The Hamfisted Modeller: 1/48 Hasegawa Hawker Hurricane IID

Depicted as an aircraft operated by No. 6 Sqn Royal Airforce in the Western Desert 1942

I've always liked the Desert Camouflage colours of the British and Commonwealth forces in the Western desert and Italy in World War II. Combine this with the Hurricane (another favourite of my mine, add in the Big 40mm cannon IID Tank Buster version and I was always going to build this kit.

The Kit

1/48 Hasegawa Hawker Hurricane Mk.IID tropical version (Kit No 09052 / JT52)

The Build

I built this kit virtually straight from the box except for the inclusion of a Vacu formed canopy , Ultracast exhausts' some scratch built lead foil seatbelts with Airwaves PE buckles and some scratch built 40mm gun barrels.

I also dropped the elevators and re-positioned the rudder. Added the support to the centre of the front of the air intake and added the 2 missing struts in the rear of the air intake.

The only 2 problems with this kit are those which are well known. These are

The position of join of the wings and fuselage on the underside. It means you have a join on the fabric section and this can be a little difficult clean up.
The one piece canopy. The cockpit is so nice it really deserves an open cockpit so the detail can be viewed. I used a vac formed canopy I went though 3 of them to get one set that I was happy with. I hate working with these tings as they are so flimsy. A tip I got from Hyperscale is to stuff the thing with Blu Tac. This made it slightly easier to work with but it was still a pain. I'd also recommend grabbing a mask set. I would save you a bit of time masking out the frames.

The cockpit in this kit is outstanding straight from the box, all I've added is some scratch built lead foil seatbelts with some PE buckles. All the instruments where punched out with my Waldron Punch set and attached individually. I like this technique as it gives a much better panel than I could ever hope to paint.

The kit guns have a flared end that appears to represent a "blank" that was fitted over the barrel. My references didn't show this and mentioned that it wasn't used in theatre. I wanted some hollow barrels so I used a syringe needle of the appropriate size stuffed into the hollow part of a cotton bud, which conveniently was close enough to the correct diameter for that part of the barrel.

Painting

Here's the aircraft with the paint on. I used Model Master enamels, I'm using these more and more as they really seem to airbrush well.

I used the blu-tac sausage method for the camouflage. Usually I free hand all my camouflage and I tried that first with this kit. When I free hand I draw the scheme on the primed model with a 2B pencil. However in this case I found that I needed heaps of the brown paint to hide the black line. So much that it wasn't practical. So after a quick paint strip and recoat with middle stone I decided to try the Blu-Tac sausages. I was so impressed I stripped the Mk 1 Hurricane I'm building used the same technique.

Finishing

After the camouflage was finished and the bottom painted I sprayed a coat of Testors Polly scale gloss prior to decaling. I'm still searching for the best gloss coat as I really struggle to get a nice a gloss finish. Future and I just don't get on. The Polly scale airbrushed nicely but still didn't give a really (in my view) glossy finish. AS I found out later it's also not as good a protection against enamels/turps as Future. Still it looked ok so onto the decaling.

I used the decals straight form the box and these went down OK. I usually use Micro Set/Sol but these decals really didn't like the Micro Sol and 2 were still wrinkled the next day Luckily I have plenty of spare roundels so I replaced these and just used Micro-set.

I tried a new product Flory Models Weathering Sludge Wash. It worked very well, so well I've ordered some more. Being water based it's really forgiving if you're like me and tend to be a bit heavy handed. This was sealed with another coat of Poly scale gloss. I then tried some post shading with my new Sparmax DH-103 airbrush. I really shouldn't have bothered, .as I over did it. Damn Brett Green and his Scale workshops... he makes it look so easy .

I removed the worst with some Artists Turps but damaged the underlying paint on one side. After a re-spray, re-wash, re-post shading I applied a coat of Mr Colour Flat. Some more weathering for the gun staining was applied using artists chalks, this is my usual method for weathering and I should stick with what I know . Paint chipping was done with a silver pencil and the silver compound in one of the Tamiya weathering kits.

A final coat a flat and off came the masking for the cockpit. As the Tamiya tape had been on there a while there was some glue stuck to the vac formed windscreen . After a bit (read about an hour) of cleaning and a brush coat of Kleer the windscreen looked OK. The Gunsight is was then fitted.

The rear canopy had turned out crap though so I grabbed another from the CA Hurricane, thank goodness they have you 4, plus I had 2 squadron one spare. Another mask nightmare and a snappy coat of paint. This one was acceptable. The rear canopy was attached with 4 small spots of PVA and she was done.

When I went to bed that night I was a bit disappointed with the finish of this kit, particularly the over weathering and one of the landing light covers is a bit cloudy. But the following morning it actually looked better. And it actually looks better in the photos. So in the wash up, I reasonably happy, it's not my best work but it deserves it's spot in the cabinet.