StephenMG

As Sabrejet says, the hole is used when changing the gun pack. The 'hole' is actually a tube about 5" deep with a thread in the bottom. A 'spigot' is screwed into the hole and a standard bomb winch is hung from it. A strop is slung under the gun pack and attached to the end of the bomb winch cables. Those 2 winches plus a third at the front of the gun pack are operated together to winch it in or out. There's no plug when the spigot is removed, just a hole. The 'trestle' marking directly below it is actually a guide for locating the strop. The hole is present on all Hunters, but it's not always visible in photos.

The kit includes two tailcones, one with and one without the brake 'chute housing suggesting that an FGA.9 (or an F.6A) is on the cards at some point. Chuck an extra sprue with the big tanks and cut-out flaps in the box and the job's a good 'un. There's a lot more effort required to produce the F.4 that they've already announced so I'd imagine an FGA.9/F.6A is inevitable in due course. The airframe Airifx LIDAR scanned at Duxford is an F.6A so they have the data they need, although that Hunter has no tanks or pylons fitted which might explain why they made a bit of a mess of the latter.

All that's really missing to make an FGA.9 are 230 Gallon tanks (along with their bracing struts) and flaps with the cut-outs to clear them. There are some minor detail changes (antennas/aerials mainly) but that's about it.

There's virtually no difference at all. The F.6A was an F.6 with most of the mods for the FGA.9 except the uprated engine. There are some cockpit differences but externally the differences are usually just differences in antenna types and locations. The Academy/Italeri tailcone is a bit a long, but other parts of the fuselage are a bit short by the same amount, so overall they cancel out! The biggest problem with it is that they just stuck a 'lip' on the F.6 tailcone so there'e no bulge to the top surface to accommodate the parachute. I put a post on BM once with a list of all the things I thought were 'off' with the Academy Hunter. I'll see if I can find it. EDIT: Found the thread if it's any use - https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234909441-italeri-academy-hunter/ Mark

As has been said, a 'healthy' Hunter that's just been shutdown would have flaps and airbrake fully retracted. There is an interlock which prevents the airbrake being lowered when the undercarriage is down (in fact the brake will automatically close if the wheels are lowered with the airbrake out) so only loss of hydraulic pressure will cause it to droop on the ground. There is a test switch in the cockpit but that only partially opens the brake then snaps it shut again after a couple of seconds. To fully open the airbrake on the ground for servicing it was necessary to disconnect the jack. The test switch also came in handy for toilet roll bombing operations - operate the test switch, while the brake is partially open jam your toilets rolls in, take off, fly over neighbouring squadron's airfield, open airbrake to drop your 'bombs'!!! That's a fantastic video posted by YK GOH. Note that the Black Arrows (and the other Hunter aero teams for that matter) flew displays with one notch of flap on. That allowed a higher engine power setting to be used making it more responsive while flying the display.

Thank you all. This means there's another 20 quid I won't be seeing again! Thank you @Troy Smith for the great prop info. As you correctly guessed I'm more familiar with things that go "whoosh" than things that go "brrrrrrr"!!! I'm keen to build a Hurri as I've had a plan for a while to build aircraft related to RAF Pembrey where my Dad was based as a Hunter airframe fitter. Having done a Hunter F.1, Tempest TT.5 and Vampire T.11 (and with a Mosquito TT.35 half finished somewhere) I fancied a Hurricane as 316 Sqn were formed there in 1941. Although they've been 1/72 so far, that Airfix Hurricane looked so lovely I think I'll switch to 1/48, especially with Airfix' Hunter F.4 on the way later this year. Thanks again, Mark

Hi all, I have a hankering to build the latest mould Airfix 1/48 Hurricane but note it's currently being sold in 'tropical' or 'sea' guise. I'm not bothered about the decals but wondered if all the bits are in the box to build it as a 'standard' Hurricane, i.e. without arrestor hook or Vokes filter, with options for Rotol/DH props etc? Looking at some sprue shots I suspect they probably are but if anyone could confirm that before I hand over my Groats I'd be grateful. Mark

Genius!!!

B*gger! I wish I'd thought of that before I painted it cream!

@Ralph don't paint anything yet, I'm about to change my mind!!! I should have been painting the kitchen this afternoon but with all this talk of Qatari Hunters, and as I intend to build a new model of QA12 shortly, I thought I'd revisit my Tamiya colour mixes. While I happy with the Brown and Sand, I thought the mix for the Deep Sky Blue could be better - turns out it could have been a lot better! I thought my original mix was a little dark so I did what I should have done in the first place and got a better original paint sample to test it against. This is an original Qatari link collector which was filthy and had some weird milky build-up on it. I polished the front bit back to the original colour (then ran out of T-Cut so couldn't do any more!) and tried some paint mixes against it. Turns out that Revell Aqua 50 Light Blue (top left in this photo) is a pretty good stab at the colour straight from the bottle although it does need lightening a touch for a scale model in my opinion so a 60:40 mix of Light Blue:White should be pretty darn good. As for the Tamiya mixes, mine was indeed too dark. Lightening with white was good but threw the balance of the other colours in the mix off. Oddly the XF-18 has a significant effect when I first put some in but that seemed to lessen when more was added. Anyway to cut a long story short, the best mix to my eye was as follows, X-14 Sky Blue - 6 parts XF-18 Medium Blue - 1 part X-3 White - 3 parts (plus a bit more for scale effect to taste) I'm off to finish painting the kitchen before I get into any more trouble!

I don't know for certain John, but they certainly look very similar. The photo you posted looks quite saturated so the colours are very strong but in the photo here (look at photo 3 in the Strikemaster Gallery) https://www.baesystems.com/en/heritage/bac-strikemaster and at the photo you posted a few years back here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235005846-what-are-the-external-differences-between-a-strikemaster-and-a-jet-provost/&tab=comments#comment-2422788 they look much the same as the Hunter colours, which would make perfect sense as the Hunters and Strikeys were delivered around the same time. It appears the Saudis, Kuwaitis etc. drifted more towards a lighter 'sand' colour (similar to Light Stone) and a paler underside blue later which may also fuel the confusion over the older Hunter colours.

Yes Steve, good for Kuwaiti Hunters too. In fact any time you see a Hunter in this Brown/Sand/Blue scheme it'll be these colours. The appearance varies massively in photos though, hence the confusion. Those Humbrol codes I quoted are very good matches. Unfortunately Humbrol only do the Dark Earth in acrylics (they seem to have ditched the Middle Stone and never did the WWI Blue) but they are still all in the enamel range. M

Where indeed?!!! Ralph, further to my reply earlier I've dug out the colour mixes for Tamiya paints that I used for a model of Qatari Hunter QA12 I built some years ago. The colours were matched, as best I could, to the same original components shown in the thread I linked to above. The Tamiya brown isn't perfect, but there was certainly a variation in the original colours (as visible in the photo below) so I wasn't too concerned. Please bear in mind the colours quoted on the Xtradecal sheet are wrong but you can see how confusing these colours can be when you look at this faded photo. (Also, Xtradecal have the 'Sand' ring of the roundel as gold for some reason when it's actually the same Sand as the camo) Tamiya colour mixes, Brown - XF-52 Flat Earth straight from the bottle Sand - 4 parts XF-3 Flat Yellow with 3 parts XF-60 Dark Yellow Blue - equal parts of X-14 Sky Blue and XF-18 Medium Blue with a spot of white These mixes on my model, To collect the paint information from my link together here, the excellent Humbrol matches I used straight from the tin are, Sand = Humbrol 225 (Middle Stone) Brown = Humbrol 29 (Dark Earth) Deep Sky Blue = Humbrol 109 (WWI Blue) Unfortunately Humbrol only do 29 Dark Earth in their acrylics range (they seem to have ditched 225 and I don't think they ever did 109) but a good acrylic alternative, for the blue at least, is Revell Aqua 50 Light Blue, although I would personally add a tiny smidge of white or very light grey for scale effect. Cheers, Mark

Thanks Paul. It's seems sooooo long ago when we discussed this last! To answer your question Ralph have a look at this thread I posted a while ago for starters as the colour recommendations on decal sheets are often well off the mark - Cheers, Mark

F.6 only or, at a push, F.6A or FGA.9. To turn it into a Mk.5 you'd need to modify the fuselage vents to match the Sapphire engine, remove the leading edge extensions, reshape the wingtips and replace the tailcone with the 'small bore' version. It's been done though, there's a build on here somewhere I think. M