Revell Hurricane IIc

[LSP_Kevin]

Excellent progress mate!

 

Kev

[SinuheH]

Man, I'm glad you're doing this, because as soon as you're finished, Tamiya will release a stet-of-the-art Hurricane, for those of us who are less skilled!

I mean, they have to put those excellent Merlin sprues to good use.

[KallistiUK]

Haha nice one SinuheH One lives in hope!

Thanks for the photos Mike, I've already got a couple of them, but the 3rd one down confuses me - I don't think this is a wartime arrangement in the fuselage - what is a water tank doing in place of the radio transmitter? The emergency air tank is usually behind the pilot seat in the schematics I've seen. Where that red thing is seen is usually the IFF transmitter (the large grey box in my model), with there being a wooden switch box underneath there the water tank is. Its a very interesting photo but I think its of a converted/restored aircraft. The 4th photo is one of the first photos I found in my research and is one of my main sources of inspiration - wait until I start building the figure of my dad to see what effect that photo has had

[MikeMaben]

Yeah that's always the case, beware resto photos.

In the 4th photo, that light colored item at the far

right of the opening looks like a sheath that covers

the bungee mechanism for the step retracting system.

I have a drawing for that if it would help.

[KallistiUK]

I think that sheath is for the landing flares on certain models. The tube for the landing step is smaller and further back, more behind the "F". It is a great photo, the post of the radio engineer is perfect for what I'd like to portray with my father's figure...

[mdeanstrauss]

[chacer]

This is looking fantastic mate. I have one I am going to turn into a IID, so watching this with interest & gaining inspiration.

[KallistiUK]

Will look forward to seeing that chacer - I've got the Hasegawa IID in 1:48 that will be built later as part of my long term project.

 

Got a bit more to update now - cockpit details including the gun sight, base and some ancillary pieces... first though, the cockpit.

 

Seat belts added

 

Here you can see the control column and just about make out the control wires that have been added

 

and here finally is the gun-sight, mounted in the right place

 

So for a bit of a break from the aircraft itself, I turned to the base. This is a trusty old picture frame sourced from Oxfam, with a layer of claycrete stained with artists acrylics, dusted with various ground scatter, wood logs, small boulders, plants from long green and cream hairs and a scattering of mixed herbs nicked from the kitchen...

 

 

This is 11" square which is big enough for this model. So what about what else will be appearing in the diaorama? Well how about this:

 

 

its the RAF Accumulator trolley in resin from Iconicair and this iwhat it looks like assembled:

 

 

I'm sure there's been discussions about the various inaccuracies of this kit - ie the wheels being post war versions, but lets face it, there isn't much choice so I'm making do with this one. I'm not sure exactly what colour it should be to be in Burma - RAF Blue or Olive Drab or sand? I can't fond any definitive information about it so I'm going to go with what I feel will work - a blue base coat, over-painted with sand with the paint flaking off in places. Well thats what I'd like to achieve

 

Finally in this update, some tools from the 1:35 Aber PE set

 

 

Spanners:

 

Toolbox compartments with wires added to attache the hinges

 

and finally with hinges added...

 

and yes it DOES open and close as it should - although if it still works after painting I'll be very surprised!

[MikeMaben]

It's hard to say what it is ( sheath appearing object that is),
but the bungee mechanism is a fairly straight line from the
handhold to the step, while it could be the flare chute too.



These are from the Richard Franks book.
Hope they help. Project looks great.

 

edit: I think you're right, the step mech wouldn't be inside a sheath anyway.

Model on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2013 by MikeMaben

[KallistiUK]

Hi Guys, not been online much this week so only now catching up!

Thanks for the pics Mike, I will be modelling the step (as you'll see later in this post) but not the parachute flare tube.

So for progress this weeks its been a bit all over the place. I started work on the figure that will represent my father. Beginning with the Airfix Multipose 8th Army figure set as shown here:

the prone figure immediately stands out for the position of the legs...

so with a bit of manipulation this can be turned into this:

which is a very good approximation to the pose I've got in mind as inspired by the photo Mike posted further up the thread

except of course my Dad would be in tropical gear and not wellies!

In place this looks pretty convincing...

So what about the torso? This went on okay along with arms that make the right pose. The torso-waist join required a lot of filling with some epoxy green stuff, but came out okay with a bit of careful carving and sanding. After trying a number of arms, I found a handy one for the left arm which would be resting on the fuselage as a support, and a right arm reaching into the body. Here it is all primed up and ready for paint:

and from behind (the most common view)

So for the head, I salvaged a bush had from one of the Aussie infantry set. This led to the discovery that the plastic used in this is a very stiff form of vinyl and not polystyrene as I expected. This caused issues with sanding - ie you can't sand vinyl! However I did get around that problem by sticking it in the freezer overnight which acts to make the plastic more solid and allows a certain amount of sanding if done quickly before it warms up. That led to this:

So to fit, the head needed a bit of trimming, which is difficult to see in this photo as the white plastic has got overexposed...

[KallistiUK]

Now what about the base and the trolley? Well the trolley has been completed, painted and weathered. In addition I've knocked up some wooden trestles out of balsa to support the panels that have been removed from the fuselage as I doubt they'd have made a habit of dropping them in the dust/mud of the airfield. Then I also made up some wheel chocks so all together on the base it looks like this:

Close up of the accumulator trolley:

I painted this RAF blue, then did the hairspray trick and painted it stone colour then chipped some of the stone paint off to make it look worn and knocked about. I've left the cable off for now as that will be connected to the Hurricane in the finished diorama.

Here are the wheel chocks

Finally for this update, I plucked up courage and fixed the cockpit into the fuselage. I then spent a very annoying hour or more trying to get the bloody front canopy glass to stay glued. I had previously masked this up and painted inside and out, but when attached, there is contact with the gunsight and the small amount of pressure from this is enough to push the transparency forward. I first tried to glue it with Krystal Klear ie PVA glue, but that took so long to dry it all came apart. I then thought I'd be clever and use a 5 min epoxy to glue it as this would be quite strong. Sadly it took a LOT longer than 5 min to set (I think I got the mixture wrong) and it made a complete mess which took even longer to clean up. That was this morning and I carefully put it all to one side and took a break before it ended up thrown across the room in frustration - something I know I would have regretted HUGELY!!! Eventually this evening, I returned to the tried and trusted polystyrene cement and that did the job very efficiently and quickly! Jeeze!

So the cockpit now looks like this:

I've sanded down the joint between the cockpit rear bulkhead where it meets the upper planel behidn the pilots head and painted this cockpit green. You can also see the masking tape I've stuck on the inside of the open fuselage panels. This should be easy to remove one painting outside is complete. I've also pre-sprayed my mix of faded RAF green (XF81 with a couple of drops of XF 57 Buff, which I'll be using more of later) around the cockpit area so I can mask it easier when it comes to spraying the whole thing later.

One other thing that I've done that hasn't been photographed is the main wheels got painted using Tamiya xf85 Rubber black. This will get toned down and muddied up when it comes to weathering later. I've also done a few more details on the undercarriage legs, making sure then fit well into the resin wheel wells. I've left them off for now so its easier to handle, but when they get attached, I'll then be adding wires and break lines as required.

So thats it for now. I think this week will see the wings and fuselage finally joined together - a pretty big job as the fit is pretty bad, so I expect to do a lot of filling and sanding - another reason for masking the panel openings!

[LSP_Kevin]

Very nice work mate! I'm especially impressed by your base, and would love some more details on how you did the groundwork.

 

Kev

[KallistiUK]

Hi Kev

 

The groundwork is mainly made from this stuff called claycrete - its actually a premashed papier mache you can get from craft shops like Hobbycraft. You just mix it with water to make a paste and spread it around. I added a couple of dollops of water-based artists acrylics to give it colour. Then while it was wet, I pushed some small stones into it, then scattered some coarse and fine landscape scatter from railway modelling to give it the green colour. Then two different coloured bristles were pushed in to make the tall plants, and a couple of small twigs added to give some variation. The claycrete takes about 2 days to dry and does shrink a bit, hence why some of the stones are sticking out above the surface. The base itself is an old picture frame I picked up for £1.50 at oxfam and I left the glass in so that the claycrete is sitting directly on top of the glass.

 

I've used this technique a couple of times before, for example on the Curtiss Mohawk:

 

 

the RAF Mustang III

 

 

and the Sherman Calliope diorama

 

[xmh53wrench]

[A.Wolf Grant]

Well, I for one am amazed with what you're doing with this ... that toolbox would be fabulous even if it didn't actually open and close and the figures .... I could go on for ages!

 

Great building skills Kallisti - just great.

 

Grant