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Introduction
The CH-47 Chinook is a twin tandem-rotor, heavy lift helicopter originally built by the Vertol Aerospace Company. Vertol was acquired by Boeing Defense, Space and Security so it is now referred to as the Boeing CH-47 Chinook. Work began on the Chinook in 1957. It was adopted by the US Army in 1961 and is still in service today with no replacement currently in the works. In 1956 the US Army was looking to replace their aging piston powered Sikorsky CH-37 Mohave with a turbine powered heavy lift helicopter. The (then) Vertol V-107 eventually won the contract and was redesignated CH-47A Chinook. Throughout its lifespan, the Chinook has developed into numerous variants from heavy lift troop and cargo to special operations versions used by the US Army 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) located at FT Campbell KY, coincidentally where I attended US Army Air Assault School in 1996.
The Kit
Trumpeter introduced their 1/35 CH-47D kit in 2005, which makes this kit 20 years old at this writing. Immediately upon opening the box you are aware that this will build into a rather substantially large, finished model. This should not come as any surprise, as the Chinook is a rather substantially large helicopter. The kit as presented, depicts the troop and cargo version. Surface detail is fine and generally very well presented. Rivet and panel line detail become a little soft on the top and bottom sides of the fuselage halves, but not enough for me to re-scribe and redo all the rivets. Of course, the rivet detail is recessed and all US military helicopters have raised rather than flush riveting but there is no way on this earth I am going to replace thousands of recessed rivets with raised ones. This has always set me to wondering why. When making a mold, it seems to me it would be a whole lot easier to drill a hole in the casting block to make raised rivets than to mill around it to make recessed ones. Bafflingly, with this being a troop/cargo transport, none of the canvas bench seats are provided in the kit, only the two pilot seats. Those will have to be scratch built. Two engines are provided which have very good basic detail, including both compressor and turbine disks. The rear ramp can be positioned either open or closed. Molding is very crisp and flash free and the level of detail is good, though not exceptional, and severly lacking in several areas, to be discussed later. I am not going to build this kit as a CH-47D, rather I am going to convert it to the MH-47E assault version used by 160th SOAR.
This is going to involve a fair amount of scratch building on my part, not only to depict the differences in this specific version but to also fix several shortcomings in the kit. Additions will include an in-flight refueling probe, various optical and infrared pods, an advanced all-glass cockpit, a hoist pod above the starboard cabin door, twin M-134 mini-guns and two M-240D 7.62mm machine guns and chaff/flare dispensers on both sides of the aft fuselage. I also plan to leave the starboard engine bay doors open, which will require a fair amount of detail to the engine. I am still on the fence as to whether I will open the access doors to the "hump" on the spine of the aircraft that covers the rotor shaft. There is a fair amount of detail under it. Since I can no longer take my heavily chopped and detailed Revell 1/32 AH-64 Apache to model contests anymore as it has taken numerous First Place, Best in Category and Best in Shows in local, regional and national competitions, I am planning to detail this one to the same level!
Construction
Upon opening the kit I noticed immediately that each fuselage half is composed of two parts. I thought that this was rather curious but given the length of the fuselage, perhaps this was to keep the box to a standard size. As it is, the box is already very large. The aft fuselage of the Chinook has not changed at all (with the exception of different turbines, which would not affect the overall shape of the aft sail) so that would not be done to accommodate later versions. The fit here was less than perfect, to say the least, in fact it left about a 1mm gap between the halves. I am going to have to make some "sprue goo" and fill it in. I have not used putty or CA to gap fill for a long time because sprue goo made from sprue of the kit has the same sandability and re-scribability, there is such a word, as the original plastic.
Once the halves were together, I scribed and cut out 3 windows (one on the starboard side and two on the port side, to accommodate the two M134 and two M240D guns.
Now it was time to turn my attention to the interior of both halves and so the scratch building begins. The kit does provide a well detailed floor, so that is not going to be an issue, not much to do there. Also provided is a pleated cover for the cabin roof. Some of the Chinooks I have ridden in have this cover and others do not. If I leave it out it will require a massive amount of scratch building to add all the ribs and wiring, plumbing, etc., to run the entire length of the cabin. Perhaps I am just getting lazier in my old age, but at 67 and having built many hundreds of models in the last 60 years, the prospect of doing all that work just no longer appeals to me like it used to, so on goes the cover. The aft section of the fuselage is another matter entirely, however. The kit depiction of this area is extremely sparse and the size and shape of the ribs are fictitious at best. I am going to grind off all the detail and replace it with scratch built structures. Here is what the real aircraft looks like:
And this is what the kit provides. Mighty WEAK EFFORT you did there, Trumpeter! I still can't figure out what all those rectangles are supposed to depict. They are going to have to be filled in with sprue goo as well.
This will most likely be my last update for a while, all of that work on both sides of the fuselage is going to take a good while, perhaps an entire week or more. However, since this entire area is immediately visible from the open rear cargo door, the AMS side of me requires it to be as correct as I can get it.
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