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1/48 Hasegawa Hawker Hurricane Mk1


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Greetings everyone!

I'm in with a 1/48 Hasegawa Hawker Hurricane Mk1. I will be depicting P3886 UF-K 601 ' County of London' Sqn. Tangmere, August 1940.

In order to be considered eligible to wear the Battle of Britain clasp to the 1939-1945 Star aircrew had to have flown operationally sometime between 10 July and 31 October 1940. There were 11 Americans that earned the privilege, however only one would survive the war to wear it.

601 ' County of London' Sqn's pilots and Hurricanes were one of the RAF units to bare the brunt of the Luftwaffe's assault against Britain during the summer of 1940. During which time there were two Americans assigned to the squadron. The first was Flying Officer Raymond 'Carl' Davis an experienced pilot with over 2000 hours and a veteran of the Battle of France and Operation Dynamo. The other was Pilot Officer William Fisk. He was a relative novice compared to Davis but was a gifted pilot and was very much like by the rest of the squadron. Unfortunately he would not last in front line duty for more than a few weeks before he succumbed to wounds he received while in action on 17 August. The next day while flying P3886 Flying Officer Carl Davis scored two and one shared kills, a Ju 87 destroyed, a Bf 109 destroyed and another Ju 87 shared destroyed. A little less than two weeks later he would score another Bf 110 shared destroyed in this aircraft. Flying Officer Davis wouldn't survive the battle either unfortunately and on the morning of September 6 he was killed in action with his Hurricane crashing just east of Tunbridge Wells. He had ten confirmed kills to his credit, all of them during the Battle of Britain.

In addition to the Hasegawa kit I will be using;

AeroMaster sheet 48-577 'Yanks in the RAF'

Aries Hurricane control surfaces

Eduard RAF seatbelts

True Details wheels and vacuform canopy.

I began by attaching the front fuselage parts.

Hurricane_Mk1_build01.jpg

The cockpit has been assembled and is ready for paint.

Hurricane_Mk1_build02.jpg

I cut the rudder off so I could reposition it and removed the plastic where the rudder cable should be.

Hurricane_Mk1_build03.jpg

I used a razor saw to remove the canopy from the windscreen, I much prefer the looks of a Hurricane with the canopy open.

Hurricane_Mk1_build04.jpg

Here's the fuselage test fit with the cockpit, windscreen and rudder.

Hurricane_Mk1_build06.jpg

Once I get the cockpit painted I can close up the fuselage.

Thanks for looking,

Mark

Edited by Rampage55
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Very purty indeed - don't waste time now do you :coolio:

Thanks jugjunkie, I don't waste time as much as I build at a glacially slow pace, but I'll gitt'r done though...Eventually.

What are you going to do about the cut open canopy not fitting over the fuselage?

Thanks iiwy, I'll be using a vacuform canopy from Squadron. I managed to cut it out of it's carrier last night and didn't mangle it to badly and it seems to fit pretty well, I'll post some pic's of it with my next update.

Here's a brief update of the progress I made over the weekend on this project.

I painted the cockpit interior green and gave it a wash followed by a bit of dry brushing. I still need to do the detail painting.

Hurricane_Mk1_build07.jpg

I thought I might try and open up the hand hold as most of the images of parked Hurricane's I've seen seem to have it this way. I'm not sure if it opens when the boarding step is down but since I'm planing to have the step down I figured this would add to the look a bit.

Hurricane_Mk1_build08.jpg

Here are the Aries horizontal stabs attached to the fuselage. I had to butt join them because I found the instructions were misleading as to what bit's to remove on the pour stub. The join is quite strong though and attaching them before I joined the fuselage halves together allowed me to add more glue to the inside of the join. They fit perfectly.

Hurricane_Mk1_build09.jpg

Thanks for looking,

Mark

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Here's what I accomplished on this project over the weekend;

The interior has been painted and weathered a bit with a wash and drybrush.

Hurricane_Mk1_build10.jpg

The cockpit with the instrument panel ready to be attached. I have to say Hasegawa did a great job with the cockpit on these Hurricanes. With just the addition of seat belts they look great OOB.

Hurricane_Mk1_build11.jpg

Another image of the IP attached to the cockpit.

Hurricane_Mk1_build12.jpg

Once the cockpit was complete I could close up the fuselage halves and they fit together quite well.

Hurricane_Mk1_build14.jpg

There were quite a few tense moments while I cut the vacuform canopy away from it's carrier with a scalpel. I found using my OptiVisor was the key to seeing what I was doing with the blade. In the end it came out pretty well and once it's glued in place it will fit perfectly...I just have to figure out how I'm going to paint it.

Hurricane_Mk1_build13.jpg

Now on to the wings!

Thanks for looking,

Mark

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  • 2 weeks later...
Great job with the cockpit!

Thanks Issac!

Painting the canopy - for this one if it were mine, I'd use painted decal strips.

I was think'n the same thing. Great minds eehhh?

Here's an update of my most recent progress on this project;

I filled in the step at the rear of the cockpit with some putty and smoothed it in. Not the best job, but I was afraid I would mess up the work I have all ready done so I kept it simple, I don't think it'll be to noticeable under the canopy anyway.

Hurricane_Mk1_build19.jpg

The wings are attached and they fit fairly well.

Hurricane_Mk1_build18.jpg

Except for the seam on the bottom, this one is going to take a little work to sort out.

Hurricane_Mk1_build16.jpg

The plugs for the various leading edge configurations were a bit troublesome to get to fit properly and took quite a bit of putty to blend in, especially the ones on the right wing for some reason.

Hurricane_Mk1_build15.jpg

The radiator cooling flap has been dropped a little. I still need to sort out the actuators for this though.

Hurricane_Mk1_build17.jpg

The plan is to get this one into the paint barn over the course of this coming week but I still have a lot of cleaning up to do before that can happen.

Cheers,

Mark

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  • 1 month later...

Despite not having made any updates to this thread in a while I have made some progress on this build.

Hurricane_Mk1_build24.jpg

I cleaned up the seams and added the navigation and landing lights to the wing and masked them off in preparation for painting. I chose to prime the metal areas with a bit of Floquil Old Silver and I primed the fabric areas with a dark grey. There seems to be a fair amount of paint chipping on this aircraft so I'm hoping that by priming with the silver I can chip up the paint work after I spray the camouflage paint, so once the silver had cured for about a week I masked the panel at the nose that will remain in a NMF for this particular aircraft and I masked off the wheel wells.

Hurricane_Mk1_build25.jpg

The control surfaces have been removed from the pour stubs and cleaned up ready to paint. The fit of these parts looks to be quite good. I decided to use the kit rudder as the Aries one had one of the control horns broke of and needed a bit of clean up to get it to fit properly and the kit part only needed a little of plastic strip added and a bit of clean up to get it to fit properly.

Hurricane_Mk1_build26.jpg

The radiator tub has been added with the cooling flap lowered a little. At this point I'm ready to start spraying the underside color.

Thanks for looking,

Mark

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  • 1 month later...

Here's an update of my progress so far.

I got on a bit of a roll over the past weekend and neglected to take any in progress pictures, but here's where I'm at with this project as of last night. The process went a little faster than normal because I wanted to chip the paint before the paint had a chance to fully cure. For some reason the dark earth was a lot harder to chip than the dark green was, go figure. Once the chipping was done I shot a gloss coat on and as soon as that was dry I applied a panel line wash using a mix of Promodeller washes. After that was dry I applied the decals using Micro Set and Micro Sol to settle them in to the panel lines. The Aeromaster decals worked great and look good, I'm pleased with them.

Hurricane_Mk1_build27.jpg

The bottom of this particular Hurricane didn't have under wing roundels so that saved a little time during the decaling process. I'm going to weather it up some more though but it still has a gloss coat on it to help the wash go on, once I get a dull coat on there I'll be able to get some more weathering done with a little pastel dust and artist oils.

Hurricane_Mk1_build28.jpg

I'll have to start working on getting the cockpit sorted soon. I do have the windscreen and gun sight painted, but they obviously need to still be attached along with the canopy and the exhaust still need to be painted.

Hurricane_Mk1_build29.jpg

I do have the landing gear painted and ready to go and the prop is done. I also have the control surfaces ready to attach, so I'm hoping my next up date will be one of the last for this build thread.

Thanks for looking,

Mark

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Looking good Mark. Those decals sure worked well!

Thanks Issac, Although I did notice that one of the serial numbers on the tail silvered a bit on me though... :thumbsup:

Here she is up on her landing gear... :cheers:

Hurricane_Mk1_build30.jpg

The underside has been weathered a bit, but I think I'm going to need to do a little more...It's not quite dirty enough.

Hurricane_Mk1_build31.jpg

The boarding step and the open hand hold have been added.

Hurricane_Mk1_build33.jpg

Here you can see some of the pastel dust weathering added to the top surface.

Hurricane_Mk1_build32.jpg

I'm just about there.

Thanks for looking,

Mark

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thank you very much for the kind words gentleman, I appreciate the encouragement... :cheers:

I must confess I have been a bit distracted lately with summer activities and the kids going back to school and have not been spending much time at the work bench the last month or so. I have made some progress though.

I had been deliberating about how to replicate the self adhesive tape used to cover the gun muzzles. I was considering using tape or decals until over on Britmodeller I was given a tip to use cigarette rolling paper and white glue. I used the decal supplied on the sheet as a template to cut out a piece of rolling paper the proper size and glued it in place with diluted white glue. once it was dry I painted it. I'm pleased with the result of this technique.

Hurricane_Mk1_build34.jpg

The windscreen and canopy have been completed. I painted the windscreen in the standard fashion by masking with tape and cutting out the frames with a sharp blade but that wasn't going to work on the vacuform canopy. So I decided to try using an old set of Fast Frames by True Details that was originally intended for a 1/48 A6M2 that I've had in the stash. This set had a section of spare straight sections that would be perfect for my Hurricane canopy. Fast Frames are a self adhesive vinyl that you paint the desired color and remove from the carrier, dip in water and apply. They are a bit thicker than decals so the overlap is slightly noticeable but not too bad I can't live with it.

Hurricane_Mk1_build35.jpg

The control surfaces have been glued in place and they fit like a charm.

Hurricane_Mk1_build36.jpg

I decided to order a set of Quickboost exhaust that still need to be added. I also need to run an aerial from the radio mast to the rudder and attach the pitot tube... Then I'll be done... :)

Hurricane_Mk1_build37.jpg

Thanks for looking,

Mark

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