**** DONE: 1/48 Hawk H-81-A-2, AVG - Aircraft in Foreign Service WWII

[Vic Balshaw]

That is good Glen, better looking than mine on the H75.

 

[woody]

Looking good Glenn.

 

[Crimea_River]

Nice panel. Hope the butts show up!

 

[vikingBerserker]

Very nice, and another victory for the carpet monster.

 

[T Bolt]

Still no sign of the panel mount but I've been smoothing out seams in the fuselage. The fit of the underside of the nose was not great and there was a prominent step(pic 1). I drilled the rivets deeper with a #80 drill bit so they wouldn't disappear and went to work with a needle file and the result is pic 2 after re-scribing panel lines and sanding. Also glued together the wings(pic 3).

 

[Crimea_River]

Good idea with the rivets Glenn. Need to remember that.

 

[Wayne Little]

rescribing some of the panel lines a tad deeper, before filing is the other thing that sometimes is necessary too with doing the rivets deeper, the No.80 drill is a handy item!

 

[T Bolt]

I found the missing control panel bracket (along with a lot of other missing parts) tonight so I was able to continue with the interior. I finished modifying the bracket by adding more realistic gun butts with a small piece of wire drilled in. I also shortened the bracket as the way it was the panel would be out in the open under the windscreen. This was how it was in later P-40s but in the early ones it was farther forward. This also makes the gun butts more visible.

 

[Crimea_River]

Looks good Glenn.

 

[Wayne Little]

That it is....

 

[Gnomey]

Looks great so far Glenn!

 

[woody]

Looking good Glenn.

 

[T Bolt]

Thanks guys
Here is the expected bad joint where the lower rear bulkhead meets the upper bulkhead after I inserted the cockpit You can see how it looked after filling and sanding in the second picture along with the installed wings. The fit at the wing root is very nice and will not need fill, only a small amount if attention where the leading edge meets the fuselage. I have to say I like the wing fit of these HobbyCraft Hawks better than the AMT P-40's. Not to say there's really anything wrong with them, just that the fit is not as good.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Looking pretty sharp!

Whatever page I am looking at on this thread, Post #1 always shows up top. I'm I the only one seeing this?

 

[T Bolt]

They set it up so the first post is repeated at to top of each page for every thread in the Group Build section so if you're looking at a later part of a build you could easily see the description in the first post.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Excellent idea, thank you for explaining that to me!

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Looking very good Glenn and that extra time spent on scribing and drilling is what gives the finished model that extra edge.

 

[meatloaf109]

Thanks guys
Here is the expected bad joint where the lower rear bulkhead meets the upper bulkhead after I inserted the cockpit You can see how it looked after filling and sanding in the second picture along with the installed wings. The fit at the wing root is very nice and will not need fill, only a small amount if attention where the leading edge meets the fuselage. I have to say I like the wing fit of these HobbyCraft Hawks better than the AMT P-40's. Not to say there's really anything wrong with them, just that the fit is not as good.

Mine were too tight. I had to do a bunch of sanding.

 

[T Bolt]

I think I know what happened to yours Paul. In test fitting I noticed that if I just glued the wing half's together as is the fuselage would be too tight for the opening for it between the upper wing halves so I when I glued them I moved them outward taking up as much play in the alignment tabs as there was. It made the bulges of the landing gear fairings not line up perfectly, and a slight step in the joint at the wingtip, but nothing a bit of CA filler and careful filing didn't solve. The end result was a near perfect fit at the wing roots.

 

[Crimea_River]

Turning out to be another good one Glenn.