Hi all,
Well, it's been quite a busy year with work, which has meant another slow year at the bench. It's been quite difficult with lots of distractions to keep the modelling mojo flowing this year. I've recently started my Christmas holidays, and I've felt the need to do a quick and simple build, to get said mojo flowing again, and to kick off the new year on a good modelling foot.
I recently asked my 85 year old father in law (who is still an avid modeller) what I should build. Being an ex-pat Brit, and a young lad when the Battle of Britain was raging over his home in London, he suggested a Hurricane ("the Spitfire is a beau'y and awl, but the 'urricane was the real work-'orse", he said). I had the 1/48 Airfix Mk 1 in my stash, and promptly dusted it off. It's the 'trop' boxing, but all of the parts for a standard Mk 1 is in the box. Somewhere along the line i'd also added an ultracast seat with moulded harnesses, and exhausts into the box.
Now, I know very little about Hurricanes, which is perfect (as I won't get bogged down in details or accuracy related rabbit holes, as I often do). My deadline for completion is 16 January, when I start back at work.
"The game is afoot"!So far, I have completed the interior. In keeping with the the simple theme of this build, I kept the cockpit essentially out of box, save the aforementioned seat. I did have to add belts to the top of the seat, to slot through the bulkhead behind the pilot. The Airfix interior is complex yet simple to build, and looks very nice (especially when compared to their earlier 1970s/80s rendition of the Mk1). I followed the Airfix instructions for the interior colours. Thankfully, most of the cockpit and interior is silver, with some RAF interior green to add colour. I decided to avoid the complexities of using the kit decal for the instrument panel; the panel is buried quite far inside the cockpit so not much will be seen. A simple dry brushing and picking out the dials with Future will suffice. Here's some pics so far:
I also painted the wheels (one of my least favourite parts of any build, so best to get those out of the way early). The wheels and hubs are quite nice out of the box.
I don't intend on showing off the gun bays (again, a complexity I don't need, so I'll likely trim the spars away, just in case they muck with the wing fit, which looks a little tricky. We'll see how we go with that when we get there.
So far, so good! All feedback welcomed.
Cheers lads,
BC