Hobby Boss BAe Hawk T Mk.1A 1:48

[Mike]

BAe Hawk T Mk.1A
1:48 Hobby Boss

The Hawk has been the RAF fast jet trainer of choice since it replaced the Folland Gnat in the late 70s, at which time it was still under the management of Hawker Siddeley, who were later subsumed into British Aircraft Corporation. It has gone on from there to be a widely used across the world in varying guises, including a carrier-borne variant operated by the Americans as the T-45 Goshawk.

The T.1 has been in service since the beginning with the RAF, and a number of airframes were upgraded to the 1A specification to carry Sidewinders and a cannon pod. As well as being used to train pilots, it is also the mount of the much-loved and admired Red Arrows, who are probably the best advert for the aircraft available. The new T.2 has been designed as a lead-in to the new fast jets, the Typhoon or F-35, as and when it arrives in service.

The Kit
This release from HB was a bit of a surprise to all but the diligent, with very little heard about it before it hit their catalogue a few months ago. It arrives in a busy market, with the old Airfix kit, and the newer Italeri kits in this scale as competition, both of which have their own foibles. Can this new release correct those, and give us a nice Hawk T.1A out of the box? The box art is a little dull, and inside are eleven sprues of mid-grey styrene, two and a bit of clear parts, and a pair of small frets of Photo-Etched (PE) brass. There are also two decal sheets, a glossy painting guide, and the usual instruction booklet, with a card divider inside the box keeping some of the smaller sprues in place.

First impressions are quite good, as the designers have certainly tried to pack plenty of detail in, and they have used a good degree of slide-moulding to achieve this, although this has introduced some additional seam lines here and there, which will need some careful scraping to make good. There is also some restrained use of raised riveting at the rear of the fuselage, which looks nice, but may fall foul of the sanding stick during building, so to this modeller is only really valuable if you can manage to avoid damaging them. There's always a few runs of Archer 3D rivet decals if you fail to keep them intact, so I'll not worry about it.

The cockpit is the first task in building the kit, and it is well appointed with moulded in side consoles to the two-piece tub, separate instrument panels with moulded in raised dials and decals to finish off, twin control columns, but no rudder pedals (which probably won't be seen anyway), but there are some bits and bobs missing from the rear "parcel shelf" behind the back-seater, which is an accusation you can also level at other kits of the subject. Detail on the seats is nice, but you only get the early wedge-shaped head-boxes, so would need to spend out for a more modern iteration of the Martin Baker seat if you wanted to model a more recent article. Once complete, the cockpit and single part nose bay are inserted into the nose and closed up for posterity. The nose bay is a little shallow, but most folks won't notice that anyway, as it's quite dark in there. There is a bit of detail moulded into the sides that should come up nicely under paint however. The nose section goes back as far as the rear of the intakes, which is a requirement to maximise the use of tooling for all the variants they have planned. The rear fuselage closes around the back of the nose section, with an insert for the belly-mounted air-brake, and the front cockpit coaming added during the process. The intakes are single parts, with slide-moulding giving them plenty of detail all around, and a nice thin lip. There is a clear light part to add to each one, but they weren't fitted to all airframes, so check your references before you install them into the engraved spaces on the intake sides. The exhaust fits into a rear bulkhead, and although it is too short, it has engine detail moulded into the end. The canopy can be installed at this point, complete with the blast screen that fits between the pilots attached to the canopy. Some GS Hypo cement, or PVA would be best to fix that in to avoid clouding up the canopy, which seems quite thick on the sills, with a bit of distortion. There are PE rear-view mirrors provided, plus a small latch on the forward edge of the canopy for external opening. There are no references made to the det-cord pattern on the canopy top, and a representation isn't moulded in, but there are decals that are provided on the larger sheet to accomplish the task, and if you look carefully at the last two decal options, it is mentioned there, but not on the first option. Odd!

The tail fin isn't integral to the fuselage halves, as there are differences between marks in fit and finish, and the two halves are glued together then added to the fuselage on two pins that fit into matching sockets. The fin looks a little short and/or blunt, but is actually taller than the Airfix offering, and both now look a little wide and short to my eyes. That's annoying! The horizontal tails are single parts that attach to the fuselage sides via a single point, just like the real ones. The wings will be the cause of a little sanding and trimming, because they have four fences moulded into them, some of which aren't needed for the T.1A, which generally sports only the larger outer one. One wing for all marks seems to have been tooled, but you aren't advised to remove the inner fences for this edition, even though you'll need to do so if they bother you. Comments have been made about the vortex generators being too far aft, but that might be an optical illusion caused by the excessive wing fences, or the fact that the wing span scales out correctly for an airframe with tip-mounted Sidewinders at 9.94m, when the Airfix kit is almost 10mm shorter in wingspan, which is about right for the basic wing at 9.39m. The wings look like they're about 10mm too wide if I'm correct. The vortex generators are actually closer to the leading edge than the Airfix kit, and are finer too. The lower wing is full-span, while the upper wings are split either side of the fuselage, with flaps and ailerons moulded into the wing. The flap actuator fairings are added to pairs of holes under the wings after they have been joined to the fuselage, but the main gear bays are inserted beforehand. The bay inserts are a single part each, and have wiring and ribbing detail moulded in, some of which is fictional, and they don't have the deeper inner section of the real thing. A lovely clear nose-light and wingtip lights are added here too.

The landing gear has been moulded in halves to add extra external detail, but this will mean a seam to hide, although with some careful alignment, you do at least have some control over it. You will also need to remove some large ejector pin marks from the mating surface to achieve a snug fit, so test-fitting is the way to go. The nose gear leg has a single wheel trapped within its yoke, and the moulded-in hubs are shallow, while the tyre has a substantial sag to it, which isn't all that evident on the real thing unless it has been parked up for a while. The main gear also have sag moulded in, but this is more appropriate, and again the hubs are too shallow by far, having an almost hub-cap like appearance. CMK's wheel set will come in handy here for sure. The main legs are built from four parts, plus small legs that hold the captive bay doors at the correct angle, but you'll probably want to leave them off and paint them with the rest of the airframe exterior. The air-brake and actuator strut are shown open only, and although the brake is nicely detailed on the inside, the bay itself is a little simplified, and until I have fitted the parts together, it is difficult to say whether it will be easy to pose retracted as it is often seen when on the ground.

A full set of pylons are included in the kit, which aren't frequently seen installed all at once, but they're there, and you can use them if you wish. You are supplied with the following ordnance and a diagram of which pylon they can be placed on, but you are better off looking for some actual photographic evidence rather than loading up regardless.

2 x AIM-9P with adapter rails
2 x AIM-9L with adapter rails
2 x LR-155 Rocket Packs
2 x M117 Iron Bombs
2 x Additional fuel tanks

I do wish that companies (in general) would provide some training rounds for more typical real-world practice scenarios, but I suppose you could always take your knife to a "live" Sidewinder instead.

Markings
There are three markings options from the box, which have sufficient variation to please many folks, but I believe some of the roundel sizes are incorrect, so you'll need to check your references again there. The red centres of the roundels are also way out of register on my copy, which will stick out like the proverbial sore-thumb if applied to the model. From the box you can build one of the following:

• XX256 of No.2 Tactical Weapons Unit (No.63 "Shadow" Squadron) RAF Chivenor, 1981 wrap-around grey/green camouflage.
• XX341 of the Empire Test Pilots School, Advanced Systems Training Aircraft (ASTRA) Boscombe Down, 2000 Raspberry Ripple scheme in blue, red, white and grey.
• XX226 of No.4 Flying Training School (No.74 "Shadow" Squadron) RAF Valley, 2001 all-over gloss black with tiger head on the tail.
  

Decals are a little below-par for Hobby Boss, and some of the yellow doesn't seem to have been under-printed with white, so will probably disappear if applied over any darker colours. The red is a little spotty on my sample, as well as being out of register to a fair degree, and the overall view under magnification is slightly fuzzy, but it's not so obvious at 1x. The smaller sheet contains all the stencils for the weapons, as well as two nice decals for the instrument panels, which should improve their look after being well soaked in decal softening solution to get them to settle over the raised detail.

Conclusion
Not the easiest review in the book, because from an advanced modeller's point of view the kit has some fairly difficult problems to fix in terms of shape as well as the smaller details. If built up out of the box you should obtain a reasonable replica of the aircraft as you can see in the tape-up pictures above, but the more critical eye will notice problems that they would either choose to address or go elsewhere. The apparent issue with the wing span doesn't bode well, but I would prefer corroboration one way or the other before waving my arms around in horror.

The kit is best suited to the casual modeller who has no major concern regarding accuracy, and I'm sure it will sell well as such. All Hawk kits in 1:48 so far have their issues to a greater or lesser degree, but for the more detail and accuracy motivated modeller, it's a case of choosing which one you are prepared to work with, and I suspect the case for this one will be weak.

Review sample courtesy of

[Alpha Delta 210]

Great review Mike. Such a shame - a missed opportunity methinks!

[Julien]

Looks like they have not got the Tiger decals for 74 Sqn right, no white in there? also some of the white decals seem to be missing from the sheet.

[Mike]

There is some white, but it has a horizontal blend with the orange lower down than it should, so it looks different, and the cheeks are more orange than white. They did get a bit of white on the chin, teeth & ear lowers though

[Shaun]

Disappointing decal sheet, who did the research?

Never seen an RAF aircraft finished in different font between the serial numbers and letters?

And don't look at the roundels , maybe they are avoiding the copyright issue by not printing them correct?

Shaun.

[Threadbear]

It amazes me that manufacturers can get such an easily researchable subject so incorrectly proportioned? Makes you think that HB never ran a tape measure over a Hawk?

But that maybe why HB/Trumpeter churn out so many kits in all genres, they base their moulds purely on photos off the internet?

[mr_stomach]

Hello! Did not understand - wing is 10mm greater in wingspan only or in chord too?

Thanx.

[Mike]

Hello! Did not understand - wing is 10mm greater in wingspan only or in chord too?

Thanx.

Not sure at this stage, as I've not checked. If I remember later, I'll have a look

[pacificmustang]

good review Mike