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BAe Hawk T.1 Red Arrows - Revell 1/72


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Time to reveal my completed Red Arrows Hawk. It's not a great build. I'm a terribly slow builder and I just wanted to see the Red Arrows colour scheme floating from my ceiling so this was an attempt at a quick and simple build. Get it finished and looking passable from a foot or more away. I ran into a few issues en route which have ultimately increased that estimate to at least 2 or more feet away.. nice from far but far from nice. It is, however, a simple build of a simple kit, it's a learning process, and all that, so here it is.

 

Work In Progress thread is here:

 

 

Paint is Tamiya gloss red X-7 over a Tamiya white fine primer. I usually use a grey primer but chose to use white to let the red stand out unaltered by the base coat. In hindsight I think if the red had been a shade darker it would look better, so maybe I should have stuck with the grey. Or I could have mixed the red a little and put another slightly darker coat on top, but I chose to live with it as is. Top coat, to seal the decals, is Vallejo satin clear varnish from a spraycan. I applied these lightly to the acrylic colour coat to avoid any melting but I had no problems with the paints reacting to eachother in the end.

 

It did look a bit plain, all red, so I did try bring out some of the panel lines just a little. At first I tried by applying Tamiya powders with a fine brush, but the powder went everywhere except in the groove, and that would not do. Red Arrows aircraft are always immaculate, so a weather worn one just didn't feel right. That kind of thing hasn't worried me in the past, but here, for some reason, it did. Don't look for the logic there, you won't find any :D. In the end I went with a brown wash, tried to keep it as subtle as possible while still bringing the panel lines out a little. It wasn't a great success and there are some iffy areas on the white stripes, but then weathering rarely is a great success for me. It was a learning process, at least.

 

There were a few problems with the build. It needed quite a bit of filler. The intakes in particular did not fit well and I had to grind those, and the mating surfaces, down quite a lot to get it all sorted out. And hardly any of the add-on strakes have any locating holes or lugs to secure them, so they're all attached just by a really thin edge and were prone to falling off under very light nudges. They seem more secure now everything's painted, thankfully. One of the main landing gear doors had snapped in half on the sprue, so I glued it back together being very careful to line it up properly, only to discover later in the build that for a wheels down build, the gear doors have to be split along the exact same line it had broken on anyway. Doh.

The paint, my first effort with Tamiya acrylic gloss for overall coverage, didn't lay down smoothly enough for decals, so I had to apply a clear gloss coat first. That cost me a week for my "fast" build.

 

And then the decals themselves. Probably nothing wrong with them when new but they had aged and deteriorated terribly, so much so that I initially gave up on them and was going to hunt for aftermarket ones. They were brittle, either wouldn't stick at all on the model or would get stuck fast before I could align them, and the whole decal wouldn't separate from the backing paper at the same time. Half of it would be floating while the other half was still stuck solid. After a while of cooling down I changed my mind and tried them without any Microset, let them soak a lot longer, and with that made slow progress. the end result isn't great. There are touch ups in a number of places. One side of the tail fin, for instance, is missing the union flag because that part of the decal broke away but also managed to set itself solidly on to the model. I couldn't remove it with masking tape, Blu-tak, it wouldn't even scrape off with a fingernail nor cocktail stick, even though the paint around it would. And it was out of position. In the end I just painted the red, white and blue over the top of it.

 

Finally, the landing gear doors have locating lugs, but no equivalent holes in the fuselage to match them to. So they're hanging on precariously just like all the other little bits were, and without the added benefit of a helping layer of paint on top of them. I expect to lose half of those bits over time.

 

Apart from that, it was all good! For me the end product looks interesting enough to join my displays, so I'm calling it job done.

 

And now on to the images:

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And finally, the side with the half painted, half decalled vertical stabiliser. There's blue, red and white paint on there, all touching up where the fragment of decal ended up stuck to the fin, too far forward and a bit too low for it's intended position. The decal adds the white and blue to the tail. The red is painted on, but because the fragment was too far forward I had to touch up the red as well.

1213464-103006-33-1440.jpg

 

 

Thanks for looking!

Edited by kiseca
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13 minutes ago, The Shearwater said:

Despite all the issues you list, that’s turned out pretty well! Even zooming right in, it’s hard to pick out faults.

👏👏

 

Thanks! They are easier to see in the flesh / plastic as it were. The photos have been kind to it, but if I'm not looking up close, the faults don't stand out so I'm happy with it.

Edited by kiseca
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1 hour ago, kiseca said:

 

Thanks! They are easier to see in the flesh / plastic as it were. The photos have been kind to it, but if I'm not looking up close, the faults don't stand out so I'm happy with it.

I like your “1ft / 2ft” description too...recently found some kits that I built as a teenager, they’re definite “next street” viewers 😁

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