Scratchbuilding stuff

Ever since I started work on the Chinook, even though there hasn't been much progress, I've been thinking about and researching how to do the interior, if I want to leave the cargo hatch open.

Out-of-the-box, the kit is bare on the inside, but I'd like it to look more like this :

That means adding some detail on the sides of the hatch opening and find a way to make some seats in there. Both will require fiddling with styrene, something I've been meaning to do for a long time, but have been postponing. I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase some Evergreen sheet, strips and rods.

Eduard has several nice interior sets, including seats and stretchers. At roughly €15, the price is acceptable in itself, but almost twice what I paid for the model. I try to steer clear of after-market as it's a slippery slope once you start buying upgrade sets. Also, buying photo-etch would completely defeat the purpose of trying to build something from scratch.

For the seats, I decided to go with (Tamiya) tape, instead of styrene sheet, because of 2 reasons : I'm hoping it will look convincingly enough like textile (styrene sheet would be too smooth) and it easily bends around the rods. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Once the glue had set, I was eager to test-fit it inside the fuselage, to see if I got the dimensions right. At first glance, results look promising.

I'll have to make 5 more, but have not yet decided on the exact configuration. Existing configurations are 2 rows of seats, or 1 row of seats and 1 with stretchers for a medical evacuation, but any combination will probably have existed sómewhere for some practical purpose. I'm currently thinking of 3 seats (1 folded down, 2 up - easier to make :-)), 1 or 2 stretchers and 1 empty space with some cargo-crates.