British Helicopters - Part 1 - Gazelle AH.1

For some reason the first vehicle I've completed for my British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) contingent turned out to be an Airfix Gazelle helicopter (excluding the two Harriers - which were of course RAF, not BAOR). This helo will be the first in what I envisage as being a little series of air support helo for my various forces - starting with the Brits.

I hadn't actually considered making a Gazelle at all until I read a couple of books - one I have mentioned before here on my blog the other I've not. The first discusses the Gazelle, mainly in terms of how they are used to assist TOW armed Lynx helicopters to find and strike at armoured targets.

The second is a book by Ed Macy - previously the pilot and author of "Apache" which describes one of his tours of Afghanistan flying an Apache Gunship. In his next book:



Macy talks about his training and why he originally chose to fly the Gazelle over the Lynx (before the Apache was even really being considered), the training and role of the Gazelle generally. He also describes how the Gazelle was used in Northern Ireland. Well worth a look.

More basic information abou the Gazelle can be found here at wikipedia

Airfix Gazelle - The Model

What can I say apart from this is a fairly simple kit - not the greatest model I've ever made, but certainly not the worst. It all fits together fairly well (the front canopy is a little too big) and has reasonable instructions that means you don't have to guess at anything (which is a nice change from ACE kits and some others).

Painting

Again this was fairly staright forward.

1. Undercoat - Citadel Black
2. Base coat - spray FoW Warpaint "British Armour"
3. Dark Green Bands - Vallejo Dark Green
4. Rotors and engine - Citadel Chaos Black
5. Pin Wash - pretty rough - Citadel Babab Black
6. Dry Brush - base coat green over pin washed areas - Vallejo Russian Uniform
7. Engine - Vallejo Gun Metal
8. Engine - Rotor area - Citadel Babab Black - Exhaust area - Cital Orygn Flesh
9. Perspex - Vallejo Luftwaffe Uniform
10. Perspex - brush on Citadel Gloss Varnish

I know the perspex isn't fantastic or even great, but I wanted to kept it fairly basic, and see how the Luftwaffe Uniform/Gloss varnish looked. I'll live with it.

Just in case you're wondering - I decided against the Grey/Green striped Gazelle that you often see and went with Green/Dark Green instead (obviously). I decided I wanted all my BAOR helo's to use this colour scheme instead. I'm pretty sure these colours were used at times and it will fit in better with the rest of the force as well.

So here are the pictures:















So basically I'm pretty happy with how this turned out and will now move onto the Lynx's.

Here's a couple of Gazelle related youtube links: