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This is my recently finished 1/48 Trumpeter Hawker Sea Hawk. The model went together quite well, although the wings took a bit of work to attach. It would have been nice to have a better way of showing the wings folded. Built OOB except for a bit of work on the seat and I painted the invasion stripes in preference to using the decals. Tamiya acrylics were used. Primer was XF-2 with a touch of XF-1. The main colours were XF-54 Dark Sea Grey and XF-21 Sky. Weathering was with grey and grime washes and Abteilung 502 smoke and cream brown oils. The aircraft represents a Seahawk flying from HMS Albion during the 1956 Suez campaign. And a couple of photos with Trumpeter's 1/48 Westland Wyvern S4 I built a few months ago. The Wyvern was a lump of an aeroplane.

Having discarded the Airfix Sea Hawk I thought the MPM kit might be marginally better. It took a bit of prepping to get it reasonable, including blocking up the inside of the fuselage so you don't see through across the intakes. It's also very thick plastic with chunky joins between sprues and parts, but they file down ok. It needed quite a bit of nose weight, I just about squeezed in three small lead balls. Colours are EDSG upper and Humbrol 80 lower, both from spray cans. The tail bullet fairing is gloss black. Despite the photos there is an ejector seat, it just seems to sit really low in the cockpit! The decals included in the kit are pretty good, nice colours and well printed.

Having read a couple of brief 'reviews' about the Airfix Sea Hawk on this forum I decided to sell both of mine and buy an MPM one instead! No doubt it's probably no better but there are limited options, and at least the decals look decent. I'll probably have to change the serial though as apparently WV863 was lost in a crash and I never build models of any aircraft lost. It just doesn't feel right to me somehow. I'll make this one with the playing card similar to the gate guard at Culdrose and FAA museum example, but representing an operational Sea Hawk. First question, anyone know of any visible differences between an FGA4 and FGA6 which with limited skill would be insurmountable?

Hi, After years of looking at the Airfix Sea Hawk 1/72 kit, and slowly buying some after market goodies for it, I decided to jump into the deep end. I got that kit in the 1970s as a "free gift" with a subscription for a French modelling magazine (mPm if I recall correctly... time does fly!). This is a very rough kit, with many sink marks, ejection pin marks, a lot of flash, etc... And no cockpit to speak of. But I have wanted to build it since I was a brat, so here is my chance. The few thingies that I will try and use. Decals from Model Art. And the kit, in all its glory! Some of the doc I have on that gorgeous plane. Many more photos spread around hundreds of magazines and book... Such fun! Hopefully I will get somewhere with this antiquity of a kit! JR

Hello everybody, For the Hawker (Siddeley) GB I’m going to build the Trumpeter 1/48 Hawker Sea Hawk FGA Mk.6, for reference I am using 4+ Publications’ Post War Wings booklet. I have a soft spot for the Sea Hawk as it was the Aircraft I depicted in one of the first oil paintings I ever sold (Tiger, Tiger see below); not surprisingly I intend to complete the kit as the very same aircraft as per my painting, the markings for which are conveniently included in the kit. I’m going to complete the kit out of the box with some added scratched extras; however I had already purchased a Pavla ejection seat which I’d forgotten about until I retrieved the kit from the stash. In preparation I have trawled through the forum and elsewhere looking for comparable builds and pitfalls in the kit generally. There do seem to be a few minor issues, the most annoying of which is a misalignment of some panel lines between the rear of the main fuselage and the tail section. I've been looking forward to this one, Cheers, M.

This started life several years ago as a modification of the MPM kit. The original intention was to build an F1 to go with my P1040 but something, probably due to something between lack of nous and gross stupidity, led to it ending up as the N7/46, the navalised P1040. I thought that the first F1 had the short wings and tail and carried out the appropriate modifications but while searching for data on the original tailhook I found a picture of the N7/46 and realised that was what I was building. I also found that it appeared to have the the P1040's later canopy rather than the one fitted to the production Sea Hawk. Since I was in no mood to produce a new canopy at that point it was consigned to the shelf of doom until I could face up to making one. There it languished for several years until I realised that I actually had a suitable mould, created when I was refurbishing my P1081 so it was restarted. All went along well until I came to fit the main u/c legs when I discovered that the Sea Hawk u/c was different to that of the N7/46. (you would think that he should have noticed at the beginning - it's his age you know). It appears to me the the Sea Hawk main legs were shorter, perhaps to give increased angle of attack when being catapulted, so the kit legs had to be lengthened and new u/c doors made. The VP413 decals were made at home. The prototype 'P' decals were a problem as the ones I had were either a fraction too small or a fraction too large. I went with the smaller ones. There seems to be a lack of pictures of this a/c. I only found two. Fortunately one of them showed it with the wings folded so I could see the registration. For anyone building the 'proper' version from this kit the are some frustrating items. There are some 'holes' in the actual a/c for guns, boundary layer bleeds and something ahead of the windshield. None of these appear in the kit. There is a resin cockpit that requires much fettling before it will fit and a resin seat which is too wide for the resin cockpit. It has a 'battle damaged fuel tank' made from resin but lacks something that would be really useful, namely inlet guide vanes and the boundary layer offtakes in the intakes. Seen here with its predecessor the P1040 Any comments and extra information welcome John

WV908 from The Royal Navy Historic Flight. Pics thanks to Graham.

Hello again! At Ellesmere model show last Sunday I got a Sea Hawk for £2. It came without decals, only in the bottom part of the box, with loose parts. I've wanted a Sea Hawk for a while anyway, but never got round to picking one up. So I bought it as I figured I could build it in the last hour of the show when things were winding down anyway. As it's such an old kit anyway, the parts are few and far between and it didn't take very long at all to finish building. I glued it together and then gave it some sanding at home. I then decided to buy a Hobby Boss Sea Hawk so that I could get some decals. It didn't cost me much more than it would have to get the decals on their own anyway! So the Airfix kit will be a Luftwaffe one, and the Hobby Boss an Indian one! Below are pictures of the two kits...you can certainly see the age difference!

Hello everyone! I'd like to share with you the predecessor to my last submission here, the Italeri 1/72 Sea Harrier FRS 1. It was completed around 4 months ago. The Hawker Sea Hawk played a pivotal role in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. Deployed aboard the INS Vikrant (formerly the HMS Hercules), they flew successful sorties destroying or disabling vital installations in what is today Bangladesh, with no loss of aircraft. In honor of the role played by the Indian Navy and to a large extent, the Sea Hawk, December 4th is celebrated as Navy Day here in India. The Sea Hawk is part of my Indian Navy build theme, starting from the Vampire T55, the Kamov-28, the Sea Hawk and finally the Sea Harrier which replaced the Sea Hawk in the Indian Navy. These aircraft flew out of, or were based at Dabolim Goa, very close to where I spent my childhood. She, along with many others like her are now housed at the Naval Aviation Museum in Goa. The Sea Hawk bearing registration 076 piloted by Lieutenant RH Tahiliani was the first Sea Hawk of the Indian navy to land on the INS Vikrant. So it made for a unique choice of subject matter for this iconic aircraft. The kit itself was a joy to build. Along with the Eduard photoetch set to add in some extra detail, some custom riveting (which I took oodles of creative licence to place), and some hydraulic lines in the wheel bays (A big thank you to Vulcanicity here on britmodeller), the end result is a very sharp and detailed model for it's size. Boo-boos include the color- mixed it up from primary colors, and it ended up being too blue, and not grinding down the MLG bay doors before installing the PE panels which resulted in the doors touching the external tanks, and thus the wheels bend excessively inwards. The masking of the canopy also messed up unexpectedly. The Leaping Tiger was placed further aft on the original 076, and later painted forward on other aircraft. Lesson learnt. Anyways, on to the pictures! Two generations of fleet defense posing together: Thanks for watching!! Cheers, Alex.

Here's my second completed kit out of group of four HMS Eagle aircraft I'm working on. Trumpeter kit Classic Airframes decals (easy to get hold of separately on ebay) CMK wingfold It's a very straightforward kit to build, only changes I made were to open up all the vents and intakes around the nose.

SPECIAL THANKS to Bootneck, without whom this build would not have been possible - Wonderland Models are having some snags with Trumpeter shipping, so my order has yet to be delivered; Mike stepped in and offered to lend me the same kit from his stash. Top man! The statutory box etc shot; line-up as follows: Trumpeter 1/48 Sea Hawk Mk 6 Quick Boost jet pipes WolfPack wing fold set Eduard mask and PE interior detail An old Aeroclub white metal MB Mk 2 bang seat that I have had for ages and should be perfect for this. Model Alliance Royal Navy Aerobatics Display Teams decals set (those who are following the Helicopter GB will recognise that my 705 NAS Sharks Gazelle is from the same set)