Attack Helicopter Painted!

As I mentioned last time I have been mixing up my Dust 150 painting goals with some other stuff, and here's my first "other stuff".

I started painting the MIL MI-47 ground attack helicopter last year, but after having done the basic camo I got stuck and was unsure how to proceed. I wanted to go for the classic green and khaki camo you often see on real Hind helicopters rather than the green/grey tiger stripes that Dust Models have used for their studio models.

Only problem was that the large amoeba like pattern didn't translate all that well from the huge fuselage of a real Hind to the tiny, egg-shaped fuselage of the MI-47. I was almost ready to start over and do the tiger stripes instead but Anders and Gille told me to persevere and with some blue grey on the bottom and proper detailing and weathering it came out looking ok. In fact it's really grown on me and now I actually look forward to painting the second one.

Guns! Bombs! Rockets! 

This is the Striker loadout with machine guns and two 50mm autocannons. 

Here you can really see the egg shape. Ugh... 

Then again, this is how I'm used to seeing it which looks a lot better. 

A better shot of the crew. 

The Airblaster loadout - rocket pods and bombs. 

Now with proper flight stand and everything! 

The Death Rain loadout with anti-tank and incendiary bombs. 

And again, the Striker.

As I mentioned I have one more that needs some love and now I feel a lot more motivated to get it done as well. The helicopters have really served me well during my time as SSU commander and having two painted and ready would be really cool!

I think it's tricky to use less than two in an army as they do go down relatively easy. If you have two you force your opponent to either split his attacks or having to concentrate on only one of them, leaving the other two wreck havoc. I still haven't actually tried the Striker version as I'm so enamoured with bombs, but now that I have other long range anti-tank assets like the Matrioshka it might be time to try it out!