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Airfix 1/72 Hurricane OOBish - As Good As It's Going To Get


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Hello, and welcome to my first WIP on Britmodeller!

 

No exotic plastic here I'm afraid, just the newish Airfix 1/72 Hurricane which I'm sure is familiar to most readers. The obligatory box and sprue shot:

 

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This was an impulse buy. I saw it sitting on the shelf of my LMS, thought "I fancy making a Hurricane with a two bladed prop", and picked it up. Naturally, it turned out that this was not a boxing which included the two bladed prop option (I could maybe have guessed this from the box art) and that furthermore that I already had these exact same sprues in the form of a starter set I picked up a while ago but what the heck, I can learn from the mistakes I make building this one and make a proper job of the starter set.

 

I'm not the sort to lie awake at night worrying about misplaced rivets (I have plenty of other stuff to worry about) so my intention was to build this totally OOB ignoring the myriad faults that make this kit practically unbuildable such as  mis-sized main wheels with the wrong number of spokes, missing metal panels behind the gun access hatches, trailing edges a scale 7ft thick  and incorrect framing on the cockpit canopy. My only aims were the usual ones of getting engrossed for a few hours in creating something, and producing a finished model which would not be mistaken for the work of an unusually clumsy 5 year old. 

 

Alas for my intentions! Britmodeller contains much dangerously seductive information and having read somewhere that adding photo-etch harnesses to a cockpit would increase its attractiveness by at least 1000% (I may be paraphrasing slightly), I resolved to give this a try. With the etch ordered, the first task on hand was to open up the holes in the seat and back armour to allow the harnesses to pass through:

 

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This was accomplished without destroying the parts being worked on or running the drill into my finger. This is going well!

 

More soon.

 

Craig.

 

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First step was to assemble the walls of the undercarriage bay. From reading accounts of previous builds, I knew that this could be a bit tricky so I thought I would be smart and spot glue the sides and rear of the bay in place which would allow me to locate the spar which makes up the front of the bay. This was not a success, it seemed that the sides of the bay weren't quite aligned in a way which would allow them to meet the front spar at the right locations. After much futile fiddling, I snapped off the sides and rear and reverted to plan B - taking the advice of those wiser than me, in this case @Troy Smith who in his build of the same kit recommended using the upper wing to get the front spar into the correct location. This was much more successful and once the front was in place, the rest of the bay fell into place closely enough to satisfy me.

 

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Next, the cockpit was put together. The connection between the instrument panel and the armoured backplate seemed somewhat nebulous so the parts were trapped in the temporarily joined up fuselage halves and glue applied where they touched

 

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(I know the control column's squint. Don't worry, I knocked it off 5 minutes later)

 

Everything assembled so far was sprayed with Vallejo Model Air Aluminium. Once that was dried, the cockpit sides were painted Tamiya cockpit green and various details touched up following my usual mantra of "no-one's going to see this anyway":

 

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I was beginning to realise that the dread moment when I would have to tackle the PE belts couldn't be put off much longer. I started trying to make sense of how the belts went together but soon realised I had a more pressing problem. I couldn't find the pilot's seat anywhere...

 

More soon.

 

Craig.

 

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41 minutes ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

I couldn't find the pilot's seat anywhere...

 

maybe not the end of the world...the seat is too narrow!  (and control column too large...)    I didn't bother in my build, as I just wanted to get the thing done!   

Etch belts are fine if you build it open cockpit, and not very visible if built closed (so could use tape) 

If you do an open cockpit, you need to adjust the spine.  

Eduard did an old zoom etch set for the Revell Mk.II kit, which has a seat, belts, an IP BTW, most of which I think is usable. (I have a fabric wing kits I did start to tweak...that's in a box somewhere of course :rolleyes: )

 

HTH

 

PS Glad the wing aligning the wheel well helped, overall the kit fits very well, just be careful to test fit and trim the bits, and attaching the landing gear is fiddly, feeding the retraction jacks through the well structure.  It's a good idea to open out the holes in the front spar the pegs on these go into are a very tight fit.  Look for ward to seeing how this progresses.

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I have one at a similar stage- just about to join the fuselage halves, which given the thinness of the plastic and the design which(has most of the bottom half except the nose coming later, I’m finding the amount of flex is making it tricky to reliably and securely align the join, so it’s flush everywhere at once.

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I replaced the control column with one from the spares, that was already painted. I think originally it was from the Academy Hurc. For seatbelts, I scanned the Tamiya Spitfire Mk.I decals then cut the belt from the paper with an Xacto knife. 

 

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As for the wheel wells, I just followed the instructions, but I did do a light sanding on the edges of the parts, to insure a flat, smooth mating surface. Came out pretty good.

 

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As for fitting the gear legs later, it's not too difficult.

 

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Chris

 

 

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4 hours ago, dogsbody said:

For seatbelts, I scanned the Tamiya Spitfire Mk.I decals then cut the belt from the paper with an Xacto knife. 

That's a neat trick. *heads off to look for a sheet of buff coloured paper.*

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I had trouble with the wings of mine, getting the trailing edges flush. I suspect the undercarriage bay framing was too proud, and it improved with some sanding but still was never quite right. Did you have any issues?

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2 hours ago, wombat said:

I had trouble with the wings of mine, getting the trailing edges flush. I suspect the undercarriage bay framing was too proud, and it improved with some sanding but still was never quite right. Did you have any issues?

 

Actually, the trailing edges are too thick. I took a tip from someone else on the forum and scraped down the inside of the wings so I got a thinner edge. I used a rounded blade Xacto blade to do the scraping, followed by some sanding stick work.

 

Here you can see the ridges on the inside of the wings, especially the top wing. The areas inside the red are what need scraping.

 

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They turned out okay. Better than just out of the box.

 

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Chris

 

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23 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

maybe not the end of the world...the seat is too narrow!  (and control column too large...)    

Another thing I had intended overlooking! I'm now scratch building a replacement which will hopefully be closer to the mark. As it happens, I also have a 1/48 Hurricane so I compared control column sizes. They're identical!

23 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

Etch belts are fine if you build it open cockpit, and not very visible if built closed (so could use tape) 

If you do an open cockpit, you need to adjust the spine.  

I already have the PE belts and was intending doing an open cockpit, partially in the hope that it would disguise the shortcomings of the canopy frame. Is it just a case of thinning the spine down so the hood will fit over it?

23 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

 

HTH

 

PS Glad the wing aligning the wheel well helped, overall the kit fits very well, just be careful to test fit and trim the bits, and attaching the landing gear is fiddly, feeding the retraction jacks through the well structure.  It's a good idea to open out the holes in the front spar the pegs on these go into are a very tight fit.  Look for ward to seeing how this progresses.

Thanks for the tip and for all the advice. I appreciate it!

 

Craig.

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1 hour ago, dogsbody said:

Actually, the trailing edges are too thick. I took a tip from someone else on the forum and scraped down the inside of the wings so I got a thinner edge. I used a rounded blade Xacto blade to do the scraping, followed by some sanding stick work.

 

Here you can see the ridges on the inside of the wings, especially the top wing. The areas inside the red are what need scraping.

 

Hi Chris,

 

This is another thing I'm having second thoughts about tackling so thanks for the advice! I've just been re-reading your build thread and I think it would be a crying shame if you don't finish your own Hurricane when it was turning out so well. I realise that your paints are probably frozen solid at the moment but when they thaw out, I encourage you to get back to it!

 

Craig.

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21 hours ago, wombat said:

I have one at a similar stage- just about to join the fuselage halves, which given the thinness of the plastic and the design which(has most of the bottom half except the nose coming later, I’m finding the amount of flex is making it tricky to reliably and securely align the join, so it’s flush everywhere at once.

 

Yes, I noticed that when I was getting the instrument panel and back armour lined up. I think the way forward may be to glue the fuselage together in sections. Maybe glue and clamp the rudder first then when that's set, add the bottom of the fuselage and work forward aligning one section, gluing it, then moving onto the next. It's a theory anyway, we'll see how well it works out!

 

Craig.

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On 02/01/2020 at 19:02, Dandie Dinmont said:

Is it just a case of thinning the spine down so the hood will fit over it?

should be, not tried it,  I'd be inclines too look into a vacform   replacement, Hurricane canopies are really thin and flexible in reality, and also change shape when open/shut due to the curved canopy rails, both well shown here.

Sea%2520Hurricane-004.JPG&key=1b1abe1301

 

from, which has lots of great shots for getting a feel of the airframe

Prime Portal have a really handy set of the fabric wing Mk.I at the Science Museum

http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/mark_hayward/hurricane_mk1_l1592/

 

Rob Taurus do a canopy set, but it seems they just copied the kit canopy, but there are also ones for the Hase kit.   The Arma Hobby kits have both and open and closed option, which show the different shapes when open/closed,  due to the flex, but are quite thick, as any injection canopy is liable to be,  though they are the first model maker to get this (and many other) subtle Hurricane details!

 

On 02/01/2020 at 21:52, dogsbody said:

Come summer and warmer ( and hopefully drier this year ) weather, I do plan to get the airbrush out and have a go at the Hurc.

excuses, excuses... get the old Hairy stick out, if it goes wrong, that's what paint stripper is for ;) 

 

HTH

T

 

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I imagine that in most of your homes, the carpet monster is content to operate at ground level devouring whatever may come its way. Not so in Maison Dandie where the old CM has three furry accomplices who roam the workbench at night seeking tasty morsels to dispatch down below.

 

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One of the prime suspects in the case of the missing seat.

 

This, I think, must have been the fate of the hurricane's seat. The last time I can recall seeing it, it was attached to the end of a cotton bud held in a clamp for spraying purposes. One of my furry nemeses must have brushed against it and sent it who knows where.

 

As I mentioned previously, I have another copy of this kit so could have in theory have used the seat from that. This seemed like saving up trouble for future me though and besides, I had rather been taken by the notion of breaking my scratch building duck and producing a home grown replacement (I blame Britmodeller for this). So that's what I did. Images were googled,  estimates were made, plasticard was cut and filed, curses were uttered and this was the final result

 

 

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It's not perfect by any means. I really should have used thinner plasticard (but on the other hand 0.5mm was all I had to hand) and I think the seat is too long and would imperil the knees of the luckless pilot but (unlike the original) it is more or less the right width, as far as I can tell, and I'm not displeased with it.

 

This masterpiece was painted up, attached to the rest of the cockpit framework, and it was time to acquire another new skill, fitting PE seatbelts. This took some time and induced a fair amount of eyestrain but the job was finally done, to my satisfaction at least. (I should say in passing that the job would have been impossible without my recently acquired Pixnor tweezer set. If you are one of the few who is not yet part of the Pixnor collective, get yourself over to this topic and see what you've been missing).

 

Here's the finished article propped up on the aforementioned tweezers

 

49363729926_4074edb3ba_c.jpg

 

The observant will notice that driven reckless by unaccustomed success, I have also added the handbrake?, gearlever?, oh, seat adjustment lever which is a prominent feature of the starboard side of the Hurricane cockpit. 

 

Determined to make the title of this topic less and less accurate, I also thinned out the trailing edges of the wings though I didn't take this too far suspecting that my deadly combination of exuberance and clumsiness, if allowed full reign, would result in the chord of the wing being reduced by a good quarter. Hopefully, it will still be an improvement when it's all cemented together.

 

And that, I think is my next step. A precautionary review of the instructions to make sure that I haven't forgotten anything (I have remembered to add the light to the bottom of the wing, in case you were wondering) and then put the basic airframe together. Wish me luck!

 

Craig.

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I'm learning a lot. Mostly to consign the two Airfix Hurricanes that I have to  the deepest depths and recesses of the stash and to by an Arma kit instead.

Great work especially in the face of the malign actions of the Carpet Monsters evil henchmen.   

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3 hours ago, Harley John said:

Mostly to consign the two Airfix Hurricanes that I have to  the deepest depths and recesses of the stash and to by an Arma kit instead.

 

Only works if you want a metal wing Hurricane though.

 

The Airfix kit is overall decent,  just requires paying attention and taking care in a few places, and as the Arma is of a similar construction sequence, I presume that would as well.

 

@Dandie Dinmont

5 hours ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

I had rather been taken by the notion of breaking my scratch building duck and producing a home grown replacement (I blame Britmodeller for this)

Great work on the seat Craig,

I'd have suggested taking measurements from the one in the other kit (except the width)  but the point about scratching building is even if it goes wrong, you learn, and it develops your skills, if you get something usable, then you can feel quietly chuffed as well. 

Though you can find suddenly that an hour has gone by in deep concentration,  but that is a another skill in itself in today's short attention span world...

 

Look forward too more

 

cheers

T

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/11/2020 at 7:02 PM, Troy Smith said:

Great work on the seat Craig,

I'd have suggested taking measurements from the one in the other kit (except the width)  but the point about scratching building is even if it goes wrong, you learn, and it develops your skills, if you get something usable, then you can feel quietly chuffed as well. 

Though you can find suddenly that an hour has gone by in deep concentration,  but that is a another skill in itself in today's short attention span world...

 

Look forward too more

Thanks Troy.  Being able to focus on a model and clear your mind of all other thoughts is one of the big benefits of this hobby, I think.

 

There's been a little more progress on this. Unable to put it off any longer, the time had come to join the fuselage halves together and attach the wings. Having devoted probably more thought to this than I should have. and having noticed the the only place the fuselage joins at both the top and the bottom is at the very front and rear, I cemented these first getting the best join I could, then worked my way forward and back towards the cockpit, adding the fillet under the tail and then the wings as I went to try and ensure the shape of the fuselage was correct and any gaps minimised. To help with this, I used the time honoured 'run TET along the seams, wait a couple of minutes then squish together in the hope of a wee ridge of molten plastic popping up' technique which was fairly successful. On one of the other modelling sites I visit (I know, shocking), they're always talking about seams which can be cleaning up with a swipe of a scalpel blade. There's obviously something wrong with either my scalpel blades or my swipe because these things never clean up as nicely as I would like, my swipe either removing not enough material or too much. Practice, practice I suppose. Anyway after much swiping and not a little sanding, I began to suspect that things had gone badly wrong up front.

 

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It's a little hard to see in the photo but in my efforts to avoid an unseemly seam, I had sanded the nose flat. Drat, drat and double drat!, as a famous aviator once said.

 

Luckily, as part of my efforts to buy success in modelling, I now have a large number of filling compounds available to supplement the 10 year old tube of Humbrol filler that served me well for so long. Not that I know what to do with them, but at random I seized the jar labelled "Mr. Dissolved Putty" and started blobbing it along the offending conk. It didn't look too bad and the fumes from the jar were making me feel a whole lot better about things.

 

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I took up my sanding sticks and settled down to some rhinoplasty.

 

Craig.

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When I joined my fuselage halves together, i used a small padded clamp ( a pack of 2 dozen I bought in the kitchenware section of a hardware store ) to hold the halves together. I made sure the halves were touching evenly ( as evenly as I could get them ) then using Tamiya Extra Thin cement and an old small point paintbrush, I let the cement run along the line between the halves. I did the upper nose first and let that set for about 20 minutes. Then the lower nose. I slowly move along the seam adding cement as I went, checking the seam line as I moved. When that was done and set, I added the lower rear fuselage section. It fit great.

 

After a day or so the let everything harden up, I then checked the external seam line for divots and flaws. Any divots were filled with Mr Surfacer 1000 applied with a cut-off sewing needle eye that is in a pin vise. For any sanding I used Squadron sanding sticks ( fine and extra fine ) and some strips of 600 grit Wet & Dry. This helps to prevent flat spots. I think it turned out okay, so far.

 

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Chris

 

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It's looking good and I like the seat! Thinning the trailing edges does make a whole lot of difference, and I wish I had known about the metal covering behind the ammunition hatches when I was doing mine...

 

Regards,

Adrian

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry for the protracted period of radio silence. I've been away for a while and, full disclosure, I'd started the Hurricane before I started posting here so the initial breakneck pace was mostly catch-up I'm afraid. This is more indicative of my normal build rate.

 

There has been progress though. In an effort to return Camm's finely sculpted conk to its original shape, I used one of the fuselage halves from my other boxing of the kit to shape a template to match up to the sanded snout. 

 

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Ironically, the card for this impromptu tool came from a box that once held a kit of the Hurricane's greatest enemy, the Bf109 (Boo Hiss).

 

Much sanding later:

 

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Good enough. Or was it?

 

Encouraged, I got out my airbrush. When I was researching airbrushes and related matters last year, my impressionable head was turned by the allure of Vallejo Model Air paints. Paint you could spray straight from the dropper bottle! Wide range of authentic colours! Easy cleaning! This was the stuff for me! Eagerly I ordered up a big bottle of grey primer and the RAF pre-war - 1941 fighter paint set. Of course no sooner had these arrived than I started reading posts on this and other sites about how these fine products had a propensity to detach themselves from a model if looked at wrongly. Part of the reason for selecting the Hurricane from the proto-stash was to give these paints a fair try, reasoning that if it all went horrible wrong, it would at least be child's play to strip the model and use Tamiya Acrylics instead. 

 

The Hurricane was duly primed. I like the coverage and the self levelling qualities of the Vallejo primer. What I don't like is the difficulty I have in telling the difference between the colour of the primer and that of the Airfix plastic meaning that I will quite often keep spraying until the stuff starts dripping off the the model.

 

Another thing I don't like is that the primer is prone to peeling off in great chunks if sanded a little too vigorously.

 

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I noticed while taking the above picture, a ridge near the windscreen I hadn't spotted before. Having been burned before on previous projects, I started applying featherlight strokes with the finest micromesh cloths I had available in an effort to reduce this annoying bulge. Sadly, my restraint was in vain as the area under attack still peeled away (I'm wondering if it was because I was wet sanding). Stifling a manly oath, I cut away the affected area and sanded away with my customary vim and vigour. 

 

Sanding done, it was time to apply some actual paint. I thought I'd start with the white portion of the underside since that seemed easiest to cover up afterwards. It's a bit hard to see in the photo but I can assure you that the starboard wing is indeed white.

 

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After it's had sufficient time to dry (I'm thinking two to three years), I'll mask it up and see what the black looks like.

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51 minutes ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

I like the coverage and the self levelling qualities of the Vallejo primer. What I don't like is the difficulty I have in telling the difference between the colour of the primer and that of the Airfix plastic meaning that I will quite often keep spraying until the stuff starts dripping off the the model.

Add a few drops of another color in to the primer. Something to help contrast it with the color of the plastic ? Maybe a brown or a green ? As you're going for the early Temperate camouflage colors. 

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On 2/8/2020 at 7:58 PM, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Add a few drops of another color in to the primer. Something to help contrast it with the color of the plastic ? Maybe a brown or a green ? As you're going for the early Temperate camouflage colors. 

Thanks for this. I'm hoping I'm done with primer for this build but I'll certainly give it a go on whatever I tackle next.

 

Craig.

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Ah! Gale force winds and rain passing the house horizontally. Perfect modelling weather!

 

First item on the agenda was to investigate the strange object which my dear wife presented me with earlier in the week:

 

49538732077_8a26c9be1a_c.jpg

 

I fear she may have misunderstood me when, impressed by  @CedB's recent adventures, I mentioned that I'd been looking at vacuum machines on Amazon.

 

It may be of some use though, everything it sucks up ends in a nice clear compartment so it may be possible to wrest some stuff back from the carpet monster's gaping maws.

 

Anyway, onto the Hurricane. Somewhat nervously, I started masking the white paint applied last week with Tamiya tape. With most of the airframe swaddled, it was off to the spray booth!

 

49538734442_77c92412b8_c.jpg

 

All you experts will be shouting "you haven't masked the starboard tailplane you eejit!" but I ask you, what's the worst that could happen?

 

Paint was sprayed:

 

49538733527_4435495bdc_c.jpg

 

And after some work on another project which I hope will be appearing in the RFI section soon, and with fingers crossed, the masking tape was peeled away.

 

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It'll need some smoothing out but I'm pretty happy with that. The black looks black and the white is still attached. You will notice however that the unmasked white tailplane has indeed copped it, nothing another 6 coats of white won't fix. In fact parts of the fuselage has been caught in the fallout as well. Pre-shading maybe?

 

49538733662_bf1ebd8673_c.jpg

 

If the weather is as bad as expected tomorrow, I might even get the first coat of green on topsides (I'm using the masks Arma made available online which I believe require a reversal of the usual colour order).

 

Now for something completely different, at least for me. As someone born without an artistic bone in their body, weathering has been a black art to me. 

 

Recently however, while browsing through this site, I came across a post by @Troy Smith which mentioned a weathering technique by Roy Sutherland. "I could do that" I thought and resolved to give it a go, starting with a location which would be well hidden if all did not go well, the inside of the Hurricane's radiator scoop. Here's the front face of the kit radiator with a wash of the nearest Humbrol brown to hand, designed to create the impression of French mud having been copiously applied.

 

49538012813_73335f19c7_c.jpg

 

I'm actually quite pleased with that, though it perhaps looks more rusty than muddy. If I'm still pleased with it when it's all dried off, I'll do something similar to the wheel wells and undercarriage once they've been uncovered.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Craig.

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