Italeri

1/72 VH-71 Marine One

Kit Number: 1268

Reviewed by  Fred Amos, IPMS# 6672

MSRP: $29.95 A very brief history; from what I have been able to determine from the Internet the VH-71 is a Lockheed Martin version of the Agusta Westland EH-101, a European helicopter that was first delivered in January 2001. Lockheed Martin will build several versions of it including a presidential transport to be known as Marine One. First flight for the Lockheed Martin VH-71 was on July 3rd, 2007. I haven't built many helicopters in my thirty plus years of model building so I thought I would give this one a try. In the process of building it I found several problems that would confuse even an old timer like me. The box contains four sprues with approximately 120 olive green pieces, and one sprue with 20 clear parts. The interior goes together pretty easily with no problems. There are no cabin seats, which leads me to wonder where the President would be seated. I painted the main part of the interior light gray and picked out other colors as per the instructions. The main and overhead control panels are depicted with decals and they do look sharp. After the clear parts were glued into the fuselage halves I super glued one small fish weight alongside the nose wheel well and glued the main fuselage halves together. The fit was excellent.

The tail boom with an opening rear ramp was assembled and glued to the main fuselage. Next was the assembly of the sponsons; the extensions on the side of the fuselage that houses the landing gear and probably fuel tanks. I had some issues here; the instructions call out three parts for each sponson (not including the gear strut and wheel). The side part of each assembly is mis-numbered on the instruction sheet. After this was straightened out and the seams filled and carefully sanded all of the windows and windshields were masked off, it was ready to paint the fuselage. But here was another issue to deal with. The instructions say to paint the top of the fuselage flat white and the bottom with flat Olive Drab # 37087. From all of the video I have seen from the national news media, and after talking to my former Marine brother-in-law (20 years in the Corps), I came to the conclusion that the colors should be gloss. Not having any gloss olive drab, I took about a third of a bottle of Boyd Dark Yellow (a Testors product) and added to it, a few drops at a time, some Testors Gloss Black until I got the desired shade of gloss olive drab that looked right. I painted the bottom and let it dry for a few days and then masked it so I could paint the top. After the mask was in place and tight I sprayed some Flo-quil Reefer White as a primer and then oversprayed that with Testors Gloss White. While the fuselage was drying I proceeded with assembly of the rotors. The main rotors were painted Flat Dark Gull Gray with flat black leading edges and yellow tips. There is a small area of the blades near the rotor mast that is painted the same olive drab as the fuselage and then a kind of a sleeve over that is painted gloss white. The rotor attachment to the mast and other associated parts and the tail rotor were painted gloss white as well. The rotors and landing gear was left off until decaling was completed. Ah hah, the decaling. WOW. What can I say? The decals are in perfect registry and go down with out too many problems. The problem I faced was that the decals on the sheet didn't match the picture on the box art nor the instructions. The black decals that appear to be walkway areas for maintenance people are the main point of confusion. What you see on the box is not what you get on the sheet. I will leave it at that. Another area of contention is the main landing gear. When it was place into the holes in the sponsors the end of it punched through the top. I shaved off the protrusion and touched up the decal with flat black paint. I am not 100% certain but there may be parts called out in the instructions that are not on the parts trees. After the decals were dry I continued on to final assembly of the rest of the pieces. The end results are that the model looks pretty decent. If it were not for the inconsistencies in the instructions I could rate this kit as great. Thanks to IPMS/USA and Model Rectifier Corporation (MRC) for the opportunity to review this kit.

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