Fly 1/32 Hurricane

[Chaotic Mike]

As presaged in my Typhoon RFI, I am working my way through Hawker's WW2 single engine fighters, plus (eventually) a Nimrod.  Having been immersed in resin for the last 2 builds, it's a bit weird working with polystyrene again.  But, since it is a multimedia kit with plenty of resin and etch, I'll be making copious use of cyanoacrylate, and it is showing distinct signs of short-runnedness - very few locating pins, and plenty of flash.

 

It's a nice kit though, and should build up nicely with a bit of care.  Sadly, it's got me at the helm...

I have heard Bad Things about how tricky it is to get the cockpit frame to stay together in the absence of locators.  My technique involved drilling 0.2mm holes and using wire to reinforce things.  A few pics...

 

 

 

 

At t he time I took these pictures, I hadn't overpainted the photoetch for a few minor controls.  The etch looked too thin to me, so I CA's it onto some plastic card and then sanded it to size - this had the fortunate side benefit of making it distinctly easier to attach the bits of etch onto the framework.  The seat belts are HGW paper fabric, as fiddly as ever but I'm definitely getting the hang of them!  Heavy chipping effects come courtesy of AK Interactive applied over Alclad dull aluminium, an under Tamiya IJN cockpit green.  

 

Having wrestled this area into submission, I moved onto painting and augmenting the cockpit walls.

 

 

 

 

In real life, closed up, the grime from the washing is far more toned down.  Having got this far, it was time to bring the fuselage halves together.  The cockpit frame will come in from underneath once I have dealt with any seam issues.

 

 

The nose is a bit squint - I had to resort to Squadron green instead of just sanding, because the step was too much.  We'll see how well that has worked later, during undercoating.  I'm not usually a fan of feathering filler - I usually get a different step, at the edge of the filler, but I have been being diligent with very fine abrasives used wet.

 

I have also been working on the wings, because they are easy...  The inserts in the landing light gaps are resin, sanded in from the back to enable the lattice to show through.

 

 

There are a few micro cracks to tidy up, and I will probably put some filler around the edges of the framing to make a smooth surface.  I have some Master brass cannon waiting to go into those holes.  They are a very tight fit so I need to be careful when opening up the mounting holes a bit.

 

Anyway, that's enough for now.

 

Mike

[Whitewolf]

I have the 11c in my stash, so very interested to see how it builds... 

[Paramedic]

Locating pins or not, it looks good - probably smart with the drilling. Gotta love Hurricanes, I am just too cowardly to get this one! So I have to enjoy yours..

[Chaotic Mike]

7 hours ago, Paramedic said:

Locating pins or not, it looks good - probably smart with the drilling. Gotta love Hurricanes, I am just too cowardly to get this one! So I have to enjoy yours..

Perhaps the threatened new tool from Revell will take your fancy... 

[Silenoz]

Nice start, albeit start... you've been very busy... that cockpit looks nice by the way.

 

I have three of these to build one day, so I'm in

[Chaotic Mike]

A bit more business, attaching the centre section and wings to the body.

 

The starboard upper went quite well...

 

But underneath was a different story:

 

 

Port upper not as good as the other side...  There's a major step to be dealt with towards the rear

 

Leaving me with this at half time.  Got to wait for various combinations of Revell Contacta Pro and CA to cure before approaching the smoothing phase.  You can see that I was able to do something about the step on the starboard lower, via a winning combination of extra-thin CA, and muscle power distorting the shape of the wing whilst the glue went off.  You can also see a nasty step where the rear of the centre section joins the fuselage.  This will be tricky to blend, as it is marrying the flat metal panel of the centre section to the sculpted shape of the fabric covered fuselage.  Something to worry about tomorrow!

 

 

[Chaotic Mike]

Flying along with this one... (see what I did there, I'll be here all week, etc...)

 

First up, an undercoated wing root to see how its looking:

 

Not bad, clearly there are opportunities for Perfect Plastic Putty, but given the absence of any kind of positive locating mechanism, I'm happy with that.  The other side is similar:

 

 

There is still a fraction of a step towards the rear, but with careful scraping I thing I can turn it into a panel that sits somewhere around there.  Obvs the little dink on the leading edge doesn't have long to live, as well.

 

What follows now is a salutary tale, which can be most easily summarized as RTFM!  Because there aren't *that* many pieces, and because I've been doing this for a few decades now, I was blithely motoring along, getting the fuselage and wings together and polishing and eradicating seams (many...).  Nowt wrong with that.  Anyway, I was idly playing with the resin exhausts (that will go on at the end) and test fitting, when it occurred to me that they are a *very* loose fit within the cutouts, and that if I wasn't careful, I might lose them inside the fuselage, leaving a tricky extraction job on the cards.  So I looked at the sprues, and the instructions.  Hmmm... What are these?

 

 

Of course!  They are the blanking support plates that I should have cemented inside the nose before I assembled it. Brill.  Now what?  To recap, look at the size of this hole...

 

 

Inspiration struck.  Drill holes in the casting block behind the exhausts, insert brass tube and voila...  What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

As it turned out, not much.  There will be some fettling required, but I think I have snatched a victory!  Just need to remove a few millimetres, and/or drill the holes a bit deeper.

 

 

 Time to get tore into some rioja, I think...

 

[Chaotic Mike]

So after a week of fettling in the shed, and not a great deal of progress, what do we have?

The two landing lights are dinky, featuring very delicate PE to be attached over the lenses.  Makes a good effect, though,

 

I also acquired Master cannon.  They are quite lovely.  And I don't want anyone telling me I should have got the variant with flat springs rather than circular section (or indeed the other way round... I can't remember!)

  

 

I also spent more time than might be considered sane hollowing out the gap in the tail wheel where the two articulated arms are separated by a shock absorber.  It gave me something to do whilst some primer was drying, or something.

 

I predict challenging times ahead, getting the tail wheel in.  Why I didn't do the sensible thing and assemble this *after* I installed the wheel must forever remain a mystery to you, and my forebrain.

 

Also, observe this little pipe hiding almost invisibly in the wheel wells.  Another example of something that I really ought have installed when the instructions suggested (ie before cementing in the resin wheel bay) rather than afterwards.  Obviously, when finally assembled nobody will *ever* get to see it...

 

Finally, I have been enhancing the various lines where flight surfaces meet the wings.  There was an ugly gap where the outer flap butts up close to the inner, so I had to fill and polish prior to a simple rescribe that will have been done by the time the next instalment comes along.

 

Th-th-th-th-th-th-that's all, folks...

[Silenoz]

Nice progress and solutions... As they say, I've been warned... 

[Alan P]

Some good old modelling ingenuity at work here! Really appreciate your enthusiastic approach to the whole thing, successful outcome was never in doubt!

[Mr Bowcat]

Nice progress so far. I've built this kit, won't be building another one.

[spitfire]

Nice work, and some good tips and escapes, it's a shame we do not have a state of the art 1/32 Hurricane, I'm ploughing my way through a PCM fabric wing at the moment and have a metal wing in the stash as well as a few FLY kits so I am and will be taking more notes.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[bigbadbadge]

This looks a good project and some interesting fixes, we all do that and end up not reading the instructions also.  I have the Fly Sea Hurricane in the stash and am also taking notes. Cockpit looks great as does the rest of course.

Great job 

Chris

[Troy Smith]

On 21/11/2021 at 19:36, Chaotic Mike said:

And I don't want anyone telling me I should have got the variant with flat springs rather than circular section

Depends on what the chose subject is (and I gave some info on the  BE581 Night Reaper decals request you made)

 

The rear mounted flat spring are earlier, the mid mounted round spring later, but from photos it varies, so work from a photo if possible.

 

Detail points, more for others

Tropical cockpit vents the black lines under below foot step. help cool the cockpit,  did become standard on very late Hurricanes,  but not  usually seen in NW Europe.   Easier to mould then add, Hasegawa did the same. 

 

underfuselage lights

at some point, possibly post war, you get 3 in like shown, but for most of the war only the centre was a amber light, the other two were exits for flare tubes. 

 

Interior colours.

Fly are blinkin' awful at colour research, 

for a rambling take on internal colours

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234963507-all-the-hurricane-questions-you-want-to-ask-here/page/2/#elControls_1682406_menu

 

a lot of their decal options are, well, pretty profiles they found online.

 

from their trop kit

eg AK-G, BP592 

see https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/29149-hurricane-ak-g-bp592-photo-needed/

 HV538 /B

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235009172-riaf-hurricane-with-elephant-nose-art-did-it-exist/page/2/#elControls_3338676_menu

 

HV538 is a IIB,  and almost every detail of the profile they used is wrong. 

 

I did offer help to them, as their IID kit contains all the bit to do a Mk.IV and Mk.V,  but they don't always take onbaord offers, @tonyot  offered help with their Sea Hurricane without them taking it onboard 

 

Neat work @Chaotic Mike   

 

 

 

[Chaotic Mike]

Thank you Troy, your input regarding what machine I might end up building was appreciated. One of the photos shows a Mark II that had been in the intruder scheme, then repainted in a day fighter scheme, but which then showed enormous areas of night showing through on the underside looked interesting... 

[Troy Smith]

45 minutes ago, Chaotic Mike said:

One of the photos shows a Mark II that had been in the intruder scheme, then repainted in a day fighter scheme, but which then showed enormous areas of night showing through on the underside looked interesting... 

Which is the ones discussed here

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235025819-interesting-scheme-for-the-hurricane-fan-to-replicate/

 

 

JX-Y of 1 Squadron. 

 

Note the very patchy upperscheme repaint as well.  

It will enlarge seems to be Z3775, last maybe 8,  but I'll check Air Britain later, dinner calls.

EDIT checked, it's Z3778

 

Glad the witter was of use.

[npb748r]

I love pictures like this, makes you think that perhaps we seek a level of painting perfect that doesn't match real life.  The engine on that first picture looks like it could be a BMC engine with the amount of oil streaming out !!! 

[Troy Smith]

51 minutes ago, npb748r said:

makes you think that perhaps we seek a level of painting perfect that doesn't match real life. 

the first two have been repainted from an overall Night scheme, and not very well, though bear in mind when 1 Sq came off night intruder missions, they went up north and then converted to Typhoons,  so maybe that influenced the care of the repaints?  It's quite unusual for repaints to be done poorly,  the other that spring to mind are the 87 Sq Hurricanes in August, again, which was done is rush.

Part of this maybe just a full scale 'black basing' effect....

JX-I/HL603 is factory finish BTW

51 minutes ago, npb748r said:

The engine on that first picture looks like it could be a BMC engine with the amount of oil streaming out !!! 

Merlins leaked a lot of oil,  that's clean and tidy for a Merlin!  

[Chaotic Mike]

Meanwhile, looking closely at the pictures does, of course, show the other variation on cannon springs than what I have acquired.  I *told* you not to tell me... 😁

[Troy Smith]

On 24/11/2021 at 16:26, Chaotic Mike said:

Meanwhile, looking closely at the pictures does, of course, show the other variation on cannon springs than what I have acquired.  I *told* you not to tell me... 😁

and they were interchangeable    

 

Or pick one that has that type....

 

fancy something different?  Used for mail around D-Day...

 

 

 

see

 

 

ONe last thought,  I don't know how clear  the Fly instructions are on what goes on what version,  but the Mk.II uses a carb intake with a rear fairing, 

as seen here, I( think there is one in the kit, but I've seen the Mk.I type fitted to builds...

Hurri BBMF underside crop by losethekibble, on Flickr

[Chaotic Mike]

Seems to be a paucity of Tamiya acrylics in the Basingstoke area ATM. No problem, Revell Aqua Colour 50:50 diluted with Ultimate universal airbrush thinner gives a beautiful black finish (that I am going to cover up, mostly!) 

 

@Troy Smith, what colour do we think the spinner, Fuselage band and lettering are? I was assuming the band will be sky, the letters light grey, spinner who nose? (see what I did there...)

 

Mike

[Troy Smith]

2 hours ago, Chaotic Mike said:

what colour do we think the spinner, Fuselage band and lettering are?

For the patchy 1 Sq repaint scheme?  Sky for all.  Standard for Day Fighter Scheme, introduced in August 1941. 

 

If you have not seen it,  read this

https://boxartden.com/reference/gallery/index.php/Camouflage-Markings/Hawker-Hurricane

 

as it has a lot of information, note, while old, these monographs were the result partly of declassfied documents  at the time. 

 

HTH 

[Chaotic Mike]

Boy, there's a lot there! 

I was going to show a photo of the kit in its black state, but figured it isn't very exciting! 

[Chaotic Mike]

So I took a picture of it in its black undercoat.  The intention was to then do a scuzzy looking Day Fighter scheme, but I'm quite liking the patchy way the black has come out - it looks tired.

 

 

Now not sure if I will return to JX-E in all over black (but no Night Reaper), or carry on with the grubby camouflage look.  Decisions, decisions...

[ModelingEdmontonian]

1 hour ago, Chaotic Mike said:

So I took a picture of it in its black undercoat.  The intention was to then do a scuzzy looking Day Fighter scheme, but I'm quite liking the patchy way the black has come out - it looks tired.

Now not sure if I will return to JX-E in all over black (but no Night Reaper), or carry on with the grubby camouflage look.  Decisions, decisions...

Gorgeous! No particular opinion as to whether it should stay dark or go to DFS, but lovely at this point either way!