Fly/Hasegawa Hawker Hurricane

When Fly bought up a run of Hasegawa Hurricane F2Bs – metal winged but no cannon – I was glad to see the kit return to production. I was never all that bothered by the exaggerated rear fuselage treatment; I mean, it is overdone, but not a dealbreaker for me. Plus Fly managed to dig up three camo schemes that I was interested in doing. There is an NMF with a red fuselage stripe outlined in Black, a Free French version, and the one I chose: a South African non combat type with a weird camo scheme and large Trainer Yellow strips and patches. What is not to like?

Construction moved pretty quickly with the Hasegawa kit’s fine fit. It’s not that detailed, especially in the cockpit, but since I was planning to have the canopy closed in any case, that was not a concern. About the only aggravation I suffered was that the dorsal mast kept breaking off and seeking refuge with the Carpet Monster.

The camo scheme, two greens over Azure Blue, was a mystery for a while. But after some research, including help provided by kindly members of the Britmodeller board, I settled onto X001 Dark Green and X116 Light Green. And of course X011 Trainer Yellow for the stripes etc. When you have built 22 Hurricanes, you must respect a new (to me) color scheme. The painting process did take a while, given the four colors, and I had to check the sizes of the Yellow portions to make sure they would accommodate the lettering that they would contain.

The Fly decals performed very well indeed. No folding, they floated into place with adequate water, and didn’t require much in the way of setting solution.

The Hurricane is part of 11 Squadron South African Air Force, as based in Port Elizabeth in 1945. Not sure which side of VE/VJ Day, so I suppose it may technically be a postwar scheme. Not something that concerns me, though. Though there are some minor flaws, I was pretty happy with this one.

This is completed aircraft #504 (2 aircraft, 0 ordnance, 0 vehicles for the year 2019), finished in January of 2019.