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mozart

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I'm going to be building what is for me one of the most beautiful aeroplanes ever designed:

 

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The wonderful  Hawker Fury
 

The Fury I entered squadron service with the RAF in May 1931, re-equipping 43 Squadron. Only relatively small numbers of Fury Is were ordered, the type equipping No. 1 and 25 squadrons. At the same time, the slower Bristol Bulldog equipped ten fighter squadrons. The Fury II entered service in 1936–1937, increasing total number of squadrons to six. Furies remained with RAF Fighter Command until January 1939, replaced primarily with Gloster Gladiators and other types, such as the Hawker Hurricane. After their front line service ended, they continued in use as trainers.

 

It was a fast, agile aircraft, and the first interceptor in RAF service capable of speed higher than 200 mph (321 kmh). It was the fighter counterpart to the Hawker Hart light bomber (which I'll also be building later next year!).

 

The kit was originally issued by Montex but latterly Alley Cat, being mastered by Wojtek Kuakowski who then went on to found the Silver Wings company.

 

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when you open the box, everything shouts "Silver Wings":

 

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except for the interplane struts and undercarriage which are cast in white metal rather than resin reinforced with brass rod "a la Silver Wings":

 

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Instructions are "meh.......... challenging!":

 

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but the schemes and decals look good:

 

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References:

 

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I haven't decided which Fury to finish her as yet, possibly one of these:

 

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Fortunately Robert Hardy built one some years ago on Hyperscale so I've copied and printed out his words of advice. 

 

A lovely gaggle of Furies:

 

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Edited by mozart
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Lovely choice Max. I look forward to seeing your Fury take shape in due course.

K2065 in your image above is the subject of a 1/72nd scale offering by Revell which I built a few years ago. It would certainly look replendent in 1/32ndscale. 

Have you thought about how to replicate the metal parts yet?

I have recently experimented with the newish Vallejo Metal colours and found them to be quite good. 

 

Cheers. 

 

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I'm leaning very much towards Bare Metal foil Guy, but need to do a bit more experimenting yet to be fully persuaded.  I was very pleased with the way it went onto the intake ring of my Echelon Lightning, it took the "stretch" of the shape, essentially a thin truncated cone, pretty well.  I'm less sanguine about metallic paints, too much hassle for indifferent results, but that's only my limited experience so far.  I need to make the right choice because I have several 1930s fighters and bombers needing similar treatment.

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Not a terribly glamorous start to a build but, apparently, quite a critical one.  The Alley Cat instructions are, shall we say, enigmatically interesting but sparse on detail.  As mentioned previously there is a build log on Hyperscale that I'm following, it's more user-friendly.  It states that this first part, which is assembling the three sections of the upper wing and getting the dihedral right is quote: "the most important as it sets the entire geometry of the wings and fuselage".  A 3mm "spacer jig" is provided to help with this, so the wing is assembled and tomorrow's job is to test the cabane strut/wing/fuselage fit.  It's then suggested that the white metal cabane struts are then fixed to the fuselage halves at this early stage.......:hmmm:

 

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We'll see! :)

 

 

Edited by mozart
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I've cleaned up the cabane struts and drilled the 1.5mm holes in the nose panels and underwing for them, the fit is very positive which is reassuring for these and the main interplane struts later.  

 

The single forward cabane struts and the interplane struts are clearly marked A, B, C and D or 1, 2, 3 and 4 to distinguish the port and starboard ones and relative location, each fitting pin being correctly orientated for its location hole.....now that's pretty damned thoughtful in my book.  As the HS build says, it enables all the struts to be located, trial fitted and glued in place with confidence on the fuselage and lower wing before the upper is finally fitted, which aids painting and foiling. What a refreshing change from the Tiger Moth!

 

In the photo below the struts shown in place are not glued, it's a good enough friction fit to hold close to their final position.

 

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