The Lift Platoon of the US Aero-Rifles

One of the problems with fielding an Aero-Rifle platoon is the number of helicopters required - you will need a minimum of five Huey 'slicks', and at a cost of around £6.50 (about $9.50) each for the Revell 1/100th scale model, this is an expensive unit to put together. Fortunately for me, I managed to pick up a whole lot of Huey's whilst on holiday at a cost of only £1.25 each (about $1.75).

Admittedly, these were not 'proper' kit models but rather, would you believe it, pencil-sharpeners! I had first seen one of these helicopters on a visit to the home of Barrie Lovell for a game of Incoming! and was impressed by their appearance although until recently I had never seen them available for retail. In the summer, whilst on holiday, I saw them in a shop and bought the entire stock - I am sure that the woman who served me must have thought that I was either mad or a 'pencil-sharpener' fetishist but nonetheless, I cleared out her entire stock cupboard of seven UH-1 Huey pencil-sharpeners.

One concern that I had was that the 'pencil-sharpener' Hueys would not fit in with the appearance of other Huey models in my collection (1/100th Revell kits) and that they would look conspicuously out of place on the wargames table.

Fortunately, by a quirk of fate, the models are almost exactly to scale. My Revell kits are of the UH-1C, with the extended passenger compartment, whereas the 'pencil-sharpener' models are more like early UH-1B's. Nonetheless, they look right when compared to the commercial model kits and I expect that they are not too far off being 1/100th scale themselves. So, I used five of the helicopters as the lift platoon for the ARPs and decided to convert the sixth helicopter that I had into a Huey 'Hog' Gunship

Preparation

The helicopter is a die-cast model finished in 'antique-bronze'. Being die-cast, it consists of two halves riveted together and the rivet holes are clearly discernable as is the 'join' in the tail-boom. Before painting this model it was necessary to fill these obvious signs of the manufacturing process. I used das Putty to fill the rivet holes as well as the tail-boom join in an attempt to create a flat surface for painting. The pencil sharpener itself is actually located on the underside of the model and is not visible unless you turn the model upside-down, so no work was required on this.

One other item of note is the fact that the model is literally festooned with simulated rivets. In fact, the model looks like something that has been cobbled together in somebody's garage! There is not much you can do about this and I had no intention of spending hours filing down each individual rivet.

Painting the Lift Platoon

I intended to split the painting of the Aero-Rifle platoon into two stages. First, I would paint all the helicopters and, second, I would paint the troops. As is usual with all my painting, I undercoated the helicopter models with a black acrylic primer.

Anyone familiar with my other Crossfire articles or Figure Reviews will know exactly what techniques I use to paint vehicles and helicopters and if that is the case then you should skip this part. Despite the objections of 'purists' to the technique of dry-brushing vehicles, I think this is a perfectly good technique to use at this scale however, I do not use it myself. Instead of dry-brushing I use what are called in the the UK 'make-up sponges', small wedge-shaped pieces of dense sponge with a flat, square-shaped, face at one end. I dip this into the paint, dab the excess off onto a cloth and then repeatedly 'dab' the surface of the model with the sponge. The trick here is not to overload the sponge-face with paint and to exercise a good deal of patience. As you dab the surface of the model, the colour will gradually build up and the end result is similar to an air-brush finish. I call this the 'sponging' technique (all credit to my friend Dave Owen-Mellor for introducing it to me).

Using the sponge, apply a base coat of Vallejo 'US Olive Drab' (889). Apply this coat quite heavily over the whole of the model. What should emerge is that as you apply this coat, the deeper recesses of the model should start to stand out in black.

Once the base-coat has been applied, apply a second coat of Colour Party 'Olive Drab' (CA13) for the first highlight. This coat should be added evenly across the model but a little lighter in terms of coverage than the base-coat. This can then be highlighted further to whatever level you prefer. I add highlights using a mix of the Colour Party Olive Drab and a little touch of yellow.

Since this is a die-cast model, unlike the Revell kits, the windows are not individual components made of clear plastic but are instead simple flat surfaces forming part of the model itself. These will need painting and this is an area of technique where I am not particularly good. The small windows on top of the cockpit should be painted in an aqua/green colour since these were tinted. How you paint the other windows is entirely up to you - any advice from other modelers would be greatly appreciated.

My method simply involved blacking out the windows completely and then painting them a very dark blue - making sure to leave a clear black edge. I then mixed a lighter blue and painted this on the windows and added some small highlight lines in an attempt to portray some reflections.

Final touches included painting the tips of the rotar-blades in yellow and drybrushing the engine with a metallic silver. Also, I painted the top of the nose black which, I believe, was done in order to reduce glare but whether or not this was the reason in nearly all the pictures that I have of Hueys, their noses are black.

Finally, you will have to paint any markings that you want directly onto the helicopter itself since the helicopter does not come supplied with any decals - it is, after all, a pencil sharpener!

Personally, I did not paint any markings since I am neither skilled or patient enough to do it although I am sure it would be worth the trouble to individualise the aircraft and may well do so at a later date. For now though, the models were finished.

The Completed Lift Platoon

For each helicopter I made a base from card. The base was textured and a unit ID was glued in place. I used bamboo skewers as supports for the aircraft. These were inserted through the underside of the base at an angle of about 45° and a blob of glue was placed on the top surface to hold them in place.

Fortunately I didn't have to do any drilling of the helicopter hulls as the bamboo skewer simply slotted into the underside of the model where the pencil-sharpener was - so it did come in useful after all.