SPA Modeler

It's Kari's fault, seeing his Wildcat build has really got we wanting to build another 1/48 WWII fighter, as I've not done so for nearly a year now.

So I picked up this rather spiffing Airfix Hurricane Mk.I kit from Amazon



It comes with a couple of choices of schemes, an all over silver post-war training bird (which is rather tempting) or the box art desert bird with the interesting leading edge camo....





The moulding is nice, if a little bit pebblely...





(More sprue shots: https://stuartsscalemodels.blogspot.com ... pical.html )

Looking forward to building this one! Hopefully I'll get started on it tomorrow, as my wife and daughter are at the cinema.

Cheers!

I’m gonna be living vicariously while watching you build this one Stuart. I kinda like the desert scheme myself. IIRC, that aircraft is mentioned in an Osprey book on Hurricane Aces, and the unusual camo was to throw off recognition by opposing Italian fighters from a head on angle.

It's a great kit. I did have some fit issues with the wing spars, here's my build log.

http://goldeneramodel.com/mymodels/hurr ... icane.html

Stuart wrote:It's Kari's fault, seeing his Wildcat build has really got we wanting to build another 1/48 WWII fighter, as I've not done so for nearly a year now.

YES!


- Kari

Definitely the desert scheme.

I really like the interesting desert scheme - especially under the nose and wings edges. I'm assuming there are no decals for it and you have to paint them.

Definitely will be watching this one. May tempt me to buy another Hawker Hurricane again.

Great color scheme options! Following

Looks like a really good kit

Thanks Gents!

Stikpusher wrote:I’m gonna be living vicariously while watching you build this one Stuart. I kinda like the desert scheme myself. IIRC, that aircraft is mentioned in an Osprey book on Hurricane Aces, and the unusual camo was to throw off recognition by opposing Italian fighters from a head on angle.

It's certainly unusual - I do like the silver scheme but I probably will go for the desert one. At least I won't have to mask the leading edges!

jeaton01 wrote:It's a great kit. I did have some fit issues with the wing spars, here's my build log.

http://goldeneramodel.com/mymodels/hurr ... icane.html

Thanks for the link John, I had wondered about the assembly of the cockpit - building it around the spars without putting the spars in the wings first is just asking for alignment issues - I was actually thinking about doing it how you have, and add them to the wings first.

Do you know what, I'm amazed - Airfix has made a pretty good go at replicating the tube structure of the cockpit and it actually blooming well fitted together!



Stupid building method though, as you can see, Airfix suggest you start building up the structure onto the loose spars BEFORE you fit it all to the wings.... Yeah no... (bearing in mind this is made form their speciality floppy grey plastic!) no way is that going to work without major alignment issues!



Before John even suggested it, I'd had the idea of fitting the spars to the wing and building the cockpit around, I just didn't know it would work - so thanks John for sharing the link to your build photos as you confirmed it would...
(great minds and all that )

I also had to build up the U/C bays and gun bay walls too, to give the spars some structure.



It's actually a nicely detailed cockpit (this is only the bottom, the IP goes into the fuselage halves).





I lost count of the number of parts. It's also quite fragile thanks to the bendy plastic, but should hold together long enough to get painted and into the fuselage.

Mind you, these highly detailed cockpits are all very well, but even in this scale nothing of it is going to be seen once the canopy is on - makes you wonder what the point is?

Cheers!