Hawker Hunter F6

[Hubert Boillot]

When I was youger than now, I loved reading Air International. This was the time when the magazine was publishing the Green and Swanborough encyclopedia of fighters, when you had aircraft histories with beautiful cutaways, when you had contributors like Roy Braybrook about his hinsights on British aircraft designs, or Eric Brown recollecting his various flights. I particularly enjoyed the latter, with his detached-yet-professional tone and sharp descriptions. (This is now long gone from Air International, and it's been ages since I bought any issue)

 

So, even though I readily admit that I had this project before the Group Build, in the light of my fond memories of Eric Brown's articles, here is my entry (btw my other projects are stalled for the time being, notably the Cutlass, thanks to one of my cats chewing happily the cockpit tub ) :

 

- Revell's Hawker Hunter FGA, backdated to an F-6 thanks to the conversion tail by a belgian company, whose name escapes me right now,

- with the True Details cockpit set

- with the Flightpath detail set. I'll go for the open flaps, pretending an hydraulic pressure leak on my model

- with G-Factor beautiful metal legs

- and finally, because I still do not like camoed aircrafts, in a red / white /grey scheme of the 4 Fighter Training School, in RAF Valley in 1974, coded XG185, and featured on Fantasy Printshop's FPAF 32-001 sheet.

 

In fairness, I had done a bit of work before the start of the group build, so some pics will already WiP ones.

 

The customary pic of he box :

 

 

... and its content

 

 

... of the G-Facftor metal legs

 

 

... A glimpse of the Flightpath PE fret

 

 

And finally some pics of the decal sheet :

 

 

 

 

 

The sharp-eyed among you will notice that, strangely enough, the decal sheet with all the codes does not include the "XG" part of the "XG185" underwing code for my chosen bird. Too bad, I will have to make my own.

 

The pics of the True Detail set will apear in the next post, as they are in the painting stage.

 

Hubert

Edited April 18, 2016 by MostlyRacers

[Hubert Boillot]

I have started with the cockpit.

 

The True Detail set is really beautiful, and with the help of the Flightpath PE, a even better result can hopefully be achieved. In fairness, the resin set is in many areas almost identical to the Kit parts, but for the rear of the cckpit tub, more detailed in the TD set, and the ejection seat, really beautiful with its cast harness.

 

I painted all the parts in Tamiya white primer, then sprayed them with a coat of Tamiya TS-12 Silver decanted in a glass jar. I added an overcoat of Gunze Tire Black and Mig "Rubber & Tires", which is even greyer than the Gunze color, the idea being to try to achieve a "colourful" black cockpit. One of the first ways of stressing and aging the black color is to use a glassfiber pen (used by architects and draftsmen to eerase mistakes on calc papers). It recreates realistically (at least IMHO) the wear and tear on the angles and more worn areas. Just be careful to thorougly clean your work area fater using a glassfiber pen. The microscopic glassfiber fragments have a nasty tendency to plant themselves in your skin, and that is painful.

 

The tub has been supplemented with the Fligtpath pedals and some instruments panels on the side consoles (not yet here on the pics, as the areas are masked to preserve the white for the instruments faces). The throttle and other levers of the left console come from the Flightpath set.

 

The tub and the rest have then been sprayed Tamiya W-22 gloss, before applying a wash a grey oil paint diluted with lighter fluid. It will later be sprayed with a matt varnish, but I am not athis stage yet, so it appears very shiny. The dust is actually coming from some pastel chalk powder brushed on the relief of the parts, btw.

 

The "family" pic of True Details and Flightpath parts :

 

 

The cockpit tub :

 

 

The resin side panels

 

 

and the part behind the seat headrest

 

 

And finally the seat painting in progress

 

 

Other details of the rear part in the next post

 

Hubert

Edited April 18, 2016 by MostlyRacers

[Hubert Boillot]

The kit's rear tail is for a FGA-9, with a parabrake housing. I could not lay my hands on the original F-6 kit, which has the appropriate tail for my chosen scheme. Fortunately a belgian company has issued a resin conversion set for the F6. It is OOP I believe, but Aviation Megastore had at least one in stock, which I ordered from them.

 

It is actually a solid chunk of resin, with a too shallow tailpipe (just like the kit btw). Anyway, when you cut the pouring stub of the part, the molded turbine face is also sawn off.

 

This is where I will confirm Thierry (Laurent)'s rant about the detail sets' manufacturers asking you to butt-joint some thin metal sheet. The Flightpath set provides you with a lengthening pipe. The only problem is that the metal of the PE fret is incredibly rigid, and does not take any kind of bending, even after some very serious annealing .

 

The end result is really bad, even tough I added some strips on the outside of the joint to help with the soldering ...

 

 

And anyway, the plug is still too short to reroduce the real length of the un-reheated Hunter tailpipe (about 10 cms from the tail end). This is where I stumbled upon a PVC electric conduit which had about the right inside diameter : a quick and easy fix !

 

 

The kit's turbine face representation will be glued at the extremity of the pipe

 

 

I have drilled through the resin of the tail part to add the 8 exhaust temperature probes, in 65 thou plastic rod.

 

 

To complete the rant about the too-rigid metal in the Flightpath set, a quick pic of the airbrake. The flat PE part is etched on both sides. You are expected to bend it gently into a fairly narrow curve. The problem is that the sheet is so rigid that rather than take a curve, it bends around the inside "reinforcing" strips. Excellent if you want to achieve a canning effect, but this is not right for the Hunter's airbrake   !

 

 

And another disaster pic of the unusable Flightpath parts...

 

 

That's all for today folks. Now resuming my normal snail pace.

 

Hubert

Edited April 18, 2016 by MostlyRacers

[Erwin]

Very impressive kit.Looks like a lot of work.

[BradG]

Welcome Hubert. The red and white is a striking scheme, good choice!

[Azgaron]

Nice choice, and good start!

 

HÃ¥kan

[Zero77]

Great start Hubert ! Nice to see you tackling a jet !

 

I see that you were fighting with your PE set. PE exhausts are a real PITA, indeed (especially with the damn Flightpath stainless steel). Except in the rare cases when you can use the plastic parts as a support or template (i did with the F-15E and it was good). But it's way easier with larger radius, and the Hunter exhaust is a lot smaller than the huge F-15 burner cans.

 

 

 

Sometimes, it's better to just sit the part on a flat surface, quite soft (cutting mat are perfect, or even something softer), and just roll a hard cylinder (knife handle, paint jars...) on them with pressure, and it will little by little rolls onto itself, better and smoother than if you just try to shape it around a curved surface. It may not work to make a full cylinder (360° rolling) but for a part like the airbrakes, i think it can work. For 360° rolling, it can be a good solution to start and break the fibers before shaping around a form, so you may avoid the worst deformations. Anyway, you have to start very slightly, first with a very large radius, and reduce the radius little by little to avoid bends.

 

For the airbrakes, you may try to smooth the deformation with coarse grit sandpaper, and/or applying a thick coat of Mr Surfacer.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Zero77

[Hubert Boillot]

Thank you for looking, Nicolas.

 

I did just what you described for the tail pipe. But the steel is so thick and hard that, at some stage, it just did not take the bending anymore. The issue, as you know, is with the edges of the flat sheet, where the elasticity of the metal fights the pressure to bend it to the proper radius.

 

For the airbrake, I used a pasta machine to bend it into shape, after sandwiching the metal part between some card to increase the thickness. The issue is that the etched ribs on the reverse side resist the smooth curve you are after. But I have a plan B. I have made a masking tape copy of the Flightpath part, and will cut a metal part out of thin brass. I will then add the reinforcing ribs inside.

 

Hubert

[Lothar]

I have a F.6 kit which I plan to convert into a twin seater using the excellent Fisher conversion set. So the kits exhaust parts

are all yours if you want them.

 

Cheers,

Lothar

[Hubert Boillot]

I have a F.6 kit which I plan to convert into a twin seater using the excellent Fisher conversion set. So the kits exhaust parts

are all yours if you want them.

 

Cheers,

Lothar

Thank you for the offer Lothar, but I am covered with the resin conversion. If you need the rear part with the parabrake housing, it's yours however.

 

Hubert

[alain11]

Hi

did you try to reheat the metal sheet to make it "softer ", I don't know if it works with "steel" on the contrary of copper though .... just try !! then you roll it around a cylindre to give its shape , but I am sure you already know that  

Alain

Edited April 18, 2016 by alain11

[Hubert Boillot]

Hi

did you try to reheat the metal sheet to make it "softer ", I don't know if it works with "steel" on the contrary of copper though .... just try !! then you roll it around a cylindre to give its shape , but I am sure you already know that  

Alain

Yes I did anneal it, Alain. But whereas copper-based metals will become softer after annealing, if the Flightpath fret is indeed steel, the annealing process (i.e. heating then cooling down in water) is in fact called tempering for steel, and will make it harder ... I suspect this is what happened to me (and Tristan, aka warbird, had the same problem than me)

 

Hubert

[LSP_Kevin]

Boy, you have been busy, Hubert! If I ever built a Hunter, it would be this scheme too.

 

Kev

[wunwinglow]

I suspect they use steel because it is much cheaper to etch. The usual etching solution is Ferric Chloride, which  has some weird chemical properties, in that as it etches steel it just changes the valency of the iron atoms and keeps on etching!! Because you are adding more and more Iron, of course eventually the solution becomes exhausted, but you can recover it by adding hydrochloric acid. You end up producing more and more ferric chloride! This has some value, it is used in treating sewage for example, so the excess can earn the etcher a little bit of money. If you etch brass, copper, bronze, when the etchant is exhausted it costs a great deal to dispose of properly, because it is now contaminated with copper, tin and other metals.

 

Stainless is not a very nice material for modellers though. It is hard, cracks easily, you can't solder it, if you do bend it it is impossible to straighten again. But it doesn't tarnish, so it looks nice in the packaging for longer....

 

Tim

[mozart]

Good to see you in the GB Hubert and modelling an iconic aircraft. I get the feeling this isn't going to be a straightforward build somehow.........

regards

Max