The Hamfisted Modeller: 1/48 Airfix Hawker Sea Fury

This was built for the 2019 NSW Scale Model Shows "Airfix Cup" The Illawarra Plastic Modellers Association run this annual show.

I chose a aircraft operated by 808 Sqn Fleet Air Arm Royal Australian Navy during the Korean War. This particular aircraft was flown by a New Zealander Lieutenant Guy A Beange . You can read about him here . It damaged by Typhoon Ruth in 1951 and was ditched overboard.

The Kit

The new Airfix kit is the best kit of the Sea Fury in 1/48 scale. That said I don't think it is quite as good as their P-51D Mustang. The biggest issues IMHO, are the lack of gunsight and the engineering of the Cowl.

I used the gunsight from the Eduard Mk IX Spitfire kit. The Mk VIII, IX and XVI kits all have two gunsights. The unused one in the MK VIII and IX are correct for the Sea Fury.

Aftermarket and Build Summary

Barracuda Cowl
Eduard Steel Seat Belts
Eduard Mk IX Gunsight

I have seen a couple builds by club members who got good results using the kit pieces for the cowl and re-scribing the detail lost during fitting. I was to lazy so I replaced the cowl with the excellent Barracuda resin piece. The Airfix Nose ring required a few swipes with the sanding stick to get it to mate nicely with the cowl

I also removed all the panels on the area forward of the nose that cross the centreline of the aircraft and replaced those with 0.005" card once the seams were cleaned. Apart from that fit was pretty good. Looking at the photos I probably need to flatten the wheels a little more.

Cockpit detail is fine from the box in this scale, and with a black cockpit not much can be seen. I added a set of Eduard steel belts. Whilst a resin seat would be better the pre panted Steel belts are easy to work with and look good enough in this scale.

Markings

I purchased the Barracuda sheet that had this particular aircraft on but I ended up using my Silhouette Portrait cutter to cut a mask for the codes that go over the stripes. The stripes were also cut out with the Silhouette Portrait. I also made a mask for the tail code K.

I first painted the stripes then laid the mask over the stripes, covered the respective white or black piece and sprayed the alternate colour. This worked well.

I did try to paint the roundels but failed to get a result I was happy with so I went back to decals. I'm still not convinced painted roundels are worth the hassle in this scale if you have good decals.

Most of the markings were from the kit sheet with the RAN and 808 Sqn crest from the Barracuda sheet. The Airfix decals, although printed by Cartogragh proved a little more troublesome than usual.

The serial decal WE673 was home made as I didn't agree with the serial Barracuda suggest. There is a nice table of RAN Sea Fury serials here

Paint

Extra dark Sea Grey - Mr Color EDSG (#333) lighted so it looks right with some white
Sky - Mr Color Duck Egg Green (#24)
Black - Gaia German Grey
White - Mr Color Off White (#69)
Mr Color Red (#3)
Tamiya Smoke for the exhaust stains
Other various Mr Color/Mr Hobby greens and greys for weathering
Various Vallejo Acrylics for details

Clear Coats

Gloss Coat 1 - Testors Glosscoate which didn't go off
Gloss Coat 2 - Tamiya X22
Flat Coat 1 - Winsor and Newton Galeria Matt Varnish . This resulted in lots of white spots which had to be sanded off.
Flat Coat 2 - Dullcoate Flat