AK47 Summer Offensive [18]

I'm planning to build one of the Mil Mi4's as a ground attack helicopter gunship, so I've been doing some background research to find out what one would look like. There seem to have been at least two versions of the Hound adapted to the ground attack role with others also developed for aerial mine laying and the like.

I'm going to go for the simplest option which will involve adding a door gunner to the rear left hand side access hatch, using a converted Peter Pig Vietnam figure, and a couple of weapons pylons on either side of the fuselage. These might be a bit tricky to pull off, to say the least, as they consist of a lattice of rods supporting a trapezium type mounting, as you can see in the pictures.

They will be either scratchbuilt from plastic rod and bits from the spares box or I'll cheat and use stub wings from the tailplane of another kit. The rocket pods will be scrounged from a 1/144 scale kit. I'll also add a machine gun to the front of the underlsung gondola, which is what it was originally intended for although it wasn't used like that very much according to the stuff I've read.

I've also had to do some surgery to the front end of the model that I built yesterday as it was tail heavy and tipped up. I removed the front couling with a blade then superglued a flattened lead fishign weight to the inside surface before sticking the whole lot back together again. This has done the trick and I'll now be able to land the choppers on the table without them all tipping up skywards.