UH-1 'Huey' and AH-1 'Cobra' (Bell and Augusta built aircraft) all versions

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Slight OT here, but I've always wanted to build an AH-1W or -Z with a 4 or 5 blade main rotor, a retractable wheeled undercart, and a Fenestron tail rotor.

How badly do you want to build this WHIF?  I trashed at least three of those crap 1/32nd scale Monogram Blue Thunder kits many years ago.  I salvaged the interesting things such as the Fenestron rotor assembly which I thought would be ideal for a 1/48th scale UH-60 Blackhawk WHIF but it could be applied to an AH-64 or even the UH-1 and AH-1 with a bit of imagineering. 

[Weaver]

Here's a whiff that occurred to me today and which I might seriously do. I was looking at pictures of Westland Scouts and Wasps and it struck me that shape and style-wise, the Scout is pretty much a scaled-down UH-1 with no engine cowling. So what if Westlands had made a scaled up Scout/Wasp?

<trippy cross-fade....>

Easy bits:

Start with a Huey. Remove the skids, the tailplanes and the engine bay down to the "shelf" on which the engine sits.

Now take a Wessex and nick it's rotor and undercarriage.

Apply the Wessex four-blade main and tail rotors to the Huey (because the two-blade original screams "Bell"), the Wessex mainwheels behind the Huey's side doors and the tail wheel under the nose.

For extra style points, fit a couple more clear windows in the roof, a Scout or Wasp stlye tailplane, and external stringers to the rear fuselage and tail boom


Now the tricky bit:

Fit an exposed engine or engines. The Nimbus engines from two Airfix Scouts would be ideal (with single exhausts each) but I understand these kits are bit thin on the ground now. I've got a detailed (ish) turbojet from an Iskra which would be ideal although that's not exactly a common kit either. Alternately, there might be a Huey kit which has a detailed engine inside the casings: I've got a 1/100th Revell one which has.

I've got a picture somewhere of a Mil-2 hovering over a Pt-76 with "despatches" being handed down to the commander. I now have a vision of a Patchwork World diorama with an AVRO Hornet* helo (as above) hovering over a Crossley Crusader** armoured car in similar fashion.

*Since the Scout was developed by Saunders Roe before being taken over by Westland, and since in PW A.V.Roe would probably never have sold his shares in his his Cheshire factory and gone into the flying boat business with "Slippery Sam" Saunders, you could credibly claim a super-Scout as an AVRO product in PW.

**Saladin armoured car, possibly re-armed and up-armoured. In real life Crossley Motors in Stockport, Cheshire were scheduled to build the pre-productiono batch of Saladins, but it was then changed back to Alvis before they could get started. In PW, they could credibly be building their own version under licence.

[jcf]

Now the tricky bit:

Fit an exposed engine or engines. The Nimbus engines from two Airfix Scouts would be ideal (with single exhausts each) but I understand these kits are bit thin on the ground now. I've got a detailed (ish) turbojet from an Iskra which would be ideal although that's not exactly a common kit either. Alternately, there might be a Huey kit which has a detailed engine inside the casings: I've got a 1/100th Revell one which has.

The old Monogram UH-1 'Huey Hog' kit, re-released several times by Revell, has a full engine and transmission.
It is the short body type (UH-1B, C) Bell 204/205.

For a long body based twin in 1/72 you could use the engines and transmission assembly from the Tamiya 1/100 S-64(CH-54) Skycrane.

Jon

[Weaver]

Now the tricky bit:

Fit an exposed engine or engines. The Nimbus engines from two Airfix Scouts would be ideal (with single exhausts each) but I understand these kits are bit thin on the ground now. I've got a detailed (ish) turbojet from an Iskra which would be ideal although that's not exactly a common kit either. Alternately, there might be a Huey kit which has a detailed engine inside the casings: I've got a 1/100th Revell one which has.

The old Monogram UH-1 'Huey Hog' kit, re-released several times by Revell, has a full engine and transmission.
It is the short body type (UH-1B, C) Bell 204/205.

For a long body based twin in 1/72 you could use the engines and transmission assembly from the Tamiya 1/100 S-64(CH-54) Skycrane.

Jon

Cheers John - that sound promising. 

I like the idea of a short-bodied 204 one actually: a bit more Scout-like.

Having done a bit more checking, a couple of other things have come to light:

1. The Wessex rotor is too big, so you'd either have to cut it down or find another 4-bladed rotor with a old-fashioned articulated hub (if you were updating to a Lynx-style one, you'd be losing the leggy gear too and it would probably end up looking more like a Bell 222 which isn't the point).

2. Logically, you'd use the Wessex u/c the same way as on the Wessex, i.e. tailwheel-style, because there's a solid "pillar" on the Huey between the cockpit and cabin doors and because it leaves a clear path for the cabin doors to slide back. I acutally started this line of thought because I'm going to end up with a spare set of Belvedere gear, which is not actually as stalky as I thought, but still interesting.....

[Weaver]

Whoa that is excellent - thankyou very much Apophenia! 

I think a Scout nose is significantly narrower than a Huey fuselage so grafting it on might be a problem. In any case, it was the general "Scoutishness" of the Huey that gave me the idea in the first place.

The vertical strip at the front of the Huey's sliding door is actually a hinged door, so your front gear strut would have to go bit further forward on the very narrow solid pillar just in front of it, but that's a very minor point. you got the position of the tailwheel just right: I only meant to use the component, not copy it's waaay aft mounting position on the Wessex. I think I might play with the part to see if I could make it longer (or the main gears shorter) to hold the fuselage more level, however:

I've had an idea that allows the reinstatment of the nosewheel layout which I prefer. The Hind has a side door which is split horizontally, i.e. the bottom half folds down and the top half folds up. It sounds like you'd have trouble opening the upper part against the rotor wash, but it must work, indeed the Belvedere had a full-size upwards opening door! You could cut the Huey door just below the window and give the the bottom half a flat liner so that when dropped 90 deg, it made an extended cabin floor, a bit like the tailgate on a pickup truck. Because this door wouldn't slide, you could then have the main gears right behind it and the nosewheel under the cockpit with a pair of fixed, exposed machine-guns alongside it to keep the '50s theme.

Cornwall would probably always have been independent in Patchwork World, so that's fine.

[Weaver]

Just found out something else of background interest.

The Westland Scout was developed from the SARO Skeeter after Westland took over SARO, but the Skeeter was originally started by the Cierva Autogyro company before they were bought out by SARO. Now from the 1930s on, AVRO had a licence to produce Cierva autogyros and did, in fact produce quite a lot of them, so there's a legitimate link between AVRO and the Scout.

Although  Juan de la Cierva did his intial development work in Spain, he then moved to Britain, but only maintained a drawing office rather than a full factory, choosing instead to contract other aircraft manufacturers such as AVRO to build his designs. This is, in fact, a very Patchwork World way of doing things, since it's much easier to licence a customer to build your design locally than it is to export big military hardware across PWs multiplicity of borders.

So in Patchwork World, Cierva Autogyro would probably have stayed in Spain and stayed independent, developed the "Skeeter", "Scout/Wasp" and "Hornet" (those certainly wouldn't be the original names) and licenced  companies all around the world to build their designs with local variations (much as Westlands did with Sikorsky designs). You would therefore get basically similar "Westland-Cierva Hornets" in the South West of the British Isles, "AVRO-Cierva Dragonflies" in the North West, and even "Bell-Cierva UH-1s" in Texas.

[Weaver]

Apo - could you do me a favour and post your Hornet profile, together with it's markings, on the Patchwork World thread here please?

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,20194.msg327528.html#new

[jcf]

Just found out something else of background interest.

The Westland Scout was developed from the SARO Skeeter after Westland took over SARO, but the Skeeter was originally started by the Cierva Autogyro company before they were bought out by SARO. Now from the 1930s on, AVRO had a licence to produce Cierva autogyros and did, in fact produce quite a lot of them, so there's a legitimate link between AVRO and the Scout.

Although  Juan de la Cierva did his intial development work in Spain, he then moved to Britain, but only maintained a drawing office rather than a full factory, choosing instead to contract other aircraft manufacturers such as AVRO to build his designs. This is, in fact, a very Patchwork World way of doing things, since it's much easier to licence a customer to build your design locally than it is to export big military hardware across PWs multiplicity of borders.

So in Patchwork World, Cierva Autogyro would probably have stayed in Spain and stayed independent, developed the "Skeeter", "Scout/Wasp" and "Hornet" (those certainly wouldn't be the original names) and licenced  companies all around the world to build their designs with local variations (much as Westlands did with Sikorsky designs). You would therefore get basically similar "Westland-Cierva Hornets" in the South West of the British Isles, "AVRO-Cierva Dragonflies" in the North West, and even "Bell-Cierva UH-1s" in Texas.

Pitcairn was Cierva's major US partner, so if Cierva (i.e. the man himself didn't die) continued as in your scenario perhaps Pitcairn Autogiro would also have survived and would have been the more likely partner than Bell.

Jon

BTW,  Westland worked on Cierva patent derived autogiros in the '30s.


Westland built Cierva-Lepere CL-20, project supervised by W.E.W. Petter and Arthur Davenport

C.29, the largest British built autogiro attempted, never flew due to ground resonance problems. Cierva's death had a direct impact
on the project not proceeding.

p.s. the Cierva Company (formed in March, 1926 with James Weir as chairman, Cierva as technical director) designers and their colleagues from Weir (the Weir shipbuilding firm had taken the decision in 1932 to become directly involved in design and construction as a Cierva licensee. Weir moved their efforts to helicopters at the end of 1937) formed the nucleus of Britain's post-War helicopter designer capability.

p.s.s. its doubtful that Cierva would have had as much success if he stayed in Spain, the Brit connection supplied the funds used for development through the latter half of the 20s and the early 30s. By the time of his death in 1936 Cierva had become sidetracked by Spanish politics, he was supporter of Franco, and had been spending less time on design and engineering problems... this is considered  a major factor in the later dissolution of Pitcairn Autogiro, without Cierva the necessary cross-ocean cooperation ceased.  Cierva died in the crash of a KLM DC-2 at Croydon airport on Dec 9, 1936.

[lenny100]

you could also do this to a attack helicopter which i believe is now flying on a uh 60











***edited to remove the extra identical images***

[Archangel]

Once again, everyone is welcomed to provide his/her own take on any variants and offsprings of the UH-1 and AH-1 family.

But here is (more or less) mine: what prompted me to start this thread began when I read about the not-at-all convincing JUH-1H Hind-surrogate.  Then I figured- why stopping at just looking similar when someone, as I remember hearing somewhere, tried to create an answer to the Crocodile out of a Huey in the form known as the American Aircraft "Penetrator"?



I tried to augment what little I remembered of it by Googling and arrived at this link:

http://www.stealthstar.com/

Many picture links on the website are broken, but those that do work, while displaying mostly (by my estimation) movie props, show some interesting possibilities.

This former UH-1B carries a crew of four as well as six troops and has four 7.62mm miniguns, either a 20mm gatling gun or twin-barreled 40mm grenade launcher, as well as (in its "movie prop" form) two underwing and two wingtip hardpoints.  What if the Penetrator was built from an UH-1H or an UH-1N instead?  Huey II or Huey 800 upgrade?  How about building a Penetrator from an UH-1Y?  And perhaps the (IMHO) over-elongated nose can be replaced with a more business-like one similar to the configuration with twin 40mm GL in the nose but instead housing a navigation/targetting sensor turret?

Now come the questions:

1. Does anyone know if the cabin crew control all four miniguns or do the cockpit crew control the two at the front?

2. The miniguns are obviously remotely controlled, but does anyone how the minigun controls work?









On the totally fictitious side, I am still thinking about an UH-1 that looks like a Mi-24...... what prompted me to do so is that, before introducing AH-1W, Taiwanese did arm some of their UH-1H with 2.75" rocket launchers as a make shift gunships and copied or reverse-engineered the Russian 9K11 Malyutka anti-tank missiles.  What if the ROCA found a niche for an up-to-date Malyutka copy for use alongside TOW systems (I'm under the impression that Malyutka is more man-portable than TOW)?  And what if they wanted a more powerful helicopter gunship but, instead of being able to acquire AH-1 outright, had to make do with components of UH-1H for any reason?

My oldest brother flew UH-1M Huey Gunships. An upgraded model of the UH-1B I think is what he told me. Anyway when they fired both miniguns at once the vibration shook the Huey. I'd hate to think what firing all four miniguns at once would do in real life to the bird.

[Weaver]

Pitcairn was Cierva's major US partner, so if Cierva (i.e. the man himself didn't die) continued as in your scenario perhaps Pitcairn Autogiro would also have survived and would have been the more likely partner than Bell.

Yes, indeed: now what would Bell have built if they'd stayed in the fixed-wing world?

p.s.s. its doubtful that Cierva would have had as much success if he stayed in Spain, the Brit connection supplied the funds used for development through the latter half of the 20s and the early 30s. By the time of his death in 1936 Cierva had become sidetracked by Spanish politics, he was supporter of Franco, and had been spending less time on design and engineering problems... this is considered  a major factor in the later dissolution of Pitcairn Autogiro, without Cierva the necessary cross-ocean cooperation ceased.  Cierva died in the crash of a KLM DC-2 at Croydon airport on Dec 9, 1936.

True, although equally he might have found Spanish funding easier in Patchwork World, where the fractious little countries are very keen to develop any indiginous capability to avoid dependence on imports. He might have been pushed into more overtly military products though.

Cierva's death was truly ironic, because it was watching a low-level stall accident that got him interested in rotorcraft in the first place, and yet he died in a fixed-wing aircraft that stalled.....

Harold Pitcairn died in a "gun accident" that may or may not have been suicide, but I'm not sure if this was before or after the company was wound up.

Cheers Jon - mine of information as ever! 

[Weaver]

More ideas on the Scoutised Huey:

1. There's a better way of getting 4-blade rotor than butchering an innocent Wessex. Italieri does a kit of the Bell 412/CH-146, which is basically a big, late twin-Huey with a 4-bladed rotor. Now if you swapped rotors with a 204 to make the Whiff, the bits you'd be left with (big, pointy fuselage and a 2-blade rotor) make a 212 (or so close that only a JMN would notice), so there's NO waste.

Of course, this doesn't solve the undercarriage problem, but in my case, I've going to have a spare set of Belvedere gear which is stalky enough for anyone, and for anyone who dosn't, it shouldn't be too hard to whiff one up from tube/rod/spares box.


2. The horizontally split door's lower half could drop down on u-shaped hinges to make a boarding step. On armed versions, it could have armour fitted to the inside of it and be left closed to offer the door gunner some protection. The door gun itself could be mounted on struts attached to the inside of the upper door so that it swings outboard as the door opens.


3. On a winch-equipped version, the whole side door could swing upwards with the winch in a bulge in the lower part of it, in the manner of the Belvedere. To compensate for the big door area being battered by the downwash, the winch door could be narrower than the standard one, and the forward-opening "strip" door could have a second section hinged to it, which folds up behind it, concertina-style.


4. A single helo, could, of course, have a split door on one side and a winch door on the other, making for a glorious asymetry.....

[dy031101]

When browsing the web regarding an unrelated topic, I came across this......

D-255...... it's said to be the first mockup that at last led to the AH-1, and I found it looking surprisingly similar to the later Mi-24......

So pairing it with a Malyutka-inspired ATGM system on under-stubwingtip rails, in a manner similar to the Mi-24......

[GTX]

So pairing it with a Malyutka-inspired ATGM system on under-stubwingtip rails, in a manner similar to the Mi-24......

Wicked idea!!!

Regards,

Greg

[gunfighter]

I don´t know why the cobra was not selled in lage quantities to NATO countries other than the US. The TOW cobra was far more capable than the utility helicopter conversions of the time, like the Bo-105 and the Lynx. And sure the germans, danish, dutch and french needed something to stop the hordes of russian tanks coming from the east.