drab all over colour scheme with large roundels and tail rotor warnings. The only other colour is the flat black anti glare panel in front of the cockpit. I painted this first, followed by Tamiya XF-62 Olive drab for the rest of the machine. I then gave the model a wash with black aquarelle paint to highlight the panel lines. This was sealed in with Tamiya clear. The Siam scale decals are very thin but can withstand quite a bit of abuse. They went on without a problem. They are sharply printed without any colour offsets, and that even the smallest stenciling is readable was proven to me by my wife. When I showed her the finished model she laughed at me. When I asked why.. she told me that I had put a few stenciling decals up side down…dohhh!!

At this time Thai aircraft still carried Thai Language numerals.. and since I can’t read Thai I feared the worst. But luckily my wife confirmed I had used the right serial for a machine with V-type landing gear. As you might understand the merciless Thai sunshine does awefull things with paint, so after putting on the decals I made a bit of lightened olive drab and dry brushed the top surfaces of the fuselage with it simulating a bleached look. Then I covered the whole fuselage with satin varnish. This looks a bit too shiny though, so I might dry brush the upper surfaces with matt varnish some day.

Conclusion

Every one is raving about Italeri helicopter kits, and while this is by no means a bad kit I was still a bit disappointed with it. First of all the warped fuselage and short shot tail gear might put off beginners. Secondly the lack of cabin interior detail is a bit disappointing. Still I thoroughly enjoyed doing this conversion, even if it was a lot less straight forward than I had hoped. I ended up with a very interesting model that you don’t see every day. Also I profoundly respect modelers that just build heli’s. These things are a lot harder to build than your average jet. Because of the slower speeds at which helicopters operate, aerodynamics seems to be of no concern. All new and additional equipment is simply bolted onto the outside of the machine. That’s why helicopters are festooned with little details on the outside.

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with the high quality of the Siam scale decals. This sheet offers options for 5 machines, but if you chose your subjects right you have enough stenciling to build at least 2 machines.

References

Squadron Signal in Action, H-34 Choctaw
My own photographs of the Thai air force museum machine
Some pictures on the web

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