Hasegawa Hughes 300 Calypso Egg Chopper

Gallery Article by Keith Chambers on Dec 6 2010

 

This is my modified version of the Hasegawa Hughes 300 Egg Plane helicopter.  I have always admired Couesteau's Calypse exploration ship and the little Hughes 300 they flew for observation.  The similarities between the prototype and the Hasegawa kit looked feasable and I jumped into building it.  I gathered as many photos as I could find on the 300 and got started.  I bashed several kits in the process of making this one.  I made pontoons from the drop tanks of two 1/72 F-16 kits.  After a few modifications, I had the pontoons done.  Next I found a set of decals from the old Revell Calypso kit for the helicopter, except the decal on the nose which I had to print larger to look closer to scale.  The engine is plain on this kit so I used solder to form intake and exhaust pipes.  I built a small intake box below the cab with PE screen for the intake.  The muffler was also a scratch build from plastic tubing. 

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I removed the head rests from the kit seats and ordered some old WWII PE seatbelts to use inside the cockpit.  Those are tricky wickets.  I wanted the doors to be open the same as the prototype and had to figure out how to do that.  After messing up my first model and scrapping it, I figured out how to do it; I completed the interior and set it aside after painting.  After masking off the canopy and painting it, I used my Dremel and sanding files to open the doors.  The interior was then inserted without any trouble.  By the way, to avoid marring the clear canopy, I used Future Floor Polish to attach the interior and other parts on the model.  It works as good as glue!  I used a spot light from an old police cruiser for a landing light and stretched clear red sprue for the light on the tail boom.  After adding scrap plastic details here and there, I used a piece of brass wire to form a guard for the tail rotor, applied the decals, coated them, and it was done. 

The Hasegawa Egg Planes are suitable for some extra detailing and a lot of fun to build when you need a break from those tedious scale builds.  I hope this inspires you to take a crack at these fun kits.  They're fun and relaxing too.

Keith Chambers

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Photos and text © by Keith Chambers