1/48 Hobbycraft Hawker Sea Fury FB Mk 11

Gallery Article by Wlad Franco-Valias on July 1 2011

  Canada Day 

 

I first saw a Sea Fury at the 1979 Medicine Hat Air Show. Frank Sanders flew an awesome display with it; and even there just sitting on the tarmac it struck me as the ultimate in piston-engined fighter design. I just had to build a model of one, but I couldn’t find a kit. So I collected all the reference material I could and even considered converting a 1/72 Matchbox Hawker Tempest Mk II. I soon gave up on the conversion idea as it was too much for my skills at the time.

Fast-forward to 1988 and I discovered a Sea Fury kit  by a company I had never heard of: Hobbycraft Canada.  Even though I wasn’t building models at the time I bought the kit and rushed home to inspect the box’s contents.  Though the kit captured the lines very well, I was disappointed with the heavy panel lines and lack of finer details.  I started working on the model then, but put it away shortly after until the mid ‘90s, and then off and on again from 2007 to now.

I chose to model WG565, which was on display at HMCS Tecumseh in Calgary. According to Leo Pettipas WG565 led the Coronation Review fly-past on 15 of June 1953, while flying from HMCS Magnificent.  When I last saw WG565, in the late ‘90s, it was restored and wore a mix of two RCN color scheme and marking arrangements (CSMAs).  The fuselage had the scalloped color demarcation line in the tail fin, the codes AA*A (which WG565 wore), and yellow edged roundels of CSMA III.  The wings had the CSMA III roundels and NAVY 131 of CSMA IV.  My model represents WG565 as it looked in full CSMA IV, circa 1953.

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I practiced a lot of new skills on this model, taking suggestions from this site and other sources. I also put my reference materials to good use. As such I made the following modifications:

1. Drilled out the exhaust pipes

2. Drilled position lights under the wings

3. Created clear wing-tip navigation lights lenses from pieces of clear sprue

4. Scribed the missing carburetor air intake louvers under the forward wing roots and drilled marks for the rocket launchers and fuel tank attachment points under the wings

5. Sanded off the bulges in the main landing gear doors. RCN Sea Furies did not have the modified landing gear with the extra 5 inches extension which required the bulges in the doors

6. Corrected the head post in cockpit and discarded part C14 as I could make no sense of what it is

7. Scratch built and added what seems to be a navigation antenna behind the pilot’s head armour, present in RCN Sea Furies

8. Replaced propeller and spinner with the Cutting Edge CEC48360 resin set – worth every penny

9. Used Cutting  Edge CEC48360 metal landing gear parts, stirrup and resin wheels

10. Used decals from AeroMaster 48-215 Sea Fury Collection for roundels, position lights and stencils; and a customized CanMilAir Decals sheet 007 for serial numbers and remaining RCN markings. Both decal sets settled beautifully with a little Micro Set and Micro Sol

11. Added IFF antenna under the wing, made from piano wire

For painting I used Tamiya XF-24 (Dark Grey) over XF-19 (Sky Grey). I then sprayed Future to prepare for decals. The Future coat looked pebbly and I added a couple more coats by brush. The resulting finish was mixed in texture but worked well enough for the decals. In the exhaust area I sprayed Future mixed with Tamiya Flat Base (4:1) diluted to 50% with Tamiya thinner; then rubbed white pastel powder to simulate the lead build up, followed by a black pastel to simulate soot. This was then covered by another coat of Flat Base mixed as above. As a final coat I changed the mix to 1 part Flat Base and 20 parts future, diluted 50%, avoiding the sides of the fuselage with the exhaust staining. This resulted in an even satin finish.

As this was a very long build Murphy’s Law struck twice while I was at it. The first time was when I discovered the Cutting Edge detail set and couldn’t use the beautifully detailed wheel wells because I didn’t want to disassemble the plane or start a new one. The second time was when I finished painting the kit and Trumpeter launched their 1/48 Sea Fury. I almost gave up this project, but after collecting so much to improve this kit I just had to finish it and make room in the stash shelf.

So here it is, almost 23 years in the making, much researched and much fussed over, my Sea Fury. I think my next build will be a “shake and bake” kit I have no references for.

Happy Canada Day.

References:

  • Brown, Eric (1980); Finale Furioso... The Era Ending Sea Fury. Air International Volume 18, Number 2, February 1980. London , England : Fine Scroll Limited.
  • Cooke, Peter B (1983). Spotlight No. 1 The Hawker Sea Fury. Scale Models International, Volume 14, Number 168, October 1983. Herts , England : Model & Allied Publications, Ltd.
  • Pettipas, Leo (1989). The Hawker Sea Fury in The Royal Canadian Navy. Self-published. Winnipeg , Manitoba . ISBN: 0-9692528-5-4
  • The real item at HMCS Tecumseh.

Wlad Franco-Valias

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Photos and text © by  Wlad Franco-Valias