1:35 AH-1W Super Cobra Canopy Paint Mask Set Interior & Exterior for Trumpeter

The angular greenhouse of an attack helicopter

The twin-engine Cobra of the Marine Corps grew out of its single-engine predecessors and became famous for a fuselage width of under one meter, thanks to which it was hard to hit head on. The crew sits in tandem, the gunner at the front, the pilot above and behind him, and under the nose turns a turret with a three-barrel 20 mm gun. On its pylons it carried antitank missiles as well as unguided rockets. It stayed in service from the mid-1980s until the time when the newer four-blade variant replaced it.

Why separately inside and out

The cockpit glazing is made up of flat panes in a dense frame, which is the most unpleasant place of the whole build when painting. The frame, however, has a different shade inside than out, and that is why this set contains two sets of shapes: one for the inner face, the other for the outer. First the inside is covered and the cockpit shade is sprayed, then the same is repeated from the other side with the covering color of the airframe. Cutting strips of adhesive film by hand with this many flat surfaces reliably ends in a crooked edge.

The large reduction works in the builder's favor here. 1:35 gives a fuselage over forty centimeters long, so the whole working space of both crew members is visible through the clean panes. It is worth adding the harnesses, the lettering on the panels and the wiring to the helmet sight, because all of it will stay clearly legible. Smaller formats do not give such an opportunity, because the detail hides behind the thickness of the frame and the thickness of the transparent part itself.