REVELL 1:72 NATO NH.90 "TTH"

Reviewer: Peter Knight  (pknight@macquarie.net.au)

The NH Industries NH.90 is still in prototype form and is the next generation "Tactical Transport Helicopter" and "NATO Frigate Helicopter".   NH Industries was formed by five nations being the UK, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands but only the latter four are now involved, UK pulling out of the programme in 1987.  It's main role will be battlefield transport and is most likely to replace ageing Pumas.

The kit is packaged in a relatively large box that contains injected plastic in a dark green colour.  There's no flash and it's hard to find any imperfections in the 90 plastic parts all up (a dozen clear).  Surface detail is quite reasonable and also contains finely engraved panel lines.  The instruction sheet is a whopper with over 30 stages to trudge through before the kit is assembled.  It's going to take a bit of time! Naturally the paint references are in Revell's own brand name and these are fairly easy to cross reference to other ranges eg: Humbrol.

You start with assembling all the interior detail and this takes quite a bit of time to get through.  The cockpit is well detailed and the cabin contains a full set of troop seating.  You will find that you can have either or both cabin doors positioned open, and this will reveal the work that you have done within.

The fuselage halves are not fully whole, spaces are left to attach the rear cabin door, windscreen, nose wheel and engine cowling above the roof.  The rear door is designed as a feature that can be opened and closed but it was a bit difficult to have this in the working mode it is obviously intended for.  A gap between the ramp shoulder and cabin floor is also visible when the ramp is open.  None of the hydraulic struts are provided to add authenticity to the working feature.  You can also build the rear tail in a folded position.

Most of the construction work is quite easy and straight forward.  However, most parts just need an ever-so slight trimming to fit into the allocated space otherwise they tend to resist mating.  Small amounts of filler was required but overall everything was pretty smooth sailing.  The only real difficult and frustrating bit was assembling the main rotors.  Many of the components were quite small so this proved to be a fiddly exercise. A few problems were encountered when trying to fit the rotor shaft through the allocated hole to the rotorhead - the hole was too small.  Lots of patience is called upon through these steps but if it's done right it's worth it.

As far as accuracy goes the kit is based on real life dimensions of about 53' 6" rotor diameter and 52' 2" fuselage length being that of the first prototype.   There are two prototypes currently flying and I don't have any other hard and fast factual data to compare Revell's assertions to so have assumed this is correct.   Invariably, with modifications etc, the production version will have different dimensions.

Four colour options are provided and the kit includes decals for all options.  A NATO Olive Green overall scheme for the French (1st) prototype demonstrator, another French Army version as speculated, a German Army camouflage scheme and finally an overall white version representing the United Nations.  The decals are of better quality than what has been seen in many Revell kits recently and actually conformed quite well to the fuselage with the whiteness showing against the dark background of the NATO Olive scheme I used.  Be careful though, they are thin and easily fold and curl when trying to transfer them from the backing sheet onto the model.

Overall this is a very nice kit and I would highly recommend this to all but the very novice of model builders.  It generally goes together quite easily aside from the rotor fiddly bits and builds up into a nice version of the future NH.90.

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