UH-1 Huey Helicopter Platoon - Team Yankee

[Whiterook]

I’m going to be building a box of the UH-1 Huey Helicopter Platoon (TUBX07), made by Battlefront, for the Team Yankee WWIII miniatures gaming system.



This box contains two plastic UH-1 Huey helicopters, two plastic flight stands, eight rare-earth magnets, one decal sheet and two unit cards.



I will of course, be able to use these with the Team Yankee system, which I own a substantial collection of miniatures and rulebooks/supplements… however, I bought these for use with a miniatures game I’ve been developing, called The Legion: Rumble in the Jungle. My miniatures game uses 15mm Old Glory miniatures of Vietnamese Viet Cong and American U.S. Army “Green Berets” (a.k.a, The Legion), which I based and hand painted. In this regard, the Huey’s fit to scale well enough.



The Legion game revolves around four American “Green Berets” miniatures, representing individual soldiers who complete various missions per scenario. The mechanics of the game involve missions (scenarios) where the Green Berets work their way up from the bottom of a battlefield map, through jungle and villages, to the top of the map, where the helicopters will typically be used to extricate the team; these missions may be recon missions, rescue operations, search and destroy, etc. Rather than just make it to the map top and hop off, I thought it’d be cool to have The Legion hit an LZ, sometimes hot and a danger to the helicopter…just nice, added tension!

The battlefield is comprised of 2.25” square tiles that I designed and painted.



An example of a playtest game…






The Bell UH-1 Iroquois, commonly known as the "Huey," was a multipurpose utility helicopter famous for its widespread use during the Vietnam War. Bell developed the powerful helicopter in the mid-1950s and produced more than 16,000 units between 1955 and 1976, over 7,000 of which served in Vietnam.

Ill be starting the Huey’s build soon.

[mikeh]

Nice addition to your game!

[josta59]

Cool. Will the Hueys land on the game board?

[Whiterook]

Feb 18, 2023 19:20:26 GMT -5 josta59 said:

Cool. Will the Hueys land on the game board?

They come with a clear stand that sits the helicopter above the table…I didn’t look too closely at it yet and is still in the wrapper the stand (disassembled) comes in, but I thing it sits nice and high, so, I’m planning on maybe having it enter the same bottom board by die roll, same as the 1d6 roll that determines entry tile of the Green Berets… the Huey would then maybe move by doe roll a number of hexes? I could have the Viet Cong shoot at it maybe… dunno, all that would complicate things.

I hesitate at just having them pop out of mid air (no pun intended) and for them to be in position. Originally, my idea was to just plop it down like that and roll for successful evacuation. I guess that’s viable.

But I’d not even thought of landing, which they would do for an exfil so, I should think on that!

[McCoy]

Here mate so you can get into the feel...

[mikeh]

Excellent Urban! In the Army I flew on a Huey one time, same with the C130. As for Chinooks I helped put ammo aboard a number of times to transport from Oahu to the big island of Hawaii itself.

[Whiterook]

Excellent, guys!

[Whiterook]

Doing some organizing in the workshop and this is yelling at me, “HEEEEEEYYYYYYY< @$$hole…did ‘ya forget me??!!??” I’ve been thinking I need to get back to The Legion again, so this is bumping up on the list of projects to work on!

[mikeh]

Don't leave those SF boys stranded!

[Whiterook]

OkieDokie! Been away from the workbench since the end of July… family matters with mom in law moving into a nursing home and all the logistics with drawing down an estate…man, the system is rigged against elder care costs! Anyway, I haven’t had any time whatsoever for modeling, wargaming, or anything else… but I’m now making time for myself a little bit, which included a bit of a clean around the work area, and I dug out the Huey’s



…and started assembly of one of them, on the interior deck. It’s surprisingly well detailed on the plating and had a nice fit with a bit of TETC.





Actually, that’s all I did, lol. For me, it’s not much time spent building, but I’m taking it as a win! Being late in the day, and pretty tuckered out, I don’t want to make any nasty mistakes, especially since this wargaming miniature is so small (about 1/72 scale in modeling terms). I’m going to build it as an U.S. Army Huey, hence the specific nose section pictured. There’s no instructions, really… the barest of diagram on the back with a general leader line giving the general area, haha… doesn’t even say the order of assembly so, it’s kinda a ‘fly by the seat of your pants; assembly, pun intended!

I’d like to finish both Huey’s tomorrow if I can, as far as build… paint later in the week. I’ve been doing some polishing to my Vietnam War miniatures game in which these will be used so, I’d like to do some playtest gaming with them on the board.

[Whiterook]

OK, so the ball is rolling once again! YAY! Spent a little more time at the workbench early this afternoon and it really feels good to be working on projects again. So first up this session was the interior of both Huey’s… I’m gonna build both at the same time. The inside passenger interior of the helicopter is gray, which I started with a solid gray mixed from Folk Art Acrylics (black and white), and hand brush painted on after assembly of the seating and deck/walls.







Took three thin coats to get the level I wanted. Next was installing those interior seats inside the fuselage, which dry fit perfectly so, I applied a little glue to the bottom of the fuselage and pressed the seating unit in firmly on the right side, and repeated for the left. Holding the two halves in my left hand, copter upside down, I was able to apply some TETC via capillary action, and then use clamps to hold tight… big one at the nose and a couple small ones for the tail boom; these are Dollar Store finds, by the way! Everything is curing on the bench.





…I’ll apply a wash on the interior to make the interior look more troop used, rather than factory fresh. I’ll check out seams afterwards and get anything ironed out that stands out.  I have more to assemble, of course, but it’s coming along. I’m making these as U.S. Army Huey’s for the game, but these could be made as Marines birds! These are 1H variants, which were available in 1966 and made in large numbers. They had powerful engines, and represent what I need to get in and get my boys out of harms way!

Speaking of boys, I checked out the two crew members (one being a gunner) against one of the Old Glory miniatures I’m using for the Green Berets and the size is pretty close; the models’ being a bit chunkier in body frame, but nothing way out of scale and pretty damned close!



…I’ll paint these on the sprue tree.

Planning to airbrush the exterior, but we’ll see…it’s been awhile and I’m not sure the setup for spraying is worth the desired finish at this scale.

[mikeh]

Coming along nicely Em. Nice looking kit too. I have to look for some of those clamps.

[Whiterook]

Oct 15, 2023 22:07:49 GMT -5 mikeh said:

Coming along nicely Em. Nice looking kit too. I have to look for some of those clamps.

Thanks! I’m real impressed with the Team Yankee stuff… nice fits and great detail. It’s real cool to get things like helicopters to play with. I’ve not looked real close yet but, there are rare earth magnets included so, looks like the propellers spin. The base stands are clear plastic so, they’ll look nice in the battlefield tiles. I’m excited too get these in play!!!

I kinda considered making one a Marines bird, but decided to stick with two Army slicks. I’m also leaning more towards airbrushing them…I really need to get the airbrush working again, as well as getting comfortable with using it again.

[Whiterook]

Work continues and she’s starting to look like a Huey…well, both sisters are! Both are being built in tandem. This is such a small scale, and some parts require steady handling with tweezers, or dead reckoning with fingers that feel like tree trunks! I started this session by sanding and smoothing seams and checking joins.

The synchronized elevators in the tail boom were surprisingly tricky, as the fit was a little loosely goosey and one of them has a bit of a gap I don’t like. I’ll have to look at it with a fresh view tomorrow but, I think the elevator on one slipped down while drying… unfortunately, by the time I noticed, it was dried solid in place; I’ll see how bad it looks and if necessary, use some Squadron putty to fix ‘er up.

The tailpipe fairing on the other hand, was much easier to place into the end of the engine cowling; the sculpt was made in such a way that in the placing of it within the cowling, the natural angle of the unit itself, nudged it up to the correct facing… definitely needed angled tweezers to get these into place. Not having a third hand, TETC was kinda useless, as it dried by the time I got the tailpipe fairing in the tweezers and raised to the cowling…so, I ended up using Model Masters in a squeeze bottle/pipette.





…yeah, I’m not crazy about the seams… as a model builder, they wouldn’t do at all and I’d definitely putty them. Ah, therein lies my dilemma: as being a wargamer, and these are for wargaming, that’s a bit over-the-top. “What will he do, what will her do???” (I. Don’t. Know.)

Next up was the nose compartment door at front. Dang, here we go again with fiddly! Getting it to snap into place was not easy at all and required some sweet talking to each girl; TETC again was not my friend, as it dried before I could rearrange grips and do the do, so again, I placed a dab of MM to secure in place, and then some TETC all around.

Lastly, the machine gun mounts. O.M.G. These drove me about mad. The mounts basically fit two tiny posts at the bottom L-shaped hinge, into two tiny slots at the base of the compartment floor. MM to the rescue again, but this was honestly the worse component fit of everything and I worry about longevity of the hold, as these will be handled a lot in gaming… they really should have been molded into the fuselage shell halves somehow.




Machine guns, skids, rotors, and doors to be added next session. Then I’ll get to the interior compartment washes, and then painting. Might be a couple little items to add, like litters, which might fit in. There’s not a diagram for decals included so, I’m doing a little research on the ones provided. I’m 99% sure they’ll be 1st Cav. I still don’t know if these are to be Hogs, Slicks, whatever… Battlefront was sneaky in being vague in this. Still, it’s a fun build.

[Whiterook]

I was going to start today’s session with filling seams, but alas, my Squadron putty tube was hard as a rock! Well, it’s somewhere around a decade old so, I wasn’t too surprised   I did try an Elmer’s Glue trick mentioned at MSC, but it was a bit of a failure, too… I’ll just order some more putty…or let and let be.

So I switched to painting the gunner/crew instead, with Vallejo acrylics and finishing with a heavy splash of Citadel’s “Devlin Mud”.



I clipped off and sanded the skids for next sessions’ application, but turned my attention to fitting the gunner/crew into the birds… oh man, they’re a tight fit! They are of course, a tad over scale, and I guess intended to hang out of the cargo/crew bay blasting away with their machine guns! Battlefront FoW is full of shit with their website depiction of these, as the gunners on the site are much smaller, hold the MGs better, and sit INSIDE the cabin on the benches…


_{Flames of War Miniatures Website Picture of Finished Huey UH-1}

This is not so on the miniatures!!!







All’s good, though… they are for wargaming after all, so a little artistic license is acceptable.