Flying Tigers Curtiss Hawk 81-A2 - Finished

[MikeMaben]

Hey Mike,  I don't know if you remember this, but there was an issue with the headrest on this kit.

If it makes a difference to you ... this is from Tolga's build ...   https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/92782-finished-132-great-wall-hobby-p-40-curtiss-hawk-flying-tigers/&do=findComment&comment=1343769

 

 

[Dpgsbody55]

Thanks for the link, Mike.  I still haven't fitted the headrest yet, but I have painted it on the sprue.  Just eyeballing it, it does look too large.  I foresee some time spent with a file.... 

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

Work continues on my P-40 as it edges closer to paint.  After the last update, the tail plane and fin went on, followed by the ailerons and flaps.  I found the tail plane needed a small amount of filing to fit straight, as one side was a little high.  Ditto the flaps which needed a small amount of filing on the edges against the fuselage.  Both these and the flaps were glued in only at a few points.  However, the tail plane has a gap which needs filler on the left undersides.  The right undersides only needed a little Mr Surfacer 1000, gently rubbed away once dry and settled with a cotton bud dipped in Mr Color thinner.  The elevators were added after the filler was filed back.  These are a bit of a pfaff.  There is a centre clip for them to attach to the plane, and brass etch pivots for the outer ends which glue into the elevator balance slots in the tailplane.  Since only a small amount of CA can be applied to the outer pivots and they didn't want to hold, I found it beyond difficult to fit the elevators in working order, so the outer ends were glued carefully with Tamiya thin styrene glue instead.  (Fergot to take a photo of that... )

 

 

Next the windscreen and forward top cover over the fuselage guns went on.  I found it easiest to first glue the windscreen to the gun cover, then add the bullet proof glass.  As there's no frame on the windscreen, this was glued on using Micro Klear and left for a day to dry.  Then the bullet proof glass was added after painting the frame using styrene glue to attach to the cover, and MK to glue to the inside of the windscreen.  The last 3D decals were added too.  The kit provides masks for the inside and outside of the clear parts, so the windscreen inside frame was painted first.  Strangely, the manufacturer seems to have forgotten about the bullet proof screen, so I made my own.

 

 

 

Attached to the model, with the windscreen now masked on the outside ready for paint.  Definitely easier to do this before adding the above assembly to the model.

 

 

You can see in this picture that I've also fitted the elevators, but not the rudder as this will be painted seperately to the model because the camo pattern is different.  Also visible is the pilots headrest, which has been "shrunk" with the aid of some files.  The forward area of the wings and the rudder post have been painted ZC yellow.  I'm not sure what will be visible on the front when the nose goes on, but I suspect that this area will be visible when the engine is mounted in place of the nose.  There is a decal to go on the rudder post, so I thought I'd paint this  and see how much of the rudder post and that decal is visible once it's painted.

 

I've also started work on the nose, engine and radiator.  I started with the radiator, of which there are two sets.  One goes onto the engine, and the other goes into the nose section.  In the next picture is the engine and radiators.  One of the radiators is ready for installation and the other is still in progress.  For the radiators themselves, these were painted in brass before a heavy dry brushing in flat aluminium.  The one on the left has also has the forward ducting added, which is applicable to both the engine and being fitted inside the fuselage.  I painted both fully and will use the best one on the bare engine.  The other will have some paint scraped off and added to the nose.  The engine has been assembled as far as possible before painting and the cylinder heads painted gloss black and masked off. 

 

 

Here's the engine after paint.  Lots more to add to this.

 

 

The next pic is the kit supplied etch grills for the front of the radiator, after adding the front duct.

 

 

Unfortunately, I had problems attaching one of the rear counterparts to the back of the radiator as the CA glue made a mess of one, so I finished up cleaning the lot up then repainting and dry brushing the not well raised radiator surface instead.  Definitely not as good, but not really visible without turning the model upside down and peering inside.

 

 

Truth be told, you'd have to shine a torch down the nose of the model to see the etch grills behind the front duct anyway.  So not something I'm loosing any sleep over.

 

The last bit to show is the exhausts.  These are individual pieces which glue into a mount which is in turn glued inside the nose cowlings.  I painted them in burnt iron then dry brushed steel over the top.  I'm not going for a heavily weathered look, but I want some indication of use rather than factory fresh.

 

 

That's it for now.  Next time, the rest of the nose.  I'm building this bit first, so that I can then go back and fit the pipework that goes under the belly without the fear of breaking it off during construction.  And maybe some more engine.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[MikeMaben]

[mozart]

Just read through all of this Michael; I very much like your measured and considered approach to building the model, all’s looking very promising so far!  It’s not a kit nor manufacturer that I know but it’s a good quality by the looks of it. 

[Dpgsbody55]

On 4/27/2023 at 3:53 PM, mozart said:

Just read through all of this Michael; I very much like your measured and considered approach to building the model, all’s looking very promising so far!  It’s not a kit nor manufacturer that I know but it’s a good quality by the looks of it. 

 

Thanks.  I never take the instructions as being the only way to build a model.  Sometimes there's a better way, I think.  My next update is a case in point.

 

It certainly is a good quality kit.  The actual plastic is as good as the best from Tamiya, ICM and Z-M etc.  The only let downs are in the too thin photo etch components and a few faux pas in the instructions, but I think most of us will figure them out.  I'd like to see another WW2 non-P40 subject from them in this scale.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

The nose section is now complete and there's been a little more progress on the engine.  First, the engine which now has the outer spark plug wires, carburettor and intakes fitted, along with the first bits of plumbing and rocker covers.  I haven't yet fitted the magnetos which in this kit also comprises the runner for the inner spark plug wires, but not the spark plug wires themselves.  In fairness to GWM, the inlet manifolds are covering the parts of the cylinder heads which would contain the plugs themselves, but I'd like to put them in if possible.  Something to ponder.  OOB, the engine is very complete, so not fitting those inner plug leads may not be all that noticeable.

 

 

The next part will be adding the engine mounts then the radiators and all the plumbing, which in this kit is extensive.

 

On to the nose, another area where I didn't follow the instructions implicitly.  Having assembled the radiator, the instructions say to mount the rear air duct (D9) and lower front nose section (D21) to the radiator, then put this assembly inside the nose and glue the other half on.

 

 

I see alignment issues here, as if not fitted exactly, parts D21 and D9 will cause issues fitting the left and right nose halves.  It's better to have any alignment issues hidden inside the model rather than hack about with external parts.  So my first job was to mask up the exhausts built previously and glue them into each nose half.  Back to the rad mount.  There are tabs and slots molded into the forward radiator duct and nose halves to help, so I glued the radiator into one side of the nose, together with parts G20 and G15, then taped the other side in place without glue to allow it to set in the right place.  It needs a little pressure to set in correct place with both sides on.  If the tabs and slots align, it should all be good.  The rear duct will slide straight in and the lower nose section will go in place perfectly and butt against it's one central mounting tab if the radiator is in the right place.  Similarly, the front lower nose will align with the radiator ducts.  You can also see where I've scraped some paint away to glue the surfaces securely.

 

 

Here it is together, all trussed up like the turkey roast. Left side of the nose on first, tape that tightly top and bottom, then nose section D21 in place and taped.  Lastly the rear ducting can be glued and slid straight in.

 

 

The nose section was removed and re-glued after I took this pic, for a better fit.  The gun blast tubes have also been glued in ready for the upper section of the nose to be fitted.  Here it is again with those parts in place and a little Mr Surfacer applied.  Gaps are quite small, so no need for putty.

 

 

The last part is the radiator flaps to install, together with the operating levers.  This is quite straight forward, but first I attended to the filler which was smoothed off with a rubbing of Mr Color levelling thinner on a cotton bud to remove the excess you see above.  You can also se that the magnet has been attached to the firewall.  The inner sections of the rad flaps have been painted aluminium and masked off.

 

 

 

Fitted up to the fuselage.  It looks like there's a small gap at the top of the gun cover, but this may be fixed with a little fettling.  I've also put the rudder in place, but not glued it, just for photographic purposes.

 

 

 

 

Now it's back to the undersides and all those pipes that might get broken without a nose to protect them.  Plus the small bits not yet added like control surface operating etch and all the other little bits holding up the paint process.  And maybe some more engine.  The instructions say to assemble the undercarriage to the model before painting, but this may also be ignored until later.  Less masking .

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[LSP_Kevin]

Nice progress, Michael!

 

Kev

[Troy Molitor]

How in the heck did I miss this one????  Nice updates.  

[Dpgsbody55]

Just a small update, mostly to let everyone know this is still on the workbench.  The issue has been that I've not been at the workbench much .  Firstly, my wife, who has recently had a knee replaced, celebrated her birthday last week, so we decided to go away for a short break.  But the other thing is that I've become a bit frustrated with this build, largely because of the errors in the instructions which have finally caught up with me.  Here's the first one for this update.

 

Attempting to fit the larger coolant pipes to the engine, I fell fowl of the error at step 25 in which parts G1 and G2 are glued to the radiator cores.  The instructions have these transposed on those cores resulting in this mess.

 

 

I've had to scrape away the raised flanges for the pipe mounts and will have to figure a way to recreate these if I can.     This is one area of the kit which is unnecessarily complicated and separate parts are superfluous, I think.  The kit does provide a supplement which corrects this, to be fair, but I misread this and the result is what you see above.  And it has to be said that the supplement covers quite a few such errors, but not all.  So I've decided to put the engine aside for the moment and get on with the rest of the model.

 

There are a number of pipes that go in under the fuselage, I assume for the fuel system from the earlier build up of the fuselage, and these went in next after a bit of painting.  I also split the cover for these (part C4) and thinned out the trailing edge of the forward section.  Also added here is the etch gun shell ejector chutes.

 

 

Here it is again with part C4 fitted.  As you can see, these pipes extend forward of the firewall, hence my desire to build up the nose first to protect them.

 

 

The rest of my time has been taken up with fitting those parts I need to be in place before painting.  These include the sliding canopy which has been masked on both sides and the interior frames painted, gun covers on the leading edges which are glued on temporarily with Micro Krystal klear as are the fuselage gun covers. Also fited is the last of the etch pieces for the trim actuators (not really visible here) and some masking.  I've also fitted the plastic gun sight rather than etch version which is far too thin.

 

 

I've also masked up the areas where the undercarriage will be mounted, as I'll fit these as an assembly later after painting.  Also visible here is the under wing light at left in the picture (part I8), which doesn't crack a mention in the instructions .

 

 

So that's it for now.  A little more masking, then paint.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[MikeMaben]

Hang in there Michael  

[dennismcc]

Challenges, challenges, stops you getting bored, but a great feeling when you overcome them.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Dpgsbody55]

On 5/18/2023 at 2:30 PM, MikeMaben said:

Hang in there Michael  

 

Consider me hung.  I hope to start painting this weekend.

 

On 5/18/2023 at 4:17 PM, dennismcc said:

Challenges, challenges, stops you getting bored, but a great feeling when you overcome them.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

 

True enough, Dennis.  If I sort out that engine to my satisfaction, I will feel like I've achieved something, however modest in the overall scheme of things.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

Edging loser to the finish line, the Hawk is now painted.  Well, almost.  Just a couple of touch ups to go before the varnish/decal/varnish stage.

 

Here's the undersides painted and beginning to be masked up before starting on the top sides.  You'll notice that the undercarriage bays are not in place.  The area where they fit is masked off but the parts have been painted.  I figured this was easier than building the under carriage as per the instructions and then trying to mask off that assembly.  At the moment, it's all in bits and being painted, then I'll assemble each side and put them onto the model as a whole.  Digits crossed my method works out OK.  The camera has made the colour look more grey than it actually is, as I mixed up a brew of RAF sky tinged with grey which seems to match the colour chart for this plane.  Curtiss had a knack for painting their planes in colours that only approximated the official colours.

 

 

Here's the first top side colour on, and being masked up for the second colour to go on.  Looks like garbage at this point.  Camo masking took a lot of time as the contours around the nose are hard to mask over the contours of the gun fairings and intake fairing, as well as the need to get the colour demarkation aft of the the cockpit to line up against what I'd previously painted behind the aft windows.

 

 

Here is the camouflage now finished, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.  It only needed a couple of touch ups, and none around the gun/intake fairings.

 

 

The rudder was painted separately as the pattern does not match the fin.  One other thing of note is the demarkation between the belly colour and the upper colour at the back of the nose.  This was one of the easier things to mask up as the nose is detachable, so that demarkation peculiar to P-40's at this time is easy to make.

 

 

Next is the red band around the rear of the fuselage.  Of course, it would have been much better if the fool who painted this model had done this first, before any other painting.  It wasn't me, honest  .

 

 

 

Eagle eyed reader will notice that paint has been removed around the edges of the band, which happened when removing the masking.  I used Tamiya 2.0mm flexible tape for this, and it seems to have removed only the green, which is a water based paint, whereas the other colours are oil based paints.  I've never had that happen before, but it should be an easy enough touch up.

 

That's it for now.  Next step is varnish/decal/varnish, which will probably take me another couple of weeks, but hopefully less.  No further progress on the engine yet, either.  I think I'll get back to that during the final assembly stage of this build.

 

 

Cheer,

Michael

Edited May 31, 2023 by Dpgsbody55

[themongoose]

Ugggh, i feel your pain! Mixing paint types can get ugly. Hang in there