The scheme is a simple overall chromium yellow with black trim. When dry, the tail and nose anti-dazzle panel was masked and painted satin black. The walkway on the roof was masked and painted a matt dark grey.
The doors are next on the list. The kit is designed so you can slide the side doors open. The trade-off is that they won’t open completely and the operation is clumsy and, really, a bit of a gimmick. I trimmed off the sliding parts and glued one each in the open and closed positions. There is a particular style of side door used on some civilian 205s, 212s and 412s that includes escape panels. These are identifiable by the rectangular outline on the doors and the squared-off window corners. Apparently they came about as a result of a couple of Huey prangs in Canada where the chopper ended up on it’s side. The survivors had trouble getting the eight feet up to the door and getting it open. The window openings were simply filed square and clear sheet cut to shape. VH-NSA also had a ridge running along the bottom of the door, the purpose of which I do not know, possibly strengthening as it now has two removeable panels. I replicated this by sanding square secton plastic rod to a triangular profile and glueing and clamping it to the door. The doors were sprayed medium grey on the inside and matt white followed by fluorescent orange on the exterior.
Markings
I created decal artwork on the computer and got Mary at Brunel Hobbies to run them off on their Alps machine. They were beautifully thin, in register, nicely opaque and settled down well with some Mr Mark Softer, even into the deep recess of the door rails.
