ACADEMY - AH-60L DAP Black Hawk 1:35

The kit consists of six trees molded in gray styrene plus a single tree of clear parts. The molding is crisp, with finely scribed details throughout the kit. The parts are free of flash and there were only a few ejector pin marks visible in the main cabin. Among the features and options in this release:

• Nicely detailed flight deck
• Detailed main rotor head and blades
• Detailed M134 7.62mm minigun on window mount
• Detailed M2 .50 caliber machine gun on door mount
• Auxiliary fuel cell in main cabin
• Positionable main cabin doors
• Positionable window doors
• Positionable engine bay access doors
• Two detailed T700 engines inside engine bays
• Movable FLIR turret
• Optional ESSS stub wings
• Air refueling probe

External weapons load options include:

• 8 x AGM-114 Hellfire
• 2 x M229 four-shot Hellfire launch rail units
• 2 x M261 Hydra 70 19-shot rocket pods
• 2 x external fuel tanks (included in kit but not mentioned in instructions)

The AH-60L kit is an interesting blend of previous releases. All of the parts trees from the original UH-60L release are included (some of which were left out of the second release, the MH-60G Pave Hawk). The MH-60G's parts (tree G) are also included to provide the requisite air refueling probe, cargo bay fuel cell, and updated horizontal stabilizer.

One new tree (K) is added to this kit that contains the shorter (single pylon) ESSS 'wings', eight Hellfire missiles w/launchers, two 19-shot rocket pods, radar dome, FLIR turret, machine guns, gatling guns, updated CRT-based instrument panel, SATCOM antennas, etc.

Markings are provided for two specific aircraft:

• MH-60L, 160 SOAR, 26365 'Southern Comfort'
• MH-60L, 160 SOAR, (serial unknown) 'Razors Edge'

In addition, a variety of generic numbers are provided to allow the modeler to depict other aircraft in the fleet. A complete set of maintenance stencils are also included.