Airfix Westland Sea King HC.4 1:48 – build review

Full Review with Dave Coward

Background

Just before we get on with this review here’s a look at the finished model just to let you see how it all turned out.

This latest iteration of our 1:48 scale Westland Sea King 2023 tooling includes new parts, not included in the first release. These include:

• Folding rotor blades and tail
• Undercarriage without sponsons unique to HC.4 variant
• New interior parts including lengthened cabin and extra seats
• Open/closed door option
• GPMG machine gun mount
• New cockpit detail parts
• Extra antenna and countermeasures detail parts to suit the HC.4’s front-line role.

Known as ‘King of the Junglies’, ZA298 was the longest serving Sea King HC.4. For over 30 years, it was active in wars in the Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq and, most recently, Afghanistan.

A specialist variant of the Westland Sea King, the HC.4 was the Royal Navy’s Commando troop carrying and resupply helicopter replacement for their Wessex HU.5 helicopters and a development of similar aircraft produced for the Egyptian and Qatari Air Forces. 42 newly built helicopters were eventually produced in this configuration, which by their nature, were never too far from any action hotspots.

Deployed to combat zones right across the world during their 36-year service career, the Junglie as it was affectionately known, served with distinction from the Falklands War, through to the UK’s campaign in Afghanistan.

The options in the box are a Falklands machine, a Gulf war 1 machine, a Bosnia Peace Keeping option and scheme covering the HC.4 in its final configuration.

Setting the Scene

The original release has been built by both Geoff and myself as an HAS.1 and a HAS.3 but this boxing is quite different with regards to its undercarriage, internal layout and external antenna configuration. This is reflected in the sprues where some are common to the original boxing but there are also two completely new sprues.

I had decided to build the final version as I had seen these whilst in Afghanistan so I had a personal link to these machines.

The first job was to find a picture as a reference and a quick look on the internet posed more questions than they answered. Here’s some things I noted:

This is an Afghan Sea King – note the 5-bladed tail rotor blade, triple flare dispenser, IR jammer, antenna configuration (blade antenna) and general dirty/sandy state of these machines.

This is another Afghan era machine – again note the 5-bladed tail rotor, the front boarding door has been replaced with a bolted on lower fixed section with a machine gun mount, but this machine is a lot cleaner.

This is a later configuration – it has the 6-bladed tail rotor, the front boarding door has been replaced, it has a different tail spine antenna configuration (both have a TACSAT antenna and a new bolt on white antenna whilst one retains the forward spine blade antenna), they have the 3 dispenser Flare set up and IR jammer and both are quite clean.

Fortunately, a lot of these options are in the box if you look for them (TACSAT and other antennas, flare mount and IR jammer) the only thing missing is the third flare dispenser but this is easily scratch built.

Another great source of reference material, especially for the interior and more detailed exterior shots, is the Sea King HC4 Westland photo set in the SMN Photographic Reference Library.

Once I had looked at all these options my decision was to build the later option with all the antennas, the triple flare dispensers, the IR Jammer and the 6-bladed tail rotor.

Construction…