Scotty3173

Here are some pics of the feselage now glued together. Of course, with an older kit, there will be a lot of filling and sanding. I decided to only paint parts of the engine that are visible and will eventually glue the engine panel in place due to the lack of detail of the engine and quite frankly, no interest in spending the time to detail such a rudimentary piece. After the fuselage was glued together, I decided to do a little more in the cockpit. I cut the paper seatbelt below the upper piece and will glue it back in place just above the seat to give it the appearance that the belt is feeding through the back piece. I also filled the gap between the seatback piece and the fuselage in the area of the headrest. Have a great weekend everyone!

I got them on Ebay. I just typed in a search for 1/32 RAF seatbelts and they came up. They are on a thicker card stock paper that you cut out with a sharp blade. The seller is "driver21winston100kerry". They are $6 with free shipping. For the $6, he sent something like 40 seatbelts for RAF, Luftwaffe, and USN. I figured I would try them out for the older models...and they do look good.

Here are the beginnings of the cockpit... This is after the seatback has been repositioned and filling and sanding on the seatback joints to the bottom piece have been performed. It fits quite nicely into the fuselage now. I found this seatbelt product online. It is laser printed seatbelts. I purchased a bunch of RAF, USN, and Luftwaffe for $6 total. I think that they are perfect for these older aircraft that I don't want to spend a ton of money on. You just cut them out with a sharp knife and glue them in place.

Apreciate the tip!

Here it is... "Wing locks" have been removed... Not a bad fit for a kit from 1986... I"ll post some pics of that cockpit next...

Hi everyone... I am new to this group, but like I said in my profile, I have been modeling since I have been about 7 or 8 years old. My father was a big-time collector of kits...he did much more buying than building. He had around 600 kits on shelves in his basement at the high point. As he is now 70 years old, he begun to "diperse" some of the kits to me. I have always been a 1/35 WWII armor guy, but I now have about 30 1/32 aircraft kits that he has parted with. I have the old "History Makers" series, Hasegawa Minicraft, and Revell Smithsonian series kits, etc., etc....the only drawback is that they are all about 30 years old! My father laughs and tells me that is when modeling was real and kits did not just put themselves together! I just currently started the 1/32 Revel Smithsonian Hawker Hurricane IIC. I was thrilled with the overall dry fit of the fuselage to the wings, especially for an older kit. And then the problems started. I do not want to spend much extra on this kit since it is so old. I just want a basic OBB with the addition of some seatbelts. With that being said, the cockpit is rudimentary and has a horrible fit into the fuselage. The seatback piece has to be positioned out of place in order to fit the cockpit. This required dry fitting the cockpit and gluing the seat back where it had to be, and then some filling and sanding the gaps because the seat back had to be positioned further back. The sides of the cockpit also had to be modified to fit. The only other issue, so far, with dry fitting was the placement of the wings to the fuselage. The upper wing pieces had this sort of locking system to fit the fuselage. These locks were placed too high up and the wings fit awkwardly. Those locking pieces were removed and after some further sanding and scraping, the fit is excellent. Does anyone have any experience with the kit? Any suggestions? Once I figure out how to post pictures, I will start doing so! Scott