Revell BAE Hawk T1 Rv04970 or Airfix Hawk 100 Series 1/72 Opinions please....

[Hairtrigger]

Opinions / experience etc...  Please on above.

 

RAF Valley variant wanting to make.

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At the moment the Revell looks in the frame, but stayed away from Revell since my re- intro into the hobby - eek that Stuka, but in fairness was a very old mould.

[nimrod54]

The Revell kit is a good kit that makes up well. If you check the link below you will find a Hawk Kit Group Build sponsored by Jadlam Racing, where the nominated kit was Revell's 1/72 04970. IIRC several of the builders, me included, had a issue with the small fillet at the rear of the tail being short shot but it is an easy issue to sort out. HTH

 

Cheers

John

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/forum/707-revell-172-hawk-t1-group-build-sponsored-by-jadlam-racing-models/

 

[Giorgio N]

I espressed my view on the 3 most easily available Hawk kits in this thread from a few years ago:

 

In the meantime I have built the Revell kit and overall this fits decently. Perfect it is not and the shape of the rear fuselage annoys me.. said that I found that this can be easily improved and overall the much better details make me prefer this over the Airfix kit.

 

[Seahawk]

I have all 3 (plus the original Airfix kit and the Matchbox one).

 

Starting from a clean sheet I would go straight to the Revell kit.  The accuracy of the outline shape of the Airfix kit may be good but I can't see past those weirdly-shaped wheel well and undercarriage doors, which, despite at least one attempt by Airfix to rework, still screams WRONG to me.  The original Airfix kit was much better: you'd have thought that someone might have compared the 2 kits before issue, spotted the glaring difference and investigated which one was right but apparently not.

 

The Italeri kit is nicely moulded but the nose looks a bit slender and pointy to me.  I have heard there's some problem with the canopy frame lines but I leave that to others to describe.

 

So to the Revell kit.  To my eyes it has the correct slightly bulbous shape to the nose which the IT kit does not.  Nicely moulded with some very impressive detail in places.  The problem with it is that it can't be built accurately from the box.  It has the early rear fuselage but the late headboxes on the ejection seats, so one or the other needs to be changed.  The RV Red Arrows Hawk, reasonably enough, comes with no external stores except the smoke pod.  The other boxing (black scheme) has a cannon pod, 2 SNEB rocket pods and 2 Sidewinders.  The cannon pods between all 4 kits (incl early Airfix) are very different in length and shape:  I asked People Who Know on this site which was the most accurate: the original Airfix was a clear winner, with the Revell last (too chunky and "boxy").  The Italeri one was usable if you didn't look too hard.

 

So they all have their pros and cons.  My qualified vote goes to the Revell kit.  And a tip of the hat to the original Airfix kit, from the days when patternmakers actually looked at their subject (which was actually an HS1182 Hawk prototype, not an in-service aircraft).  Detail levels are far below what we expect nowadays but outline shape very good, the undercarriage doors don't grate and it comes with more stores than you can shake a stick at; IIRC 4 x 1000lb bombs, 4 x SNEB pods, 2 tanks and the best cannon pod on the market.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Seahawk

[Hairtrigger]

Thanks Gents,.  The Revell version seems to be very inexpensive as well so will get both .   Thinking as the Airfix come with figures will do in flight my usual with small magnets and a retro Airfix stand..