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A pair of Airfix Hawks in 1/72. Finished.


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ADDED BY EDIT ON 8/9/2021 - THERE’S A SUMMARY ON PAGE 139 IF YOU WANT TO SAVE SOME TIME ALBEIT YOU’LL MISS OUT ON SOME STORIES AND CHAT

 

It seems to me that most folk with an interest in aviation like the Hawk. What's not to love? And most of us have seen it - whether in the able hands of Red Arrows or in the Mach Loop or via some of the breath taking photographs that clever chaps with expensive cameras take at the Mach Loop.

I like it too. As a youngster I was lucky enough to earn my flying badge on the Hawk at RAF Valley - and then to begin to learn how to operate an aircraft, drop bombs, fire guns and fly tactically - both offensively and defensively - on the TWU (Tactical Weapons Unit) course at RAF Chivenor.

The Hawk is probably the nicest and best handling aircraft I ever flew - if you've handled a Hawk in a 1 v 1 - through the hi and low speed yo yo's, held it on the edge of the light pre-stall buffet in a turning fight, and forced it into the heavy buffet on the edge of a flick and spin for a low speed scissors - then IMHO you've experienced some of the most pure fun that flying has to offer. Even if you were cr*p at it and spent rather too much time looking over your shoulder at the other aircraft than seeing it in front of you.................... :)

So I have awfully fond memories of the old Hawk and seeing as I've now built the Chipmunk and the Jet Provost 3 and 5 it's time for a Hawk or two.

These will be Hawks from the early to mid 1980's. 1983 for the Valley Hawk and 1984 for the Chivenor Hawk. Like with the Chippie and the JPs I've picked examples from my log book and these are they:

The Valley Hawk is going to be a T Mk1 - XX176. Here she is with yours truly mangling the controls on 18 July 1983. You'll have to forgive young Fritag - he's only 19 at this point:

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You'll see that she has the early style Mark 10 bang seats with the larger head box, she has the Fred Sutton tail (have a look at Geedubelyers frankly awesome Revell 1/32 Red Arrows build for all the info on that) and she also has strobe lights top and bottom rather then the older less effective anti-collison lights.

I had been planning to build XX312 - cos I've got some better picture of hers with me on board later in the same month:

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But then I noticed that she's bearing the CFS crest on her tail rather than the 4FTS badge that 176 is wearing - and it's the 4FTS badge that I want.

BTW - CT should have chosen her for his LED Hawk build - look at that nose light shining in the murk......... :)

Alongside 176 I shall do a wrap around camouflage Hawk from Chivenor. I've chosen XX263; and here she is with a wide eyed and no doubt terrified young Fritag hanging on for grim death sometime in about April 1984. He has at least remembered to bring the gear up - after all he now has his RAF wings and is an old man of 20 years of age.........

If I close my eyes I can still picture the sight of another Hawk bobbing up down a few feet away during a formation take off or landing.

She also has the early head box, Fred Sutton tail and strobe lights.

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XX263 is actually a TMk1A as she was wired for sidewinders - but there is no real difference on the outside (unless of course she were carrying sidewinders!) and in the cockpit the only real difference is a few more switches and indicators.

The TWU's had both T Mk 1's and T Mk 1A's on inventory.

Oh - I've just noticed that you can see my map sitting on the coaming. Trouble is - If I recreate that on my model now Garth will claim that I've pinched the idea from him and his awesome Tornado GR4 build :)

In this piccie XX263 is wearing pylons but no CBLS or gun pod. I haven't yet decided whether or not to model her with CBLS or gun pod - something to think about later.

Since my return to modelling I've only done models in the training scheme of red/white and grey (chippie and JPs) so I think in due time I'll be calling for help on how to best to capture the wrap around camouflage!

I have started playing with bits and pieces on the build - but only really to get as far as deciding that I'll use the latest tooling of the Airfix Hawk (A5502A) as the basis of the builds and to start thinking about what needs doing.

I had to choose between the Airfix A5502A (top in the photo below) - which is what CT used in his lovely red arrows build - or the older Airfix A03085 (middle in the photo) - which Bill didn't think a whole lot of in his charity build - ot the Revell/Italeri offering (bottom in the photo) which I soon rejected for reasons that I'll explain later.

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Hannants have had the Airfix offerings on special offer at half price on occasion recently and so I picked up 3 of the Airfix new tools at £3.95 (yes) each. As well as one of the older ones. So I've a couple of spares that I can play with and practice on.

I also have the old Matchbox Red Arrows Hawk - which I'm afraid is generally good only as a paint mule - but does at least show what a pretty aeroplane we have here :):

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Oh - and it has I think helped me out with one really quite useful part - which again I'll explain later.

That's it for now - before this opening post gets too unwieldy. I'll post a few more picks of my prep work/thinking so far a little later.

P'raps I should say this tho'.

The good thing (I hope) is that the Airfix kit is several generations newer than the old chippie and JP5 ones I've previously done as WIPs - so I'd like to think they won't need so much work and that this WIP will be a whole bunch shorter and won't trespass on folks patience so much :)

I'm not promising that I'll be working any faster of course :) - just hoping that i won't have so much to do.

Thanks for looking

Steve

Edited by Fritag
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There is someone on the model aircraft forums who says" you cannot have too many Spitfires"

I think the modern equivalent might be "you cannot have too many Hawks".

Just look at the number of colour schemes. I shall be following this story with great interest.

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Hoorah! He's back, and now I shall learn lots about the Hawk, and be able to throw around phrases like "Fred Sutton tail" as though I have some sort of clue what I am talking about. (Isn't he some sort of compost, or is that John Innes?)

[Hmmm. Czech Master box in the background, eh? Could this be better bang seats? I think we should be told, and no doubt soon will be...]

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Being the same vintage as your good self (ish) but not possessing the modelling skills, ability to fly fast jets, or adversarial abilities, I am sitting in the virtual corner being as quiet as a mouse.

If you do hear a sudden thud, it will be my jaw hitting the floor.....again!

Please don't feel you have to apologise for the pace of your build, for me, it just prolongs the vicarious pleasure.

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I have been eagerly waiting for this. I shall sit back and enjoy

You're Kemble hawk thread's a reference for me here Andy :)

...and now I shall learn lots about the Hawk, and be able to throw around phrases like "Fred Sutton tail" as though I have some sort of clue what I am talking about......

I read about Fred Sutton and his tail in a book about 2 weeks ago :blush: I nonchalantly dropped it in the first post to make it look like I knew what I was talking about here..... :whistle:

In truth - whilst I can remember a reasonable amount about flying the Hawk - I'm not much cop on it's technicalities - I know from other threads that there's a bunch of very knowledgeable Hawk experts on BM - and I stand ready to be corrected and put right at any time :)

I should say that Debs (Ascoteer) sent me some useful stuff on the Hawk and I've got a decent bunch of reference material.

1984 eh? I just entered the world :whistle:

Never mind Lad - we'll let you join in with the grown ups....... :bleh:

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You do realize that with each model, and thus, hours of invaluable modeling experience gained, that we are expecting said quality to improve almost exponentially with each build.... don't you !!! (not that there's any pressure on you after the last couple of builds!)

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I'm looking forward to this (in 1984 I was getting my MSc and bimbling around in a UAS Bulldog).

Obviously I never flew the Hawk - we 'lumpy jumpers' weren't deemed able to fly 'Operational' aircraft (don't get me started!) when I went through the system.

I did, however 'fly' the Hawk as a pax (when holding on 234 Sqn on the TWU at RAF Brawdy) and I must say it was an awesome aeroplane.

My over-riding memory was sitting in the back seat on a CAP and barrelling the aircraft into a fight with some A10s over Staxton. I got it into the fight ok at warp factor snot (well over 500 kts in the dive) but ran out of ideas as I blew througth the A10's 'Lufberry Circle'.

OOPS!

Thank the gods for QWI's

There I've said it!

Edited by Ascoteer
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Let me just pull upp my comfy chair and...

- Waiter, a pint of your best bitter and a big bag of crisps! You might as well prepare a second pint soon 'cause I'll be here for quite a while.This promises to be a long and very good show that I don't want to miss.

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100 page modelling tutorial

Sutton tail eh hadn't known about that. See learnt something already.

The IPMS red arrows guide has a couple of good pics showing the 'Fred's rear end' comparison and while googling this subject last night I found this, quite an interesting read. Hawk Story

CT

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