Hobbyboss Hawker Seahawk

I’m still catching up with models that have been completed in the fall modelling campaign. The next one is another in the ongoing series of Cold War British fighters, most recently exemplified by the AZ Models Attacker and the Xtrakit Swift. This is the relatively new Hobbyboss Hawker Seahawk.

It is a very nice kit in the box, though it suffers from the engineering that one usually sees for the Seahawk. The German and British versions have a different tail, so the fuselage is inevitably split to allow both options, giving you an unnecessary seam to deal with. Otherwise the detailing is plentiful. The only area that I messed up on was not giving sufficient attention to the seam directly behind the exhaust cans. The best way to approach this is to not install the actual exhaust pipes until after you have dealt with the seam. Not the way I did it, unfortunately, so I was unable to reach the area that needed the PSR.

The actual colors on this jet seemed a bit on the confusing side, with various iterations of DSG, EDSG, Sky, and White being proposed. I decided to use an old Modeldecal sheet. This is actually for an F1, but I couldn’t see any external differences so I went ahead. If you can’t rely on Dickie Ward for postwar RAF/RN camo data, who can you rely on? I’m sure if there are some physical differences between the F1 and FGA6, some poster on the boards where I display these finished models will let me know.

While wrapping up this model, I got the urge for another Cold War fighter, and started on the cockpit of a Heller DeHav Vampire FB5. This is an elderly kit, with raised panel lines that will need to be eliminated and unusable decals. The detail isn’t too bad for a kit of this vintage, and I believe I have another Modeldecal sheet that featured Vampires, so markings won’t be a crisis.

This is completed model #366, completed in September of 2011.