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Hawker Typhoon - Airfix 1/24 sliding hood.


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I've had this one maturing in the stash for the past 6-years. It was given as an incredibly generous leaving present by my old club mates at AMV83 in Provence, My hope is to get it built and take with me to their annual show later in the year. One can but hope!

I've bought the occasional item of after-market over the intervening years and its baby brother to build at the same time as a "paint mule'.

Time to make a start.....

Here is a photo of the huge box. Very nice box art and presentation....

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A couple of the sprues are huge. Compare them to the A4 sized instruction manual....

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I bought a Barracuda seat, wheels and carburettor intake ring for the kit....

 

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I've started with sticking bits together and will post progress shortly. I haven't decided on which aircraft to finish it as yet - but have plenty of reading material to hand so will see what ideas come from that.

Thanks for looking and I hope you pop by from time to time to see how its going,

Cheers,

Pat

 

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14 hours ago, RussellE said:

following with interest, Pat😀

Great to have you along! 👍

 

Right, off we go.....

The parts are made from soft plastic and many of the fuselage frame struts were curved and needed gentle finger pressure to straighten.

It took a long time to clean up the parts and fill ejector pin marks. I found it best to scrape the flash away using a Swann-Morton #10 curved blade rather than using files or abrasive paper as they left scratch marks which needed further polishing out. But the files and sanding sticks were best for certain things. Finer Swann-Morton blades were used to clean up nooks and crannies. It was a long, tedious process but at least could be done whilst listening to the radio or having Zoom calls!

 

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I think most of the ejector pin marks will not be visible after assembly, but I chose not to risk it, especially as they are a trap for washes which would make them show up more. I'm also thinking of having panels removed so maybe some areas would then be open to viewing.

 

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I looked for any areas of missing detail that should be added before assembly and found very few, such seems the comprehensive job done by Airfix. The right hand console seemed to be missing a knob (carburettor priming pump "A" in photo below) at the top right, a couple of small knobs "B" further down, a socket and cable feedthrough ("C" which are camera related, I think) on the flat area. I added these from punched plastic card discs.

 

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I also added a "leather" strap to each of the rudder pedals as I had seen this on another build. However, I'm not sure it is right looking at cockpit photos since then. Nevertheless, they are staying!

 

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One of the tricky things is deciding on at which point to paint. Brett Green's book seems very useful and has two approaches: Brett basically assembles what he can and then paints. Marcus Nicholls paints each part and then assembles.

 

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I chose to follow Brett's approach and assembled everything apart from the pilot, instrument panel and seat belts (I'm going to build and paint the kit seat as a practice piece before doing the resin one). Also, I refrained from gluing the structure until everything had been checked by dry fitting.....

 

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I then thought about which parts to leave off to ease painting. I also skipped through the instruction book to see if there are any items that could be glued on at this stage without causing fit problems along the way. There weren't many, just part C48 (step 65) and C11 (step 66) onto the fire wall. Although not mentioned here, I have assembled the engine so was able to check it could be fitted with these items in place.

As found by other modellers, I found the lower wing useful for aligning all the parts before gluing. I used Tamiya liquid cement in stages, leaving it to set between each. I started with important joints (such as the wing spars and then progressed onto smaller pieces. Some items needed coaxing into place with clamps so some judgement was called for as to how to proceed.

 

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I thought all was okay until the very end, when I came to glue the rear frame, A31, and found it was a bit rotated when sighting against the firewall. This meant the side frames weren't level, so I may have problems further down the line. I did check the fuselage halves fitted okay, but it is still difficult to gauge. Hopefully it will be okay.

Mr Dissolved Putty was used extensively at the joints to seal up small gaps.

Here is the assembled frame ready for paint....

 

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Many thanks for looking. If you have any comments, guidance or tips then I would love to hear them! 👨‍🎓

 

Cheers,

Pat

 

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On 11/02/2021 at 14:19, bigbadbadge said:

Very nice indeed, I have the car door version in the stash and look forward to seeing this build up.   Great start i hope the rear frame doesn't give you any problems. 

Chris

Thank you, Chris.

I would like to do the car door version as well some time in the future.

Yes - I'm keeping my fingers crossed about the frame. At least the plastic is soft and I have some big woodworkers clamps if I need to force it into submission!

 

On 13/02/2021 at 01:30, RussellE said:

Looking good Pat!

 

As amazing as this kit is, the amount of cleaning up the parts require does tend to slow the progress down somewhat!

 

 

Thanks Russell.

Very true. The electrical harnesses for the engine alone took an hour and a half to clean up! I'm currently getting into some small scratch built detail which has really slowed things down.

 

On 13/02/2021 at 16:31, flounder_al said:

Following this. Would love to have a bash at this kit

Thank you for following. It certainly is an impressively big kit with lots of nice detail!

 

As mentioned earlier, I have also assembled the engine.....

This was fun to assemble. Once again, I found it useful to dry fit the engine together before committing to glue.

I found a gap at the front end of the top plate that I filled with a piece of plastic card. Various thicknesses were tried until the best was found. An oversized piece was glued to the upper plate and left to set before trimming to shape. It then assembled fine after that.

 

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The propeller shaft is supported in two places in the engine which avoids it drooping. I lubricated the sliding surfaces with a 5B pencil.

 

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The only detail I added were a row of bolt heads that run along the top edge of each cylinder head that seem to be for holding the top and bottom plates in place. These were replicated with discs punched from plastic card......

 

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The only problem part I found was a tubular thingy that locates at the top rear end of the engine. Is it a cartridge starter? Anyway, I couldn't get it to clean up neatly so ended up replacing some of the tubes with 1/16" plastic rod.

 

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I also cleaned up and dry fitted the various pipes and hoses. This was a slow job once again - the two spark lead harnesses alone took over an hour!. The corrugated sections were the most difficult. I ran a photoetched saw blade crosswise over the areas of flash to remove the bulk of it and then cleaned up by wiping over with liquid cement. Still, the effort was worth it in the end and it all fitted together nicely and looks great. Here it is ready for paint (the piping and harnesses are clipped into place - not glued as yet).....

 

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Many thanks for looking and your comments,

Cheers,

Pat

 

 

 

 

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Hiya

 

The Airfix Typhoon is a bit of a conundrum, it’s a great kit and once built looks every bit a Typhoon, BUT the amount of clean up can be soul destroying and mojo zapping, however you making great progress with yours mine kinda stalled...

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..the only thing I’d suggest is replace the under carriage legs with the brass ones from Aerocraft, they are direct replacements and much stronger than the ones you get in the kit, you can just see the Port u/c connection point on the picture above.

Looking forward to see how you progress with yours.

Iain

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46 minutes ago, (ex)Sgtrafman said:

Looking forward to see how you progress with yours.

Iain

Yours is looking really good, Iain - it"ll be mighty impressive when it's done!

I'll keep in mind your recommendation on the undercarriage legs, thank you for that 😀

 

Cheers,

Pat

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Hi Pat , for what it’s worth my current WIP on the car door version is here:

 

I have found the revised guide very useful and yes it is a case of just ensuring everything is cleaned up and square before glue is applied. I chose not to do the full engine as I wanted to show the nose lines and consequently some pipes, that were a total faff to fit ( around the back of the radiator), were left off as they won’t be seen on mine. Nevertheless your start looks excellent 👍

 

I would recommend the RB radiator mesh though as vast improvement on the kit version.

 

Mike

Edited by mick b
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1 hour ago, mick b said:

I would recommend the RB radiator mesh though as vast improvement on the kit version.

Thank you, Mike - I'll take a look at your thread.

 

I took a look for the RB radiator mesh, but I don't think it is available at present owing to supplier problems.

 

Thanks again,

Pat

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2 minutes ago, patmaquette said:

Thank you, Mike - I'll take a look at your thread.

 

I took a look for the RB radiator mesh, but I don't think it is available at present owing to supplier problems.

 

Thanks again,

Pat

Hiya 

I might have one going spare. I’ll check tomorrow and let you know.

Iain

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As luck would have it..

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They are yours if want them, I got them when I bought a kit with some extra AM and as you can see I’m past the point that I could use em. PM me if your interested.

 

Iain.

 

They’re gratis btw. 👍

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6 minutes ago, (ex)Sgtrafman said:

They are yours if want them, I got them when I bought a kit with some extra AM and as you can see I’m past the point that I could use em. PM me if your interested.

 

Iain.

 

They’re gratis btw. 👍

Iain - that is very generous of you - yes, I would love to have them.

Let me send you a message with my address,

Cheers,

Pat

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On 2/15/2021 at 7:08 AM, patmaquette said:

Thanks Russell.

Very true. The electrical harnesses for the engine alone took an hour and a half to clean up! I'm currently getting into some small scratch built detail which has really slowed things down.

 

Thank you for following. It certainly is an impressively big kit with lots of nice detail!

 

Many thanks for looking and your comments,

Cheers,

Pat

 

 

 

 

yep, cleaning up seam lines and mismatch can definitely be soul destroying, as Iain mentioned, but you've done a very nice job of remedying them.  🙂

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On 14/02/2021 at 21:47, (ex)Sgtrafman said:

They are yours if want them, I got them when I bought a kit with some extra AM and as you can see I’m past the point that I could use em. PM me if your interested.

They arrived safe and sound in the today's post, Iain.

Thank you once again for your help and generosity 😀

All the best,

Pat

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4 hours ago, patmaquette said:

They arrived safe and sound in the today's post, Iain.

Thank you once again for your help and generosity 😀

All the best,

Pat

Nice one - I look forward to seeing them in place.

Cheers

Iain

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Hi and thanks everyone for your help and interest.

I would have posted a progress update earlier, but had problems with the image hosting site. But it seems okay now.

 

Seat.....

I have been working on the seat recently, using the Airfix one as a practice piece before working on the Barracuda resin one I had bought. Here are the two ready for paint....

 

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First step was to prime with Mr Surfacer 1500. I chose the black so it would help with shading...

 

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The following day I masked the back cushions and then airbrushed with Alclad aluminium. The result did not come out as nice as I had hoped in the bucket part of the seat....

 

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The day following that I gave the aluminium areas a brush coat of Klear, followed an hour or two later with a second coat with some Citadel Nuln Oil added to it. This added some nice shadow relief around the detailed areas.

 

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Yet another day after, I applied some coats of chipping fluid and followed up with Tamiya NATO black. Chipping was then done using a cocktail stick soon afterwards.

 

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Then it was decision time: do the same treatment to the resin seat or leave it in aluminium.....

 

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I decided on having it black.

 

Having brought the resin seat to the same stage, the masking was removed (along with patches of primer). Some residues of liquid mask had also crept through and needed a surprising amount of teasing to get off. I should have used Tamiya tape instead of the blue 3M stuff,

 

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I wanted to get a light and shadow effect on the quilted seat back as I think it would have looked a little more padded than today's surviving examples (but I may be well be wrong). This is where I found the practice seat useful to experiment with. I started with light and dark paints of a suitable colour: Vallejo 70.987 Medium Grey was applied to the shaded areas (mainly the lower half of each quilt "diamond")...

 

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 and 72.034 Bone White elsewhere...

 

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The lines of stitching were far too dark, so a heavily thinned coat of Medium Grey was run along these to lighten them a little. I noticed from photographs that the top edge of the cushion has a leather strip and there is some dark edging around the slotted opening at the bottom of the cushion. These were picked out in dark brown first and then black-grey, leaving some dark brown visible at the edges. The cords at the top of the cushion were painted Vallejo Iraqi Sand.....

 

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An oil paint mix of Naples Yellow, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre with a touch of indigo was used to blend the light and shade areas and add some warmth to the colour. I quite like the resulting cushion, although many will think it has too much contrast.

 

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I now repeated this on the resin seat, although this time I started by muting the areas of dark stitching before going on to colouring the quilted patches.

The seat straps were painted with Citadel Morghast bone for the shade, with white added for the base and highlights. Metalwork was black-grey on the shoulder straps, steel for the clasp ends and aluminium for the quick release box, all given a wash with Citadel Nuln Oil.

Here are the seats competed apart from some fine stitching details along the centre of the straps, if I feel bold enough to try!

 

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I hope there is something here you found of interest and that the post was not too long and boring. Thank you for looking. 😀

Cheers,

Pat

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Instrument panel......

The kit has a front and a transparent rear part. I spent some head-scratching time trying to figure out how best to proceed as the clear part had one or two problems - it didn't fit too well to the front piece and had some gaps and shrinkage dimples in the instrument faces that put me off.

Ideally I would had cut individual thin clear discs to pop in each instrument hole, but do not have punches of the right diameters. However, I have inherited my dad's little lathe which is fun to use so decided to make some instruments from a piece of clear plastic (a cocktail stirrer from a bygone era of going on holiday in an aeroplane).....

 

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The inside edges of the front piece were painted black before the instruments were glued into place to avoid the grey plastic being visible. It was only later when I realised it would have been better to have made the instruments from opaque plastic.

 

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Here they are being tried in place.....

 

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The edges of the back face were thinned around the edges and the rear painted black.

 

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I'll probably add a cable or two to these where they may be glimpsed through any gaps.

I've started painting the front face of the instrument panel and will post a photo when it's done.

 

Many thanks for looking,

Cheers,

Pat

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Hi everyone,

Thanks again for your interest and comments.

I'm continuing to enjoy myself making this kit. One thing I find attractive about this large scale model is that you get a good idea of how the real aircraft was constructed. Airfix have done a good job of including some of the key items of pipework as well. Having looked at photos and diagrams, I thought it a good opportunity to add some more plumbing so that I could get to know the aircraft more. I started at the cockpit side of the firewall and added a cross and piping which I think are for the air pressurisation of the fuel tanks....

 

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There is fuel piping that runs beneath the footrests which has an orange-brown colour (but I don't know if this was the original colour or what it has aged to over the years). Anyway, as little of it will be seen once the model is built, I went with this colour anyway, which was an undercoat of Humbrol 100 dark orange followed by Citadel Screaming Bell which gives a lovely warm coppery tone. I have a little more piping to add at the rear end of the cockpit (piping that runs to drop tanks plus the air pressurisation for these), but need to come back to that later once I have the panel in place on the starboard side of the cockpit, as this has various valves and priming pumps to connect to......

 

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You may be able to see that I added a petrol filter and a crank for the rudder control wires below the pedals. The pedals themselves have "leather" straps added and these were given a coat of sand coloured paint followed by some dots of Vallejo Pale Sand along the edges. A stripe of Vallejo 70.828 Wood Grain mixed with Vallejo Glaze Medium to give a transparent paint was brushed along the middle of the straps, leaving the previous colours visible along the edges. I noticed late on that the rudder pedals had holes in their sides so I replicated these with 1.3mm circles punched from black decal sheet...

 

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The Airscale decals for the side panels have been applied and I'm part the way through doing those for the instrument panel. I used Klear for these.

First photo shows the parts before sticking the decals on....

 

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Airfix include some nice detail on the outward face of the starboard side panel. I added some terminals from a section of 1/700 warship ladder photo-etch cut to length, clear covers over the terminal boxes and wiring run to the conduits entering from beneath. A couple of further details seen in photos were also added....

 

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I also added transparent covers over the terminal boxes on each side of the footrests....

 

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And some pulleys and aileron control cables.....

 

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The side panels (but not the instrument panel or oil tank) have now been glued into position and left to set overnight before continuing tomorrow with some further piping detail....

 

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Regarding pulling together various photos and diagrams from books, I have taken to photographing what I need from them so I can quickly find & view everything on my tablet. It saves cluttering the workspace and headaches from trying to remember where I had seen things. It seems to work well.

 

I hope you found something here of interest and thank you for stopping by to look 🙂

Cheers,

Pat

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1 hour ago, patmaquette said:

One thing I find attractive about this large scale model is that you get a good idea of how the real aircraft was constructed.

 

No kidding, reading through these I practically forgot I wasn't observing a Hawker production line!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi everyone,

I have made a little more progress and the cockpit is about complete. I have continued to add details here and there that I have spotted in photos, but the Airfix kit is pretty comprehensive as it comes. 

I finished decalling the instrument panel and popped one or two details on the reverse side (a cable, support plate and windscreen heating duct) that are visible though its openings as an "amuse yeux". 

 

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Here is the completed job, save for the pilot's seat that I'll add later so I can check it sits centrally in the fuselage.....

 

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I've now moved onto working on the engine and will post about that later. The order of assembly of the engine and various pipes seems to be really important so I'll basically follow the sequence given in the instructions and add details as I go. I'm looking forward to adding the radiator grille p.e. that @(ex)Sgtrafman kindly let me have.

 

Thanks for your interest and stopping by to look 🙂,

Cheers,

Pat

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