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Hawker typhoon cockpit colour


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Hi Gents, I'm building a Hasegawa 1/48 Typhoon (car door) with an Aires cockpit set, as a lot of the info I found suggested a colour scheme of black with aluminium tubes I decided to go for that as a change from cockpit green. Now the quandary I have is that the kit instructions say cockpit green for behind the pilot in the rear of the 'glazed' area, what colour is this likely to be if the green isn't used elsewhere?

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It was used elsewhere; the Pilot's Notes, which are for the car-door version, show a totally light-coloured interior, which indicates green. For the top decking, I'd go for the camouflage colour.

Edgar

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Thanks for the reply Edgar, I'm afraid the black/aluminium pit is a 'fait a compli' (hope that's right).

I will, however do the section in question in camo colours when, that is, I've decided on the scheme.

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You could do Roland Beaumont's PR-G, as he had the cockpit adapted for night intruder work, which might have included painting it black.

Also there is the night fighter prototype with radar, which might have had black cockpit (I've no evidence for that), or this one:

typhoon-R8697.jpg

Which might have had black cockpit too...

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You could do Roland Beaumont's PR-G, as he had the cockpit adapted for night intruder work, which might have included painting it black.

Also there is the night fighter prototype with radar, which might have had black cockpit (I've no evidence for that), or this one:

typhoon-R8697.jpg

Which might have had black cockpit too...

I quite like that scheme Ben especially as there are no D-Day stripes which a lot of Typhoons end up with.

I did fancy the two tone brown desert scheme though.

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You could do Roland Beaumont's PR-G, as he had the cockpit adapted for night intruder work, which might have included painting it black.

Also there is the night fighter prototype with radar, which might have had black cockpit (I've no evidence for that), or this one:

typhoon-R8697.jpg

Which might have had black cockpit too...

That's a great scheme and an interesting variation.

Regarding repainting the cockpit of an in-service aircraft - do you realise how difficult that is? It's not a simple case of just spraying everything the required colour or putting a thunderflash into a tin of paint, closing the canopy and retiring to a safe distance and waiting for the noise to die down!!

It would require the removal of all the instruments, accessories, fittings and anything else whose operation may be impaired by the random application of unwanted paint, it's just too much work and frankly, wouldn't be considered worth the effort!

Aircraft cockpits if they do get repainted would get it done when the cockpit is stripped out - during a major servicing or modification which Beamont's adaptions for night fighting work don't fall into.

Many, many years ago I read a book in which Beamont described some of the changes he had made, IIRC the majority of them were centred around reducing unwanted reflections from the instrument lighting, I believe he also had the reflector glass removed from the gunsight so that it projected directly onto the armoured glass windscreen, this too helped cut down on unwanted reflections. I would suspect in pretty much most scales the lack of the reflector glass would be the most obvious difference for that aircraft.

Wez

Edited by Wez
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FYI, It's Beamont, not Beaumont. There was an ace, The Honourable Walter Beaumont, who had 6 kills and 2 shared but he was killed during the Battle of Britain.

Thanks and duly corrected.

Wez

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Regarding repainting the cockpit of an in-service aircraft - do you realise how difficult that is? It's not a simple case of just spraying everything the required colour

It wouldn't have been overly difficult, in the early Typhoons, since both doors could be opened, making them available for brush-painting, while the "walls," lower down, were actually formed by the insides of the removable fuselage inspection panels, so they could have been unbuttoned, and painted off-airframe.

Edgar

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It wouldn't have been overly difficult, in the early Typhoons, since both doors could be opened, making them available for brush-painting, while the "walls," lower down, were actually formed by the insides of the removable fuselage inspection panels, so they could have been unbuttoned, and painted off-airframe.

Edgar

I concede Edgar, you may have a point with the early Typhoons but I still think its unlikely - still too much effort!

I really want to disavow anybody of the notion that it's an easy thing to repaint a cockpit of an in-service aircraft, generally speaking it isn't! Imagine repainting a Spitfire cockpit? You'd have to remove the following to gain access to the cockpit and to prevent paint getting into and impairing the operation of the following:

Seat

Flying Controls

Side-door latch mechanism

Pitot heater control

Gun Camera control

Rudder and elevator trim controls

Radiator flap control

Throttle box

Cockpit lighting

Compass

Fuel Selector

Fuel Controls

Radio Controller

IFF Controller

Undercarriage selector

Harness release/lock

Oxygen connections…

...disturbed systems functional checks, compass swing, rigging checks etc... ...it's not the sort of enterprise you'd enter into lightly and would render the aircraft unavailable for days!

Wez

Edited by Wez
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