SAEP

Ah. Please forgive a newbie's ignorance. Accepting the substitution of D/H fuselage for C/M models, the mounting issue remains. See http://www.174ahc.org/easy-1.htm for a picture showing the mounting of miniguns and rockets. As I remarked before, the combination of minigun and 17-tube pods was simply not feasible due to weight. Even with the smaller rocket loads, there existed a technique called "Charlie-mode takeoff". Under conditions of high heat and humidity (such as, obviously, RVN), a fully loaded and fuelled gunship was simply unable to hover on takeoff. What they had to do was get as close to hover as possible, then start accelerating forward with the skids dragging. Drag from the skids would get the aircraft "up on its toes", and the skids would drag less and less until finally there was no contact. And even then, sometimes it didn't work, which required very good technique to get stopped safely and burn off fuel. So, no rocket pods as shown, and the pylons need considerable work.

Actually, it's much worse than that. If you switch colors on the aircraft which you identify as a Stinger bird, you have a Yellow Jacket UH-1D or UH-1H. The aircraft you identify as a Yellow Jacket is very badly wrong, even if you change the colors to red and call it a Stinger. On the one hand, the window panels identify it as a UH-1D or UH-1H, and these were never gunships, which were UH-1C or UH-1M. Even if you get the airframe correct (no window just behind the pilot's door, only a single window on the main door, the fuselage needs to be shorter, and there is no separate side-facing seat for the door gunner and crew chief), the armament is just wrong. First off, a minigun-equipped gunship only carried a pair of 7-tube rocket pods, not the 17-tube pod which you show. The combination would have been too heavy. Second, such a pod would have been mounted on the same pylon as the minigun, but inboard of the minigun. There would have been no rear-mounted hardpoint for the rockets. Assuming a 17-tube pod, as you show, it would have been mounted as shown but there would have been no minigun pylon at all. Sorry for the criticism, but Huey gunships were not just slicks with weapons tacked on, as you seem to think. And the problems I've identified apply to every Huey gunship you've modeled.

Hello, skulleader - Back in April you posted skins for aircraft belonging to the 116th AHC. While I appreciate the work involved, you ought to know that you got your units mixed up. Stingers were the gunship platoon, while Yellow Jackets (and Wasps - white ID color) was a lift platoon. Consequently, the skins you've shown cannot be accurate, since Yellow Jackets didn't carry ordnance, and Stingers always did. Swap the colors and you'll be fine. ETA - No, it won't be fine. See my next post.