Hobbyboss 1/72 Hawker Sea Hawk

[Peter Lloyd]

Hello all!  I'm here to build a Sea Hawk, one of the more aesthetically pleasing and commercially successful straight-wing jets of the immediate post war era.

 

There are plenty of build logs here on Britmodller of the Hobbyboss kit, that's now a few years old.  I will be building out of the box with some minor extra work.

 

 

 

 

Parts and packaging are very good.

 

My only previous experience with Hobbyboss was their comparable F9F Panther, which was a very pleasant build.

[Col.]

Welcome to the GB Peter. If the other threads here are anything to go bythen this kit does go together well. Just be sure to omit those Suez Stripes  

[Peter Lloyd]

I'll keep it nice 'n legal, Col. Cheers.

[Peter Lloyd]

Off we go...

 

 

This model comes together remarkably quickly, so my first photo seems to be well 'in progress'.  I have opted to use the kit parts in the interests of not spending too much money and waiting for parts for every model I build.  Resin ejector seats are done by Pavla, Quickboost, CMK and I think Freightdog, and would of course improve the kit part.  But what Hobbyboss give you isn't bad, vastly ahead of what most 80s-90s kits had.  The main issue is probably the thickness of the sides of the seat.  I made leather seat cushions from painted card.  The photo is taken before I killed the gloss properly. The cockpit is pretty accurate compared to photos, but lacking the messiness so characteristic of early British jets, which always somehow had the look of having been built on someone's garage.

I dumped in a random amount of nose weight, cutting apart a fishing sinker.  Note the two little pieces flanking the nose wheel bay had to be pried out when the fuselage halves went together. I also glued a bit more onto the rear wall of the cockpit.  Time will tell if it is enough.

 

 

This is the intake, the fences/ducts are very thick as you can see. I thinned mine down, but....

 

 

... the ducts should curve around, parallel to the rear 'wall' of the inlet tract.  I obviously didn't fix this.  It wouldn't have been hard, just a matter of cutting some pieces from a small plastic container.  The ducts cover up two ejector marks, which I removed.  I like to put the effort in where it's pointless, and be lazy where it will make a difference.  This picture also shows the two little plastic blocks glued in as 'stoppers' for the exhaust tubes. This is to allow them to be fitted after the fuselage halves are joined and the inlet seams are cleaned up.

 

 

I used the Dremel to bevel the edges of the undercarriage bay.

 

 

The undercarriage bay itself is rather nice, but needs more plumbing. The heavier pieces of sprue here are only to make the bay 'busy', real Sea Hawks had a lot of small-diameter hydraulic lines.

 

 

[Col.]

Great start Peter

 

8 hours ago, Peter Lloyd said:

...The cockpit is pretty accurate compared to photos, but lacking the messiness so characteristic of early British jets, which always somehow had the look of having been built on someone's garage.

I've never heard of cockpits from this era described so but it really is fitting  

[Peter Lloyd]

 

Jet outlet duct.  Behind that putty is a small piece that makes a fairing. I can't really see how it's possible to fit this without gaps, because it has to be put in place before the fuselage halves are joined.  But test fitting the jet pipe itself has shown not much is visible except the vertical line where the putty ends and the triangular outlet part begins.  This was just done with Tamiya putty, swiped with Mr Levelling Thinner.

 

 

Up front, there's a small tidy up job to be done here.  My inlet fences look pretty poor: they obviously taper and do not look smooth because I left scratches on them that I didn't buff out.  So I really suggest you take some time on these when you build your kit, maybe using foil or brass for these.

 

 

[Peter Lloyd]

 

This image shows those little pieces, before the rear fuselage is attached.  Taking advice from others, I cut off all locating tabs in this area and butt-joined the rear fuselage when the time came, like a short-run kit.  It fit very well.

 

 

Here the faces are, before being brought together. A little sanding on a flat sheet was all the prep needed.

 

 

A final cockpit picture.

 

 

And this is the model after just a few hours' work.  I forgot the advice to lower the pilot's seat, so I had to pry it out and sand about 2-3mm off the bottom to bring it down inside the canopy.

[Col.]

Plenty useful tips to collect in your progress here

[Peter Lloyd]

I have slathered some paint on this.

 

 

... and the early stages of some oil dot tone manipulation, which I hope will be a good method for the subtle weathering appropriate to FAA postwar aircraft.  Rarely does one see them looking beaten up.

Edited February 24, 2019 by Peter Lloyd
picture missing

[Peter Lloyd]

I realised that my plan to do the 'Suez' scheme, omitting the Suez stripes, will not work: the lower stripes covered the aircraft serial on the lower wings, and I don't have spares of this font.  So, a repaint was in order to modify the plane into an alternative scheme.

 

 

This is the late 50s scheme. Although the underside colour is supposed to be more a pale grey than the 'duck egg', as I already added grey to the Gunze 'Sky' colour I have just attended to the upper surfaces.  Almost ready for decals.

[Peter Lloyd]

We now have decals.

 

 

A plane from 806 Squadron in the late 50s. This was the first squadron equipped in the FAA (in 1953- illustrating how behind the British had got themselves in the immediate postwar era) and as such is well-covered in photographs.  The Hobbyboss decals are lovely to use, but they are transparent and have a sort of toy-like garishness to the inks.  I'm pretty sure the upper wing serials shown on the decal guide are pure man-vegetables.  I'll be leaving off a lot of the stencils as I'm far from sure my model will maintain this finish.

[Col.]

Those overwing serials are a work of pure fiction I'm sure. Well done and I'm looking forward to seeing more of this one now you have the decals on.

[Peter Lloyd]

 

Now with added weathering.  An acrylic pin wash didn't really show up, so I went for some post shading.

 

 

The underside looked too dirty so it got a redo with thinned duck egg. Should be white, but, um, I'll fix it with Photo Shop.

[CliffB]

The post shading has worked well Peter.

[Col.]

Tidy work Peter. carries the right amount of weathering to look used but not abused

[Peter Lloyd]

This has sat very close to finished for a week or so, while the MiG has drawn my time.  But, got the chance to add the little bits, or which there are rather few.

 

 

Hobbyboss are vague and possibly inaccurate about the dorsal antennae.  The little ones at the back have the mounts moulded into the fuselage, so they're easy enough.  HB give some crude 'sticks' for the two VHF antennas, but the paper instructions show the rear one as a small aerodynamic blade.  This is the arrangement I ended up with, don't copy me, use real references!  I'll have to attend to the bleeding on the canopy at some point.  The gear doors are massively thick, modelmakers with standards should cut new ones from plastic card.

 

Hobbyboss supply two drop tanks, ubiquitous on Sea Hawks, and six rockets moulded rather oddly as front and back halves.  Given these rockets and their mounts are pretty crude by modern standards, it's hard to see what benefit they were seeking.  I would have liked optional pylons to add bombs outboard of the fuel tanks.

 

 

Lots of specks from my flat clear coat, oh well.

 

Having finished this I am rather interested in doing a Hunter, the evolved expression of Sydney Camm's jet design.  The acorn on the tail fin was added to production aircraft to reduce flutter, a common issue for early high subsonic planes.  It's kind of cool that my three entries (so far!) in this Group Build all use the Rolls-Royce Nene engine... with the MiG both by far the most advanced plane, and in service considerably earlier than the two Fleet Air Arm jets.

 

 

Next images will be in the gallery, many thanks to all who looked and to the mighty moderators for their diligent work.

[CliffB]

Another beauty Peter 

[Col.]

Lovely work Peter and some interesting points you make there in your final paragraph. Can we look forward to seeing your Hunter in this GB?

[Peter Lloyd]

I've had good luck with the MiG and this Sea Hawk, and with the Attacker stalled because I've misplaced the canopy- those observing the clutter in which I work will not be surprised- I do need another project.  But I think I owe it to Serge and the balance of forces in this Group Build to try something else first!