Hurricane IIb, Revell 1/32 - finished

[Sepp]

Onwards...

 

While pondering the landing lights, I cracked on with other stuff.  Before I go any further - I know the cockpit framing is supposed to be silver, ditto wheel bays. Regular viewers will know I prefer a warbird feel - at some stage, this one has had an interior repaint.

 

Cockpit tub built up.  I've added fuel, oil, hydraulic and control lever lines, canopy latch (top of left upper frame), Sutton harness release (under right upper frame),the fuel selector transfer tube (you can just see it poking up above the left rudder pedal in the first pic), de-icing fluid filler cap, pump and one of the lines (second line omitted, as it'd be completely invisible anyway), a suggestion of the aileron control chains on the stick, the top part of which was moved to match the intended aileron position, a few PE pieces (e.g. the gear selector surround and elevator trim chain), the leather anti-chafing strap on the seat, and HGW belts. Lagging/texture on the large coolant pipe is a cigarette paper, just as an experiment.  I also added a couple of generic decals to the sight to break up the blackness of it, but they don't really stick out in the pics (precisely none of this will be readily visible once the fuselage goes together, but hey ho). Instrument panel is by Yahu: 

 

The escape hatch received a cut-down PE piece (the white placard), an Airscale decal (the black placard) and the kit decal for open/close and instruction stencils; I painted the other bits:

 

What do you know? It still fits.  The extra bulkhead suggests the rear face of the reserve fuel tank, which is visible through the hole in the panel.  Without it, the fuel lines (just visible to the left of the added piece) just end in mid-air.

 

Fuselage buttoned up:

 

Revell have done a good job with the fit - it only needed a tiny smear of filler here and there, caused more by me than them!

 

Other pieces painted ready for next steps:

 

More later - thanks for looking!

 

Sepp

 

 

 

 

Edited July 8, 2023 by Sepp
Included canopy latch and harness release in list of additions.

[LSP_Kevin]

Lovely work, Sepp!

 

Kev

[MikeMaben]

Hey Sepp, excellent work. The cockpit framing was painted green beginning with the MkI late and MkIIa .

hth

[Sepp]

2 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

Hey Sepp, excellent work. The cockpit framing was painted green beginning with the MkI late and MkIIa .

hth

Excellent, thanks - I don't feel so dirty now

[Sepp]

Well, it's been a while... apologies in advance - this will be a long post as I have made some progress.

 

First up, landing lights.  I experimented with strips of styrene sheet and PE offcuts, behind and outboard ('F' rib) of the opened up frame:

 

but I didn't like it at all, so I dug out the Cameo and drew up a section of rib and cut several from thin styrene sheet, then doubled-up these up with some square rod to form a box. 

 

I cut the sides off the kit's frame and discarded the rear bit; the edges were then glued flush with the aperture, rather than protruding slightly from it as the kit would have it.  I added the supporting rod using brass tube and a thinner lower frame from styrene strip.  This all sits in front of the spar and rib sections:

 

I didn't add the inboard 'E' rib, as it doesn't really show up on photos of the real thing, unless the observer is really close to the aircraft - the bracing on the 'F' rib is far more noticeable.  The kit side frames are still quite clunky; if I build another of these kits, I'll make my own frames.  Not perfect, or even wonderful, but at least it [a] fits in the wing, [b] was fun to do (which is the main thing) and [c] does at least adds some depth and make it look like something is going on in the wing behind the lights.

 

The lights themselves needed modding to fit the new frame; studs cut down and a tab added to hold them in place on the support rod. I added a PE bulb support frame (thanks, Tolga ULGUR) and fuse wire for the leads:

 

Not too bad when painted up. Leads could do with being a tad lighter, to show up:

 

and - finally - mounted.  Moving the side frames allows the lights to mounted inboard, as they should be, rather than central in the frame as the kit has them.  The kit also has the lights pointing straight ahead; they should normally be angled 15º down. With the help of the gauge, they are!    Hopefully you can see I also drilled out the outer gun barrels - I may yet replace them with brass because the lack of detail dismays me.  I also added the hinge cover to the camera panel on the other wing, but no pic, sorry.  Fit of the various wing inserts varied from OK to "ohhh".

 

And so, on to the undercarriage.  Lots of cleanup required: here I've started work on the part on the left; the unmolested part on the right appears to have a halo (this was also apparent on the gear legs):

 

The gear doors feature moulded on brake lines, which end abruptly at the gear leg.  I dislike moulded on things, so replaced these with (slightly overscale!) fuse wire, and silver tubing for the bushes:

 

under paint, with flexible piping added and gear legs in place (I added the filler port and brake hose connector to each) they don't look too bad. I used strips of Tamiya tape for the hose clips.  Axle stubs had to be trimmed to allow the Eduard wheels I'll be using to sit up against the leg base.  Fit was, as usual, loose - there was quite a gap between the straps on the legs and the pads on the doors which all needed filling.  The unpainted sections allow easy handling; I'll paint those before final assembly.

 

The brake lines having now reached the top of the legs, the rest needs to be added. More brass rod and silver tubing:

 

these fit into the outer section of the gear bays (here just dropped in, so not quite in position):

 

and finally under paint.  I will add the flexible sections between bay and legs just before fitting the latter.

 

 

Major milestone: after opening up the vents in wing root and right-hand upper cowling (I may yet also do something with the two vents/pipes below the exhaust opening), the wings are finally attached - after a lot of uncomplimentary words about the fit.  As others have commented, the root leading edge join (particularly) was not good and took a lot of work to get it to look even vaguely acceptable.  I see rescribing in my future.

 

[Side note: it required quite a bit of effort to close the horizontal join properly - I felt the usual thin liquid would not be strong enough, and regular glue would take too long to set, so I used MEK which provided an almost instant, strong weld. I will be using it more often!]

 

Next up: radiator tub and exhausts, then I'll run out of excuses and will have to start throwing paint around.

 

Cheers for looking - me, I'd rather look at Pastor John's beautiful work!

 

Sepp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2023 by Sepp

[MikeMaben]

Very nice progress Sepp 

[Sepp]

After (another!) hiatus, more progress.

 

I added some Archer rivets which will also do duty as raised screw heads (I don't have the patience to go the whole hog, so went for the areas round the nose and tail where I'll possibly show some minor paint wear):

 

 

Knocked up some masks.  The serials have strokes that scale to 1.25ins, because the 1in version looked too .... spindly.

 

And - finally - started throwing paint around:

 

The edges between the green and brown are too soft - I need practice to tighten them up in future.  No pic of the underside because plain sky isn't really interesting.

 

And she now has an identity. Not a good picture - apologies.  There are one or two bleeds to touch up, but nothing disastrous.

 

Next job is the exhausts while the paint sets up, then I'll give it a gloss coat and start on the (HGW) stencils.

 

Back soon...ish,

 

Sepp

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Sepp

[LSP_Kevin]

Lovely work, Sepp! Could I convince you to upload your mask files to Scale Model Paint Masks?

 

 

Kev

[Sepp]

3 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Lovely work, Sepp! Could I convince you to upload your mask files to Scale Model Paint Masks?

 

 

Kev

 

Thanks, Kev.

 

I'm working on doing a full A-Z and 0-9 in a couple of styles. When done, yep, I'll gladly upload them

[LSP_Kevin]

3 hours ago, Sepp said:

 

Thanks, Kev.

 

I'm working on doing a full A-Z and 0-9 in a couple of styles. When done, yep, I'll gladly upload them

 

Awesome!

 

Kev

[MikeMaben]

Nice progress Sepp, lights look great. Your cammo demarcation looks fine too.

In real life some of them were much softer than that. 

[Phil88]

Nice assembly, I recreated almost the same interior cockpit for the one I am currently assembling. Good job

[dennismcc]

Some really fine work going on here, I am impressed, the camouflage looks really good.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Sepp]

Me again...

 

Decals on. In the end I mainly used the kit's stencils, with one or two from HGW that looked better than Revell's offerings. Roundels are Xtradecals, fin flashes are from the kit (the Xtradecal ones were slightly too big to fit on the fin). The non-slip panels are strips of Archer's texture decal, with some scratched away and applied over Ushi metallizer:

 

The only minor inconvenience was one of the upper surface roundels cracked up over the tiny bulge.  I discovered that Vallejo's blue wash is almost exactly the right colour, so it touched up AOK. It looks a bit "gobby" in the pic - couldn't get a decent pic due to the gloss - but it's fine in the flesh:

 

Then I had the bight idea to add some paint wear round the blast tubes and outer guns (just visible in first pic) to suggest repeated patch applications and removals before adding the 'current' red patches.  After removing the masking tape I'd used as a limit guide:

 

No idea how that happened, as everyting was under a good coat of gloss - I must've missed a bit!  Oh well, can't win 'em all... Time for coffee, and a sulk while I wait for a replacement from Hannants. Gawd the paint looks crap in these pics, lol.

 

Back soon (hopefully)

 

Sepp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Sepp

[Grunticus]

Great looking model Sepp, very very nice finish! Too bad about that little setback, but at least easy to fix after some coffee.