Revell 1:32 Hunter - Miss Demeanour

[KallistiUK]

I thought you might be interested in this build that I began last year but had to put to one side to go on holiday and havn't yet got around to finishing off! Maybe posting here will stir up the enthusiasm again...

 

 

This is what I am hoping to build:

and to do it I'm using this:

which is the Revell kit plus paint instructions and decals from Cammett who did the paint job on the real plane! Sprue shot:

Bloody hell that some big lumps of plastic! Kit decals - but won't be used

Cockpit resin and pitot tube

So thats the raw materials!

[KallistiUK]

When I began this, I had just bought my first airbrush, so I had a practice with it...

Not bad for a second attempt! Thats using Tamiya acrylics. My first attempt using Vallejo was a terrible nightmarish failure - mostly because I'm a noob at this airbrushing lark and had the proportions of vallejo to thinner wrong. Anyway I'm sticking with Tamiya now.

This is the cockpit started:

This resin set is bloody good - superb detail! Initial Nato Black base coat, with dials picked out with Tamiya XF18 semi gloss back to give the faces more contrast. Once the dial detail is picked out, I'll drop a blob of Klear over the dial to represent the glass. More work needs to be done on the seat, I've so far only picked out the buckles with silver.

I've been looking further afield on the net for photos of the cockpit of MD but the best I could find was a video taken inside the cockpit over Biggin Hill which shows a sort of "over the shoulder" shot from the port side. So instead I went to the Heritage Aviation site and filled in the contact us form and emailed Jonathan Whaley directly asking if it was possible to get some photos of the cockpit for this model and he very kindly replied and included just the thing! I was very impressed! He gave me permission to post this photo here so long as I watermarked it with his copyright so here is the cockpit of Miss Demeanour:

and here is the link to the full size photo 2000 px x 1333 px

The main garmin console sits where the gunsight used to be and there is anther screen on the right console, above the fuel gauges. What is also interesting is how many LCD readouts have been embedded intot he variosu consoles, replacing whatever dials or displays were originally there - I doubt there was much LCD technology in the late 50s...

So here is my start at reproducing the Garmin in the cockpit

Just to get it into scale - this addition is 7mm wide by 6.4mm tall (okay call it 6.5mm if you must ) building the box over it will be tricky until after the cockpit is assembled, the front fuselage closed up and the coweling is finally in place. I'm going to have a go at shrinking the screens in the photo down to 3mm wide to fit in the model and print them out on the decal paper I've had on the shelf since last summer

[KallistiUK]

I'm seriously thinking about building this with wheels up and flying - I mean its a Hunter which is a beautiful flying machine in the first place and then its got that amazing colour scheme! It should be seen flying, not stranded on the ground! This will also make the build somewhat quicker as it saves me having to bugger around with the landing gear. The downside will be there is no pilot in the Revell Kit, so I've ordered one from PJ Productions, this one

http://www.pj-production.be/en/14-nato-pilot-seated-in-ac-80-90-.html

which is a NATO pilot from the 80s/90s but looks like the flight suit, helmet and mask that Jonathan wears while flying as seen in various photos on the net.

A flying hunter! So taking one of the large Airfix 1:24 scale stands, I did a dry fit to work out the angle that I could achieve and cut a hole in the side under one of the wings... this give a nice pose...

To support it, I added a plastic strip inside the body that the stand can latch onto and built up one side of the top of the stand to support the angled fuselage

This was also the time to work out the balance of the model and add ballast if required. It looks like its pretty evenly balanced and there is still stuff to go into the nose and cockpit so I'm pretty happy with that pose.

The nose with resin cockpit inside is now assembled. I printed some tiny decals on the colour laser at work today for the screens which are barely visible with their dark colours but at least I will know they are there if nobody else does lol! Did some drybrushing inside the cockpit which brought out all the wonderful details in the resin and I'm really very pleased with how it looks.

Went together reasonably well. Some filler needed on the engine as you can see, some on the joint between for fuselage and rear. The wings neede some careful fitting as they had to fit over the engine intakes and into slots which took some to get them to align well and some sanding to thin the edges of the wings to fit in the slots. Once fitted, there were a few gaps which were filled with Mr Dissolved Putty.

Now onto painting - oh boy! First things first, need to be able to rotate it smoothly, so I got the turntable and did this:

Its supported on its tail by foam and masking tape and will rotate nicely. With a bit of tape holding the base to the table its quite stable. Next it to start with the masking, following the instructions from Robin Carpenter from Cammett with Tamiay masking tape, a plastic bag from sinsburys and some normal masking tape.

white plus two shades of yellow so far, 100% yellow and 10/50 white yellow. Thought I'd messed it up when I accidentally brushed against het yellow while turning it and wiped some off - agghh! It seems to have recovered now...

Orange mix next...

Edited January 23, 2013 by KallistiUK

[KallistiUK]

You can see the colour variation more in that second photo than in the first.

The next bits are a bit more difficult... the grey and light blue bands are 10mm and 15mm wide apiece and have quite defined demarcation lines without them being too sharp if you see what I mean. These will require inverting the masking for this part. I've totally run out of yellow paint (2 10ml bottles used so far along with the same amount of isopropanol thinner, but then the yellow had to be mixed to create three different shades - white/yellow, red/yellow and pure yellow. Will have to visit Hobbycraft or Modelzone in Reading tomorrow to pick up another couple as I think I need to touch up the yellow orange demarcation just behind the cockpit - I think it needs to be further down the spine that it currently is to give the proper arc.

I've sanded down a little bit of the roughness from the paint, not much, just enough to take the edge off. Next is remasking for the other end...

This masking needs to be perfect, spot on. No paint creep can be allowed on this one! First off I sanded down the raised line where the previous paint had butted up against the previous masking tape. Then I laid down the new curve with a lot of roughly 5mm strips of Tamiya masking tape, a couple of mm inside the previously painted dark red. Then I gave the tape strips a paint over with maskol to try to fill any gaps to stop any paint creep. Then I taped the plastic bag over the top, fixing it with normal masking tape and once again giving that joint a coat of maskol to seal any gaps.

There are in fact three blues, a light blue, followed by what they call "roundel blue" to which I've got XF-4 as a reasonable match, then will use X-3 Royal Blue for the dark blue. I'm going to give this a try on the fuel tanks to check that the colour is good.

 

 

Well that was a close run thing! Almost made a complete balls up of the paintwork! Did the grey stripe last night so this evening I thought I'd be a clever ******* and make the transition between the grey and light blue a bit softer so used blue tack to form the edge. Well of course once the paint had dried a bit and I took off the blue tac, discovered a very wavy line I then re-measured the width of the grey stripe to go back to using masking tape and discovered there was some significant overspray so like an idiot I dabbed some isopropanol and ALL the paint came, blue grey and even primer... taking it right down to bare plastic!!! aghhhhhhh!!!

Thankfully I had plenty of grey left over so was able to overcoat the bad spots, but this does set my timescale back as I'm now back to where I was yesterday and I still need to remask and paint light blue! I will have a go later tonight in abotu 3 hours to give the grey time to dry out more so at least I can mask the gry out and spray the light blue later tonight.

In the meantime I did spray the stand to match

and the fuel tanks sprayed with the dark blue from the previous test

Fingers crossed I don't screw up again!

Edited January 23, 2013 by KallistiUK

[KallistiUK]

After the roundel blue stripe comes the first coat of dark blue...

That needed a second coat to get full coverage. There won't be much in th eway of weathering to do on this as its kept pretty pristine and shiny - when the paint job was done they made an effort to fill in the panel lines with putty and sand it smooth as you can see here:

So I won't be making great efforts to highlight the panels or dirty it up like I would normally do on a plane.

(drum roll)

TADA!!!!

The photo makes it look much better than it actually is... the demarcation line between dark red and grey is very blotchy and there has been some paint creep.

Here is a larger version

Sadly on closer inspection the demarcation line between dark red and grey was very ragged and has required a bit of extensive touching up with a hairy stick which brings its own problems of getting the paint colour to match since this is quite a complex colour mix and gradient! Looking at it again I think I will need to do some remasking and spraying even after the brush touch up just to blend in the brush edges.

Good news is that the pilot arrived from PJ Productions

So that means the cockpit can proceed as well.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

...and that is as far as I got with my previous build earlier last year. As you probably noticed, I cobbled this together from a bunch of posts on another board - I hope you don't mind that, but I thought you guys would be interested in this project...

Its sitting safely on top of the wardrobe inside a plastic bag to reduce the dust. I really would like to find the time to get back onto it asap year especially as Jonathan Whaley is giving a talk at the West London Aero Club at White Waltham (just up the road from me) on 8th May and I've been invited along...

Edited January 23, 2013 by KallistiUK

[Guest]

WOW, great subject. Great painting ! You are doing a fantastic job of one of my favorite jets, and doing it well. Keep it up............Harv

[billwinkes]

Stunning paint work.

Bill

[jacksdad64]

I really can't wait to see this finished.

Surely the most famous Hunter scheme and very well executed.

 

Steve

[Nick32]

Looking good. I especially like the stand, it will really 'make' it when its done.

Nick

[Shawn M]

wow!

great job on the paintwork.

[SinuheH]

Great work - one of my favourite Hunter schemes.

Used to love seeing them perform locally - most elegant jet.

[A.Wolf Grant]

ANY, and I mean ANY Hunter build is OK with me (love 'em and seen them in action on more than one occasion) but your's is just out of this world .. If, as you say, you're new to this airbrushes malarkey then, wow, you've got it licked mate.

Talk about a leap into the fire from the frying pan with this Hunter. It's nice to see something with only one wing (i.e. not a WnW's bi-plane) which has some colour .. and this one has it in spades.

 

Tell me .. are Sainsbury's carriers better than Tesco's when using as a mask ??

 

Grant

[KallistiUK]

Well I had to try out several to make sure I found the right one. Tesco was too cheap and tore too easily, Waitrose were just too posh to consider destroying in this manner. Since I refuse to go into a Lidl, Aldi or Morrisons anymore, it ended up being a one horse race with Sainsburys!

 

Edited January 27, 2013 by KallistiUK

[A.Wolf Grant]

Well I had to try out several to make sure I found the right one. Tesco was too cheap and tore too easily, Waitrose were just too posh to consider destroying in this manner. Since I refuse to go into a Lidl, Aldi or Morrisons anymore, it ended up being a one horse race with Sainsburys!

 

 

Oh, and don't get me started on M&S

 

Kidding aside I really do think you're doing a bang up job. I'm looking forward to seeing it progress.

 

Grant

[Tony T]

Fantastic Hunter. Have seen this jet fly on a couple of occasions and had this subject 'on the go', using the set supplied by the guy who painted the real thing, including paint jars, but have chickened out for the time-being!

Must attempt to resuscitate that project when the skill levels start intersecting yours - which may be never in the latter instance!

Was thinking of using curved slot-shaped templates cut from card and held in place 1-2mm above the plastic with bluetac or similar (after masking hard edges on the kit), or spraying a demarcation edge onto clear decal to put in place instead, but suspect either method may be prone to disaster or look slightly naff!

I think it's one of those subjects on which I have to bow to others' superior talents - including yours Kallisti - and accept that this is for experts like yourself only!

 

Cheers

 

Tony T