Scratch built Cobra (in progress)

Gallery Article by Grzegorz Witkowski

Article by Marcin Witkowski

The author of the model is my younger brother Grzegorz Witkowski. He started to work on it three years ago after he had bought Verlinden Lock On No.6 AH-1S Cobra book. The documentation is completed by Famous planes of the world AH-1 Cobra, AH-64 Apache, the materials found in the net and also a couple of our Polish sources. In the beginning of his work Grzegorz used the Hasegawa 1/72 kit. However after a brief estimation of it's exactness we came to a conclusion the enrichment of the kit is necessary. The Bell's construction is not that complicated as not to decide to leave the kit aside and build the whole model by oneself. First my brother decided to use the flat plastic plates and made the first tail part of the Cobra. However this method doesn't allow to fully represent the construction because you can't do the rivets on the surface.   Another problem was the plastic's thickness which made showing the inner details of the chopper impossible. Based  on my experiences with Spitfire Grzegorz decided to use the copper and aluminium instead of plastic.        

Click on images below to see larger images

On the  pictures you can see that the tail part elements are in majority made of copper plates which will be model main material.  You can also see the aluminium elements. The model is being build in the 1/72 scale. The parts are made by slitting out of the copper plates which in majority are combined with solder. The aluminium parts are glued together. The whole construction will be covered by a very thin copper plate (0,005 mm). The whole model will be made in  this way. Grzegorz intends to show almost all inner elements such as the engine, the avionics or the gun installation and of course cockpit. On the pictures you can also see the base of the tail avionics bay and the stabilisers made of aluminium (which will be  able to change it's position). As the work will continue you get further information.