**** DONE: 1/48 Hurricane MkIIc - Mediterranean Theatre of Operations

[JKim]

FWIW... I got my lead wire via EBay. It's listed as Lead Wire for Fly Tying... fishermen use it put weight on their flies. The sizes that I've been using on my 1/48 engines and wheel wells is 0.010 inch dia and 0.015 inch dia.

 

[Crimea_River]

I got mine here: UMM-USA

 

[Catch22]

Thanks a lot guys!

 

[Crimea_River]

After being away from my bench for 11 days, I got back to working on my Hurricane.

The landing lights in the kit are non-existent, being simple holes in the wings into which a clear part is inserted. In order to remedy that, I made my own lights based on a technique Wojtek posted a few years ago. Two pieces of sprue are cut, ends filed flat, holes drilled in the center and a 3/16" drill bit twisted on the end to make a concave face. Then both faces were painted silver.

These pieces of sprue were then glued into the wing opening and then bulbs made of stretched sprue held against a candle were inserted into the holes in the lamps (hard to see here).

One thing that was bugging me was that the pilot's seat poked out of the cockpit a bit too far. As I had glued it in with copious amounts of CA glue, there was no getting it out to fix it, so I ended up trimming it in place. Seen below is the trimmed and repainted seat as well as the makings of the armour plate and shoulder harness slot made of plastic card (compare to the picture in post #64). This will be painted and the harnesses installed shortly.

The wing tip nav lights also needed attention in that they were just molded into the wing, for shame.

The notches for the lenses were cut out of the wing and then I glued in pieces of round, clear sprue, one side of which was flattened and bulbs drilled in and painted. I used CA glue for this as I need something strong, unlike PVA, to survive the upcoming filing and sanding session.

Updates to follow soon.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Catch22]

Nicely done.

 

[Airframes]

Looking good Andy.

 

[Gnomey]

Looks great so far Andy!

 

[Wildcat]

Nice work Andy!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks very much gents. The more I look at the details of this kit, the more I'm disliking it for accuracy and it spurs my desire to fiddle with it to get it all correct. Nevertheless, I soldier on....

Let's start with where we left off yesterday. The nav lights were filed and wet sanded to the contour of the wing and received a brush coat of Future to make them sparkle. Pretty happy how they turned out.

The cockpit armour plate was painted and scuffed up and the shoulder belts were installed. This finished off the pit except for the gun sight.

The landing lights are now safely behind their lenses, which didn't fit too bad.

Now, onto the next peeve: the cannons. A couple of things wrong here. First, the goofy bands near the muzzle are incorrectly molded so these need to be modified. Worse, although the guns are given unique part numbers, they are nevertheless all the same but they should not be. The two outboard guns are supposed to be offset slightly from the inner ones and, coupled with the slight sweep on the wing leading edge, the outer guns should be much longer than the inners.

So, here are the modifications in progress. The first gun on the left is done, having had the band at the muzzle filed off and replaced with aluminum tape. The bore was also drilled out. The next one over is untouched. The third one has had a piece of plastic rod attached to the thick end which was then sawed in half and shaped with a file. The fourth one has just the rod glued on.

Another area that caught my eye was the grab handle, seen below as the trapezoidal outlined piece just aft of the cockpit. I plan to show the model with the foot step deployed and this means that the grab handle needs to be opened as both were linked on the real aircraft.

I drilled out the opening, cut around the edges to square it up, and installed a cover plate in the open position.

We now move on to the underside, where we are missing the signal lamp that should be present behind the radiator, as well as the opening for the foot step.

These have now been added:

Slowly getting there but these little things are taking a lot of time.

 

[Airframes]

Nicely done Andy.
I never thought to offer, not knowing how poor the kit cannons were, but I think there are two sets in each of my Hasegawa Hurricane MkIIc and Typhoon kits, presumably with the different styles of recoil springs - I haven't looked that close.
You're welcome to a spare set if you want them Andy.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Terry but I'll make do with these. They'll be fine when I'm done with them.

Another area that needs work is that there is ZERO detail on the model to represent the panels and shell ejector openings on the underside of the wings. There are also missing panel lines on the wing leading edges, though an attempt was made to by Hobbycraft to include them - ON THE BOTTOM OF ONE SIDE ONLY!!! More scribing and drilling tomorrow and hopefully a coat of primer will be on by Sunday.

 

[Wayne Little]

Doin' great there Andy.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Catch22]

Nice work Andy, I'll be sure to avoid this kit.

 

[Wildcat]

Good progress Andy. The wing lights turned out great.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks again guys. Today was about fixing and adding panel lines.

Here is the underside of the port wing as provided in the kit. Note the complete absence of any sign of the ejection chute openings.

And here it is after my drill, file, and scalpel got at it. The added panel lines are hard to see but they are there.

Next we have some access panels near the port wing root. The existing ones were filled with surface primer and new ones scribed in. The starboard side omitted them entirely so I added them there as well.

Just for giggles, I added the intricate rudder trim tab actuators as shown in the pic Terry posted earlier. The tail light has had the lens cut off and the fairing has been reduced in size with a file.

And finally, the kit propeller blades had to be thinned significantly. Here are the blades after filing, sanding, and painting with a coat of Alclad Duraluminum. These blades will be given a fair amount of wear as the sand chewed up these props quite a bit.

 

[Airframes]

Nice work on the panel engraving Andy.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Terry. A coat of primer has now been applied to the whole model. A couple of areas will require a bit of attention, as with the gun fairings below, but overall things look pretty much ready for final painting.

 

[Catch22]

Looks a lot better Andy!