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1/32 Eurocopter EU-135

A

Adam Baker

Active member
Picked this up in the raffle at my model club at the end of April, and figured what the heck, looked like a pretty simple build.

Kit is Revell Germanys 1/32 Eurocopter EU-135. This particular version is the Stockholm, Sweden police department helicopter.

EU-135-001.jpg


First impressions right out of the box is this kit is going to be a bear. This kit has flash on almost every single part, with some having flash that is almost as thick as the part, so it's taking a ton of extra work on almost every part, to clean up all the extra plastic.

And now I'm finding, once parts are cleaned up, and assembly has begun, that a lot of parts don't want to fit together. Earlier today I test fit the interior into the fuselage halves, and the fit was poor, to be kind. Seating the floor pan on one side, and putting the halves together, left at least a 1/16" gap along the entire length of the fuselage, so I can tell that's going to be a real fun time getting the fuselage assembled.

So here are some of the pic's. Before getting started, the instructions said that 15 grams of weight had to be crammed into the instrument panel. I missed this before assembling the IP, but after some cutting & grinding, I increased the volume of the IP, which helped. Here's a picture of 15 grams of BB's, and where they needed to go. Once was all said & done, I managed to get 13 grams into the IP.

15 grams of BB's

EU-135-003.jpg


And where they had to go

EU-135-005.jpg


And this is a shot of where I'm at. The interior panels are assembled, all the seats, the landing skids all ready to go. Assembling the seats sucked. There is very little positive location for the base of the seats, so at this point I've got no idea how well they'll fit when I go to glue them in place.

EU-135-007.jpg
 
Spent time the last few days working on this thing, and it sucks. I'm really hating this kit. Right now I'm in the process of using my dremel to dig out a slot along both halves of the fuselage to help to accommodate the overly wide interior. From what I can tell, the interior is approximately 1/16" wider than the fuselage.
 
Hate to hear that Adam > Sound too much like the stuff I build :fencing Long live the Dremel (y)

You did not get it from me :rotf

Cheers, Christian B)
 
Its been a fight, that's for sure, but I think I might have finally made enough room to make it fit. I was really worried I was going to grind all the way through the fuselage halves but I didn't, but it got pretty thin in a few places. I was also using my coarsest emory boards to sand down on the interior, so now I've got a pretty good mess on my bench, haha.
 
Adam Baker said:
Its been a fight, that's for sure, but I think I might have finally made enough room to make it fit. I was really worried I was going to grind all the way through the fuselage halves but I didn't, but it got pretty thin in a few places. I was also using my coarsest emory boards to sand down on the interior, so now I've got a pretty good mess on my bench, haha.
Click to expand...

Yup....I always use a strong light to look through the plastic . Touchy stuff :facepalm
 
Yup, I started doing that about half way through, when I realized how deep I was going, and knew I didn't want to go all the way through.
 
I'm about to the limit on this build. I'm having to fight the urge to just throw every last bit in the trash and walk away from it.

I fought for several days to get the interior to fit inside the fuselage. After a lot of sanding, cutting & grinding, I finally got the fuselage halves to close up around the interior. I felt pretty accomplished by getting it done.

So fast forward to day, I have the interior very close to finished. I put the last color down on the seats a couple hours ago, and will get them glued down probably this evening some time.

So now I've been working on the stuff that has to be done to assemble the fuselage, including cleaning up all the extra plastic & flash around the windscreen opening, and low & behold, the windscreen is 1/16" wider than the fuselage.

Grrrr..... :bang head :bang head :bang head :bang head

I've found that the windscreen is too wide for the fuselage, but on the flip side, there's a panel that has to be glued on, on the top of the fuselage, at the base of the tail rotor, that does fit. So that tells me the fuselage needs to be shimmed at the front to be wide enough for the windscreen to fit, but I can't go too far, otherwise the panel at the rear will be too narrow to fit.

I don't really want to give up on it, but this thing is really getting on my nerves. If it was a kit I'd actually really wanted in the first place, then I'd push through it, but this was something I had to settle for, that really wasn't something I wanted, so its making the decision on what to do a lot harder.

Here are pic's of where I'm at.

EU-135-008.jpg


EU-135-009.jpg


EU-135-010.jpg


And here you can see the fit problems w/ the windscreen.

Gap visible between the windscreen and the fuselage

EU-135-011.jpg


EU-135-012.jpg


And here you can see how much the windscreen sticks out past the side of the fuselage

EU-135-013.jpg


But then here's the panel at the rear I was talking about, that fits reasonably well, considering how crappy the fit is everywhere else on this thing

EU-135-014.jpg


And here you can see the grinding I had to do to make the interior fit. The grooves are at least half way through the plastic, I was very worried it was going to break through in a few places.

EU-135-015.jpg


I'm going to keep plugging away at it, if for no other reason than I'm to fricking stubborn & pigheaded to throw in the towel throw this turd in the trash.
 
Despite fit its coming along nicely. Not sure how you are going to overcome the canopy issue though. Maybe use it to make a mold and do a smash mold canopy?
James
 
I thought about making a mold for the canopy, I've got some .015" clear styrene sheet, but I'm not 100% sure doing that would work, so I think what I'm going to do is shim the 2 halves of the fuselage apart at the nose, to make it fit the windscreen, and then keep it the same at the rear. Probably means I'll have to add some material back onto the interior, but I'm hoping it won't be too bad.
 
If there's a seam down the middle of the windshield I'd cut it, trim it to fit there. Fill in with CA and paint it like the frame. :zen
 
Hmm, that thought never occurred to me. I think I really like that idea vs trying to make the fuselage fit the windscreen. Thanks a ton for that suggestion Bob!
 
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