Vertrep
by René Hieronymus

1/72 CH-46 Vertical Replentishment

The idea for this Diroama came up when I build the Fujimi kit of the CH-46D Sea-Knight. I simply wanted to display the model in a somewhat different fashion than normal.  So the idea came up why not show it hovering above somekind of landing place.  Because of my great interest in US-Navy Ships it was almost logical that this should be a ship. The Fujimi kit of this helicopter is pretty good and needed only small extra details in form of some upgraded landing gear, rotor-heads and the cockpit. Of course I needed some good figures for the crew but this was no problem at all. Otherwise I build the kit almost straight out of the box. Some minor weathering and the few extra-details did it all. The ship-structure was completely scratchbuilt and with no particular ship in mind. I used mainly cardboard and plastic sheet,  added some details like antennas, life-rings, fire hoses, railings and safety nets and that’s it! Finally I built a small base for the whole dio and put on some “water”. At the end all was colored and weathered. Took me less than 90hrs. to finish the whole thing but it was quite some fun. Specially when I displayed the model for the first time during a model-show, cause most people could not believe that the whole helicopter was riding on top of that small wire, which looks as if it would really swing in the downwash of those 2 rotors.  Actually the “wire” is a pretty solid brass tube of a very small diameter  (0,5mm) which was simply bent in various directions to give the right impression, only the last part of those lifting strap is actually a solid piece which is used to hook up the load onto the helicopters lifting hook by the ground-crew, while the
chopper is still hovering very close to the ground.