Hawker Hunter F.6 - 1/48 - Academy

[Marco]

Hi!

 

This is my Hunter WIP.

 

 

I´ll be using an Aires resin cockpit and a Xtradecal sheet.

 

 

 

 

And I´m going to make it XK149:

 

 

 

[Marco]

I started with the resin cockpit.

 

I cut the back wall so that the new cockpit stayed flush.

 

 

Had to cut this part too. Later on I had to cut an extra 2 mm. 

 

 

[Marco]

Built and painted the cockpit:

 

 

 

Nice glass effect:

 

 

The tub:

 

 

 

 

 

[Marco]

I glued the wings before closing the halves. 

 

 

 

And had to thin down the resin cockpit outer walls so that the halves closed right.

 

 

 

 

I now stand at this tricky part:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lord Riot]

Great start, and that cockpit and seat look outstanding! Compare them to te clumsy efforts in my Phantom WIP, how do so many of you achieve such brilliant hand painting results? Mine always looks like a kid has done it. 😕

 

I have this kit in my stash so I'm interested to see how you get on. You might want to add some nose weight before closing it up completely?

 

 

[Marco]

2 hours ago, Lord Riot said:

Great start, and that cockpit and seat look outstanding! Compare them to te clumsy efforts in my Phantom WIP, how do so many of you achieve such brilliant hand painting results? Mine always looks like a kid has done it. 😕

 

I have this kit in my stash so I'm interested to see how you get on. You might want to add some nose weight before closing it up completely?

 

 

Thank you for reminding me of the nose weight! Always forget that.

 

For painting small details I use Vallejo paints and very thin brushes.

 

But I always makes mistakes and have to repaint parts. 

 

After painting, I seal everything with a gloss coat and then cover it all with very thinned raw umber (oil). This sort of blends the colours. 

 

 

[Marco]

Working on the nose.

 

When I dry fitted the fuselage on the nose cone I saw that they had different profiles. The nose cone is round and the fuselage oval.

 

So I had to ad some spacers so that the profiles could match.

 

Here:

 

 

The bottom part needed spacers too:

 

 

Right there:

 

 

I also opened up the holes for the cannons.

 

 

 

And glued the lead weights. I used epoxi glue for this because I read somewhere that lead and CA glue don´t go together 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Biggles87]

Very impressive start.

I still have one of these, destined to be converted to a T7.

 

john

[Marco]

23 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

Very impressive start.

I still have one of these, destined to be converted to a T7.

 

john

Thank you.

[Marco]

Sanding time:

 

 

 

The result was quite good but I still had some micro seams.

 

I used stretched sprue to cover these.

 

 

I assembled the nose.

 

 

And repeated the sprue process.

 

 

 

Now I´ll have to let the glue dry before sanding the excess plastic.

 

 

 

 

 

[Redstaff]

Very nice, you look to be taming the fit issues very well  

I made one for the NATO v Warsaw pact 60s GB at the end of last year and really enjoyed it

I used an SBS resin set and I had issues with the nose fit as well, greenstuff filled the gaps. But there was a fair bit of trying to get oval and round to line up as well  

The only other thing that really needed filler was the intakes to fuselage joints, which made sanding interesting  

On the whole a nice kit, but I hear the new Airfix one is a bit better, maybe when the stash has reduced a little I will find out  

 

Ian  

[Biggles87]

I made two when they were first released ( one a retirement present for an ex-Hunter pilot I worked with ) and the nose fit caused problems with both, but as I recall the intake fit was only problematic on one, strange that.

Keep up the good work.

 

John.

[Marco]

2 hours ago, Redstaff said:

Very nice, you look to be taming the fit issues very well  

I made one for the NATO v Warsaw pact 60s GB at the end of last year and really enjoyed it

I used an SBS resin set and I had issues with the nose fit as well, greenstuff filled the gaps. But there was a fair bit of trying to get oval and round to line up as well  

The only other thing that really needed filler was the intakes to fuselage joints, which made sanding interesting  

On the whole a nice kit, but I hear the new Airfix one is a bit better, maybe when the stash has reduced a little I will find out  

 

Ian  

Thank you, Ian.

 

The intakes are the next to be tackled. Wretched place to sand 😄.

 

2 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

I made two when they were first released ( one a retirement present for an ex-Hunter pilot I worked with ) and the nose fit caused problems with both, but as I recall the intake fit was only problematic on one, strange that.

Keep up the good work.

 

John.

Thanks, John.

 

I´m glad I was not the only one with nose problems 🙂

[exdraken]

Looking good!

Nice progress

 

[Marco]

17 hours ago, exdraken said:

Looking good!

Nice progress

 

Thanks!

[Marco]

Things are starting to look good.

 

Here is the result after sanding:

 

 

There are still a gap to be filled but now everything is aligned.

 

Before and after:

 

 

 

I used Infini sanding sponges to do this. Great tools.

 

 

 

Also started on the big gaps on the intakes.

 

 

[Graham T]

Great!  The Academy kit is STILL a great looking Hunter if "worked" correctly. I've got one on my shelf still of which I'm particularly proud & will remain there even after I've built the Airfix kit.   If I may add my five pence worth, the kit looks a lot better if you remove 3mm from the rear end of the tail plane bullet & reprofile it, then move the horizontal tail surfaces forward by 3mm so their trailing edges line up with that of the rudder at that point (easiest way to do this is simply cut the front 3mm off the locating tab & fix the remnants to the front of the slot!).  

[Marco]

4 hours ago, Graham T said:

Great!  The Academy kit is STILL a great looking Hunter if "worked" correctly. I've got one on my shelf still of which I'm particularly proud & will remain there even after I've built the Airfix kit.   If I may add my five pence worth, the kit looks a lot better if you remove 3mm from the rear end of the tail plane bullet & reprofile it, then move the horizontal tail surfaces forward by 3mm so their trailing edges line up with that of the rudder at that point (easiest way to do this is simply cut the front 3mm off the locating tab & fix the remnants to the front of the slot!).  

Thank you very much, Graham!

 

I hadn't noticed the difference. The bullet is awfully big compared to the real one.

 

These are up next!

[Marco]

On 05/04/2019 at 14:42, Graham T said:

Great!  The Academy kit is STILL a great looking Hunter if "worked" correctly. I've got one on my shelf still of which I'm particularly proud & will remain there even after I've built the Airfix kit.   If I may add my five pence worth, the kit looks a lot better if you remove 3mm from the rear end of the tail plane bullet & reprofile it, then move the horizontal tail surfaces forward by 3mm so their trailing edges line up with that of the rudder at that point (easiest way to do this is simply cut the front 3mm off the locating tab & fix the remnants to the front of the slot!).  

 

Thanks again, Graham.

 

I made the changes.

 

Original:

 

 

Cut:

 

 

And filed:

 

 

The stabilizers before:

 

 

And after cutting the locating tab:

 

 

 

I also rescribed all the lost panel lines. The red tape is floor marking tape. It´s thick and sticks well - an excellent ruler for guiding the scriber:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Marco]

I finished all the sanding and primed the Hunter with Gunze Black Surfacer.

 

 

Got the paints but, unfortunately, #331 was dry. I put some more thinner in the jar and managed to melt the dry pigments. The color looks good but there is still a rubbery goo in the pot. I´ll check it tonight to see if that has melted too. I hope so because I´m guessing this goo is what makes the paint stick to the model.

 

 

Here is the Hunter with the others I primed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[gingerbob]

Hi Marco,

 

I've come to this a bit late!  That ejection seat is amazing, and the instrument panel isn't far behind.  Did you finish this kit?