Revell 1/32 AH-64A Apache

Revell's 1/32 AH-64A gives a great result straight from the box but with a little extra work it can be a real show stopper. My superdetailed Apache has taken first place and best of show in every competition it has entered. There are no more shows I can take it anymore!

 I planned to  perform major surgery on this model even before I opened the box. Total building time was on the order of 250+ hours (conservatively) I opened up nearly the entire starboard side of the aircraft. No resin or aftermarket materials, everything was scratch built.

The GE turbine engine started out life as a piece of ½” Evergreen tube and took 30+ hours of work alone. The tail rotor shaft section required the building of all the ribs and stringers in addition to the shaft - another 30+ hours.  

  Waldron instruments and seat belt buckles as well as a tremendous amount of scratch building rounded out the cockpit. The pilot's panel is probably the best work I have done to date. The 30mm chain gun was about 60% rebuilt with everything from styrene to solder to aluminum tube.   

All of the avionics boxes were scratch built from styrene, solder, screen and wire. The fronts of the Hellfire missiles are clear sprue shaped and polished (with a piece of styrene rod embedded in them to simulate the laser receiver optics!) The plastic pieces included in the kit FLIR and optics did not fit well and were thick. I substituted microscope cover slip glass (0.001"). It was tricky but the result was worth it. The optics themselves were made from shaped and polished clear sprue. The windshield washers are made up of 8 pieces of styrene each!

Both the main and tail rotors heads were well done but I added various hydraulic lines and linkages out of wire and solder.

The model was painted with Testor Model Master II enamels. All the decals were hand-made as the kit supplied items were too thick and there are no aftermarket decals available for 1/32 scale helicopters. I used MS PowerPoint to make all the stenciling decals. The Panther squadron insignia had to be hand painted. Rembrandt I am not!

The tarmac on the base is actual sifted concrete, applied to bare wood, wetted and allowed to dry. The fire extinguisher is scratch built using sheet, tube and rod styrene. “Tar” strips between concrete sections are made from black acrylic paint applied though a syringe and hypodermic needle. I used some static grass and Hudson grass to simulate grass and moss growing up between the slabs