Hawker Hart Family

[AdrianMF]

Hello All,

I've started an Airfix Hawker Demon, as the first of a planned sequence of builds covering the Hart family from various kit manufacturers. For these builds I have an Airfix Hart and a Demon - the Demon (Left) is a modification of the Hart mould (Right), "modernised" with added fabric sag (shame!). I am using up my dodgy Hart with a warped top wing and slightly warped fuselage - I still have a mint one in the stash.

The Demon seems to be about 3mm short and the fin/rudder is off compared to photos, but otherwise pretty accurate in outline. The Mushroom Model book plans and the Air Pictorial plans both match the kit, but they come up about a foot short. The old Harleyford/Aeromodeller plans show the right length. First stage was to lengthen the fuselage and add some cockpit detail. I rebuilt the gunners cockpit as well, as the Airfix one doesn't really line up against my references. So here's where I am

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

Edited November 10, 2012 by AdrianMF

[Col.]

Wonderful work so far Adrian.

[Graham T]

Wow looking good!

[AdrianMF]

I've painted up the inside and taken a couple of photos before I closed up the fuselage:

You can also see the new balsa fin and rudder, which has an accurate outline. I painted the edges in black after cutting out the profile so that I could have a datum whilst sanding it all down. The balsa was sealed with superglue and then sanded, with about 3 coats. I'm still mulling over fabric effects...

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

[Col.]

Been a long time since I last seen balsa wood being used in a static model!

The added detail looks even better all painted up now.

[Silver Fox]

Great work on such an ancient kit

[Vulcanicity]

Superb work! I've got one of these to do, so I hope you don't mind if I ask you how you did the gunner's cockpit decking? It looks spot-on.

[AdrianMF]

Hi Vulcanicity, here's what I did:

start with a cylinder of plastic of the right diameter. I heated up some 40 thou sheet and draped it over a felt tip pen with the right barrel diameter.

cut that down to fit in the gap behind the cockpit, as if the rear position was faired over.

make an almost vertical cut with a razor saw just behind the cockpit, not all the way down!

cut at a much shallower angle from the back of the piece to meet the bottom of the first cut. I used a knife for this.

this makes the large "V" you see from the profile.

stick some thinner card on the shallow slope and sand the edges down to line up with the cylinder surface. This makes the shallow decking.

bore out a hole for the gunner in the decking you have just made.

make a hoop 8.5mm inside, 9.5mm outside for the scarff ring. I make odd size hoops by wrapping 10 thou x 20 thou plastic strip round a paintbrush handle (tapered so there's a wide range of diameters available!) and supergluing a few laminations, then sanding the finished object down to get it properly circular.

stick hoop on decking

add a couple of bits of card to extend the decking at the front and to block off the steep slope (leaving little "windows" at the side)

Hope that's clear...

Regards,

Adrian

[Col.]

Adrian, you almost make that sound easy!

[AdrianMF]

I've finished my fin and made a casting - this will do for all Kestrel Hart variants apart from the Osprey:

I'm still new to casting, and I've got a long way to go... This time I learned: "get a good finish on the master copy" and "make a bigger mould"!

I've started on the Aeroclub Osprey - another scratch interior, and I'm only putting in what you can see this time:

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

Edited November 10, 2012 by AdrianMF

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Blimey!

Incredible scratchwork Adrian.....A joy to watch!

[TeeELL]

Adrian,

  is there any chance I could see the photos of your Demon build, to give me some inspiration on building my 29(F) Sqn kite?

 

regards Tony

[AdrianMF]

Sadly, it is still exactly there. See my "Shelf of shame" signature below

 

@Old Man has done some lovely builds of the Hart family though, and he's inspired me! (Although not enough to actually finish mine...)

 

Regards,

Adrian

[TeeELL]

Thanks Adrian,

  unfortunately I cannot view any of the photos you posted 'back in the day'!   I wondered if you might still possess them? 

[AdrianMF]

There is a plugin for Chrome and Firefox (google "photobucket embed fix") that gets around the problem, at least for now - I've got it installed on mine and it works well. I like to think that I will sort out all the links but that would take a while...

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

And yes, I have a copy of everything on my laptop hard drive, office hard drive and cloud backup. I didn't trust photobucket that much!!

[Hamden]

 

After the Blenheim this should should be easy you've done the hard bit!

 

  Roger

[Graham Boak]

Nice work indeed.  Something I wasn't aware of until recently is that the top of the rear fuselage is lower on the Demon than it is on the Hart.  Presumably this was to improve the field of fire of the gunner.  It looks from the photographs above that Airfix got this right: is it a feature all of the plans?