In 1951, the Army and Air Force put for a request for a helicopter that would be faster than the normal helo for battle field medevac duties. This started the competition for what we have come to know as a 'convertiplane', an aircraft that has vertical landing and take off capabilities of a helicopter, and the faster forward air speed of a normal aircraft. Several proposals were submitted by Sikorsky, McDonnell and Bell.

The most elegant of the three entries, the Sikorsky aircraft featured a rotor that could folded up for take-off and landing as helicopter, and stopped to store in the fuselage for level flight. In order to fit the rotor mechanism into the storage bay, a single blade rotor with a counter-rod was chosen. The U.S. Army accepted the proposal from Sikorsky, the designation XV-2 and serial number 54-0043 was given to the prototype which was in competition with the McDonnell XV-1 and Bell XV-3. However, Sikorsky's production facilities were fully involved in building helicopters for the Korean War and beyond. The prototype never reached past the design phase and no prototype was started. In 1960, the XV-2 project was cancelled.
 

Anigrand kits are short run, full resin kits with vacuformed canopies and decals. That is the basic blurb on thing. Basically, you get a well molded kit that is typical of many short run resin kits in that there is flash, the sprue gates invade onto the surrounding kit parts, and there are generally some deformations or air bubbles somewhere on the kit. Some kits are better in this regard as others, but it is always a bit of an unknown as to the extent of these on the kit you buy.

However, these kits are not for raw beginners and while some of them make excellent initial resin kits (basically due to the minimal parts count), others are quite complex and will require some advanced building skills. This kit is one that someone relatively new to the genre will find to be a good starting place. My particular kit has two glitches. One is a broken fuselage half (undoubtedly from cramming what is a pretty long kit into a rather small box), and the other is a wheel support part that has both an air bubble and a sink area. In all, not a real problem as some of the previous Anigrand kits I've built have had a LOT more in terms of trouble spots. The air bubble can be repaired with super glue and accelerator, while a good filler will take care of the sink area (see the image to the left).

The kit is well detailed with rather large engraved panel lines. Two real benefits of Anigrand kits are that they are generally well engineered, and there are not the huge resin molding blocks to remove as you find on a lot of resin stuff from other companies. This makes construction quicker and is really a major help. Yeah, you'll have to hack or sand off some smaller pour stubs, but really this is nothing. A single vacuformed canopy is provided. It is not very clear and has rather poorly defined framework, making masking it difficult.

The instructions are the norm with one side of the sheet taken up with a three view and painting instructions. The other side has a short history, a diagram of the aircraft and an exploded view of all the parts and how they fit together. The kit does offer an option in terms of how you display the rotor. You can take the easy way out and have this area closed up, or go for the gusto and model the aircraft with the rotor extended. I plan on doing mine with the rotor out as it is one of the unique aspects of this vehicle. Anigrand spared all expenses on the decal sheet as you get the one from the XV-1 kit. Actually, all you need are the insignia and US Army markings.