December 2024 Part 1

MH-60J “Jayhawk”

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Sikorsky MH-60J “Jayhawk”

US Coast Guard, Elizabeth City Air Station,  2007

Hobby Boss 1/72

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The Jayhawk is widely used by the US Coast Guard as its medium range rescue and patrol helicopter.  Developed from and very similar to the US Navy’s HH-60 Combat SAR / Surface Patrol light helicopter, it does away with some of the HH-60’s military equipment (e.g. armour and particularly ASuW missiles) and replaces it with up to 3 massive auxiliary fuel tanks that extend its operating range and endurance for long SAR missions, as well as maritime patrol and anti-narcotics operations.  For this latter role, the Jayhawk can now be armed with a range of door and window machine-guns  for use against non-compliant vessels.

Procured in the early 1990s to replace Sea King HH-3 Pelican variants, it was originally known as the HH-60J or MH-60J, but was re-designated the MH-60T in 2007 after an upgrade programme that improved the aircraft’s engines and introduced a modern glass cockpit. Forty two HH-60Js were built originally, with a number of ex-USN SH-60F Seahawks purchased and converted at a later date as the USN withdrew them from its own inventory.  

As of 2017, the USCG are undertaking a further Life Extension programme, including remanufacturing existing airframes and new builds that will replace existing HH-65 Dolphin light helicopters.

Although normally based ashore, the MH-60T can be embarked in the USCG’s armed patrol cutters.

Link to more USCG aircraft on my Friends and Allies pages

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Above & Below:  USCG photos (Public Domain)

Background Image & below - an HH-60J on the deck of a USCG Cutter.  Credit:  USCG (Public Domain)

Building the Hobby Boss HH-60J Kit:

I've built a number of S-70 kits now, including the Hasegawa HH-60, Hasegawa SH-60B and the Italeri / Revell UH-60A.  Of those, the Hasegawa ones are probably my favourites with the best mould engineering, although the Italeri kit creeps ahead with finer and better details (notwithstanding that they are lightly raised), versus Hasegawa's engraved lines (and inexplicable blanked engine exhausts).  

Hobby Boss' kits are more recent  (from the late 2000s) and they have produced a wide range of variants, mainly of naval versions (naturally, because there are a lot more of these than land-based variants!), but also including the US Coast Guard's distinctive red and white Jayhawk. This only requires a small replacement sprue with 6 new parts to differentiate it from the kit of the US Navy's HH-60H version.  

The breakdown of the kit is similar to the Hasegawa and Italeri offerings, with Hobby Boss' typical high moulding quality, reasonable (but not perfect) fit, lightly raised rivets, some engraved panel lines and of course, some of the obligatory Chinese kit sunken rivets that they seem to love so much.  The real thing does in fact have some prominent raised rivets and I would assess Hobby Boss surface detail on the main fuselage as being a good representation.  

Building was straightforward, although the joint along the cabin top needed some filling and sanding as this was not good, neither did the engine intakes and exhausts fit entirely snugly.   Cabin and cockpit detail is reasonable but not complete (e.g. there are no collectives), although it includes a (very plain) cabin roof (hurray!), but I added some extra gubbins and junk to allow me to leave the cabin door open.  Speaking of which, the kit is missing a triangular patch on the outside of the door leading edge, so this was added from some spare plastic card.   

The cockpit doors can't be opened (both the other manufacturer’s kits allow this) and the cockpit transparencies, which are one-piece, look a little shallow to me, but only when sat alongside the other kits.  A permanent marker pen was used to colour the top windows.  To add some interest, I also painted up two aircrew figures in the typical bright orange immersion suits worn by USCG crews.  From previous experience, I know that S-70 kits have rather shallow cockpits that are difficult to fit figures into, so I used undersized ex-Airfix figures to ensure they would fit.

Unlike the Italeri kit, the undercarriage and rotor assemblies look reasonably strong which helps with handling. The main rotor head is the larger folding type and seems a reasonable representation - I added some wire-based hydraulic lines for extra detail but forewent my normal blade folding act!  The blade attachment is straightforward and looks good, but turned out to be fragile once assembled (I’ve seen this on a number of Hobby Boss kits) and one of my blades collapsed before I hade even finished assembling.

Jayhawks seem to have varying aerial setups, ranging from wire aerials on short pylons to fixed "towel rack" style aerials.  Neither of these are provided in the kit so were scratched up from plastic rod and elastic thread. Scrutiny of reference pictures (and the Italeri kit instructions) also showed that the main blades on many aircraft should have cut-back roots (presumably newer composite blades), but I left the square ends on this build as the kit represents an early HH-60J.

Paint is Humbrol enamel, with several coats of white needed to cover the light grey plastic (and provide a base for the red).  Masking the red, black and white areas is a tricky task, and I ended up with quite a lot of bleeding under the tape, which forced several attempts at rework. To finish, I applied a coat of Klear, then decals, then some oil wash detailing, with a final acrylic satin varnish.  The kit decals are well printed, comprehensive, mathc my reference photos well and are easy to apply.

So what are my general conclusions?  Well, this is definitely a good little kit that I enjoyed building, although the masking and painting is not at all easy.  In terms of detail and buildability it beats both Hasegawa and Italeri / Revel hands down which is a considerable achievement for Hobby Boss.  

I have several more variants in the stash to build and look forward to tackling them in the near future !

Link to Part 2 - various AFVs

Above:  With my Hasegawa SH-60B and Italeri / Revell UH-60A

Link to Part 2 - various AFVs