WIP: Eurocopter BK-117 "Space Design" D-HBKS with Diorama
1June 24, 2024The Kit
2June 24, 2024Sprue "1"
3June 24, 2024Sprue"2"
4June 24, 2024Clearsprue
5June 24, 2024Decals
6June 24, 2024Instructions
7June 24, 2024Details Exterior
8June 24, 2024Details Inside
9June 24, 2024Detail Seats
10July 7, 2024I started by removing the ejector pin marks on the cabin inside...
11July 7, 2024... and assembling the tail.
12July 7, 2024The seats gor open backrests...
13July 7, 2024wich I closed for the first 2 rows.
14July 7, 2024I don't like tail-sitters -> some lead inside of the pedestal
15July 7, 2024The step in the roof section is closed with sheet, the gaps filled with putty.
16July 7, 2024OOB the rotorshaft would go down inside the cabin, so I had to modify it a bit. The rotor control also looks quite monolithic.
17July 7, 2024So I removed some unnessasary material and replaced the shaft with a 0.8 mm hypodermic needle
18July 7, 2024While I was at it I started assembling the main Rotor.
19July 7, 2024Dry-fitting showed some problems between the tail and the cowling (the angel between the cowling rear face and the tail-boom front part is about 8°). I hope matching the build groups is easier than the seperat parts.
20July 8, 2024The passanger seats are installed, a hot behind the last sets fabricated and fitted to the fuselage sides.
21July 8, 2024The forward hole in the sealing is closed, a air chanel for the ventilation installed. I could just see a little bit of this chanel on one photo, so most of it is based on my imagination.
22July 8, 2024The cowling ond rear sections are joint. The angle of the kontact surfaces seams to be the correct one, so I had to modify the fixing points.
23July 8, 2024for a 1988 tool the fit is quite good. With the modifications I made the model snaps together quite nice and one can even lift it on the tail.
24July 8, 2024One can see at least a bit of the improofments through the windows.
25July 9, 2024I made blinds out of aluminum foil and installed them.
26July 12, 2024Interiour nearly finisched.
27July 12, 2024I did some improvements on the exteriour.
28July 12, 2024Some Styrenstrips & sheet and some aluminium tape.
29July 12, 2024I hope this will come out much better with paint. If not I can use putty and try something else to ad the forgotten openings & grills.
30July 19, 2024I started painting the interiour.
31August 4, 2024Some details are painted,
32August 4, 2024decals on the panel and the buckles of the seatbelts scratched from alutape. With the litle bit one can see when the fuselage is closed that should be enough.
33August 4, 2024Most of the wIndows are installed. There are no frames, so ist very difficult to glue them in without getting the glue on the window. So when possible I masked them from both sides, if not just from the outside.
34August 11, 2024The Inside of the widows are cleaned, the fuselage closed. Next step: Filler & sanding.
35August 24, 2024A lot of sanding and filling. Most dissapointing is the fact, that the glareshild is part of the fuselage halves, so sanding inside the allmost closed fuselage in nessecary. Cross your fingers, I can blow our all the dust.
36September 8, 2024Sanding on most of the fuselage seams succsessful, ...
37September 8, 2024but not on the glareschield. Here I used a 3rd layer of putty. Priming the fuselage and checking the seams will have to wait till the front window is installed after the glareshield is done..
38September 16, 2024The bid hole in the glareshield is finaly closed and painted. now I can install the windshield. I also worked on the new installation of the rotorshaft, as the original ends inside the cabin.
39September 16, 2024There is a shorter shaft made from steel tube, extra mounting points at the top and bottom of the engine compartment and the schaft will get fixed at the top.
40October 3, 2024The main rotor is painted dark gray.
41October 3, 2024At sunday I installed the engine compartment, the rotorshaft and the tail, so today i could prime everything. As you can see ther are still imperfections, so back to puttying and sanding.
42October 5, 2024The figures for the project: The pilots and the already painted pair are from 2 sets from Preiser, the 3D printed figures from the sets from FC Model Trend.
43October 5, 2024The figures for the project: The pilots and the already painted pair are from 2 sets from Preiser, the 3D printed figures from the sets from FC Model Trend.
44October 5, 2024The figure of the woman unfortunately broke out of the printing frame during transportation and lost the heels of her shoes. This is the first time I will be using 3d printed parts.
45October 5, 2024Before I try to remove the paint from the figures, I have already cleaned up the mold parting seams, filled the ejector holes and exposed undercuts with the Dremel and 0.5 mm drill bit (e.g. under the solid cast skirt).
46October 5, 2024Unfortunately, I only got the figures from Preiser pre-painted. Not only are they many times more expensive, I also have more work to do to remove the paint. Unfortunately, this is not even usable as a base coat, as the figures were not cleaned up before painting.
47October 6, 2024The printed figures got a very thin layer of primer, just enogh that one can see where work is nessesary. That wasn't possible with the semi transperant meterial.
48October 6, 2024After 24 houres for the oven cleaner and nearly 3 houresof scraping and brushing most of the paint is removed from the Preiser figures. There were up to 4 paint layers on top of each other and it lookd like some of them they were aplied by dipping.
49October 27, 2024I started with the base. I glued a piece of styrofoam to a wooden board and covered it with polystyrene sheets.
50October 27, 2024The excess length was cut off so that I can glue on matching trim after painting the sides of the house. The transitions between the panels have been filled.
51October 27, 2024I sprayed the skin areas with colors from Vallejo.
52October 27, 2024Everything else is Aqueous Hobby Colors applied with a brush.
53October 31, 2024I worked a bit on the building, but I have to buy some meterial tomorow.
54October 31, 2024I build the roof exit. Here need some profiles I dont have here too.
55October 31, 2024Internal construction
56October 31, 2024This is roughly how the finished roof exit is installed.
57October 31, 2024During the week I found a few minutes in the evening to continue painting the figures.
58November 3, 2024The base needs some more clean ups.
59November 3, 2024The roof exit recived a door and some round profiles for the edges.
60November 3, 2024An other "hut" with who knows what's inside.
61November 3, 2024The chimny
62November 3, 2024The various roof superstructures could be positioned in this or a similar way. Now the large heat exchangers for the air conditioning system, a switch cabinet for the lighting, the rails for the window cleaners, lots of pipes and of course the helicopter platform are still missing.
63February 2, 2025I used propellers from the sparsbox to simulate the fan of the airconditioning.
64February 2, 2025The schaft is made from drug packaging, coverd with some mesh.
65February 2, 2025When the glue is dry I can clean up the edges.
66February 9, 2025I started this weekend with the landing platform. Now I have to buy some more 1/4 " I-beams as I used my hole stash.
67February 9, 2025I cleaned up the other elements of the dio as well. This would be considerably less work if not all the profiles used so far were warped.
68February 9, 2025Small positioning test with the elements built so far.
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5 June 2026, 00:03 -
Album info
Build proces for my 1/72 Eurocopter BK-117 in Stunning Space Design colours designed by Luigi Colani. The Kit is based on a 1988 Matchbok kit and there is no detail set or a kit from better moulds that I know of. So I'll try to improve this oldie a little bit.
I'm going to present the helicopter on a helipad in a city with 2 pilots waiting for some VIPs.
68 images
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En cours
14+MBB BK 117 A-3
MBBD-HBKS
VIP Transport, representative helicopter
Luigi Colani, Space Ship