Thanks for the feedback guys. I tried to dull the effect a little but was concerned that I would make it worse so I'm leaving it.
Attention has turned to the undercarriage. Seen below is a picture of one of the Hobbycraft landing gear struts in between two on the sprues of my unbuilt Italeri Hurricane. As you can see, the HC one is very basic and the various collars and straps on the main strut appear to be overdone.
Here are the HC parts after adding scratch-built details and the obligatory brake lines. The collars and straps were filed off and replaced with aluminum tape.
Here is the installed undercarriage after painting and applying a dust colour around the base,
I was also disappointed with the look of the HC wheel hubs. At left is the kit hub and at right is a separate hub supplied with the Italeri kit which supplies a 4 spoke and 3 spoke hub. I decided to steal the 4 spkoe one and modify my HC undercarriage.
The hub was carefully drilled out and the Italeri hub glued in.
The finished result, painted. Not totally happy with how this turned out but this is a brutal close-up showing every flaw.
The tail wheel also needed attention as Hobbycraft supplied the wrong style of shaft for this version. The Mark II had a sprung fork style wheel so I again scratch built the added bits:
That's it for now.