Sea King – One Yellow Rotor Blade

IIRC the green ones also had a yellow blade
Whether this would have been the case in Combat SAR or not I don’t know but when there was a green one/s at boulmer, they were like that.

I believe this was covered in the Haynes Manual on the Sea King written by someone a couple of years ago.;)

new kit came out in 2016/17, but that boxing is the original 1980s version (based on the 1960s SH3)

One other reason why one blade might be painted is to make it more conspicuous from above.
You see that on firefighting helicopters to help avoid mid-airs when operating at low altitudes.

BTW: Is that the same Airfix kit I built as a kid, or have they come out with a newer model? Yours looks much better than mine! 🙂

Yes it was to make it visible from above, they were hard to see form the air.

Very nice model, the customer should be very happy!

I’d always thought the yellow blade was for the benefit of ground operations (ATC, vehicles, other aircraft etc) so that it was obvious that the rotor was turning.

Thanks. That one blade does stand out. Here’s the completed model.

According to a post on a thread within the Britmodeller site back in 2013 this was the reason it was introduced (initially on the Wessex):

“I think the single yellow blade was introduced about 1989, as a conspicuity measure for the SAR ac. At least, the paperwork and first blades were at Finningley by mid-1988, when I left SAR. The one blade was highly visible – you could see the single blade going round well before you could see the yellow fuselage in many cases.”