Construction (Hurricanes, Fw-200)

There has been quite a bit of construction going on, now that we have passed the craziness of the holiday season. This is not necessarily a good thing, given my ongoing storage crisis, but I am once again considering interim measures to get more square footage. How this will all work out, only time will tell.

I received my Arma Hurricane metal wing Mk 1 from Hannants, along with the AZ X-3 and the Revell Boxer (a modern AFV command post vehicle). The Hurricane and X-3 immediately went into the pre-queue. You know you have too many projects going on when you need to designate a decal queue, paint queue, construction queue and pre-queue.

While I was anxiously awaiting the Hannants parcel, which took longer than usual to arrive due to the Christmas holidays, I decided to start work on the Fly Hurricane 2b (ex-Hasegawa, to use unusual SAAF markings) and an Airfix Hurricane ragwing I didn’t even remember I had, to be put into Italian AF markings.

I have previously mentioned the Mc-202 painting disaster that took place, but it wasn’t the only modelling catastrophe that took place prior to year’s end. When I took the Airfix Hurricane out of the package, I found that the canopy was split right down the middle. The clear plastic is admirably thin, but clearly that is not always an advantage. My solution was to mask both sides of the canopy, glue it in place in phases (using regular cement for the part that connected to the fuselage and Clearfix for the areas where the two broken halves came together. Once dry – and yes, I actually did wait until it was fully cured for a change – I masked the portion that covers the middle of the canopy where the split occurred. Whether all of that survives painting and mask removal is a problem for a later date.

And if that wasn’t enough, when I de-masked the horrendously complex masking job on the Lufthansa Fw-200, I found that some of the RLM63 Light Grey had pulled up. At this point I was about to look for a ledge to crawl out onto. And neither of these problems were due to my native impatience for a change. But they were still problems. The RLM63 issue was made worse by the fact that Xtracolour changed their paint color to a darker, near RLM02 shade, based on further research. With extreme good fortune, I found that I still have a tin of the former color; I had thought that they were all used up. So some careful remasking and reshooting ensued. I did have a problem with overspray landing on one of the black stripes on the Fw-200 fuselage, but I was able to repair that to my satisfaction as well. I have added wheels and props, and the model now stands ready for decals.

BTW, in the photo below, the Airfix Hurricane with the broken canopy is on the left, in lighter grey plastic.