1/48 Hobbycraft Hurricane MkII C

by Lloyd Curtis

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After finishing my Trumpeter HH65A, I needed an easy project. During a recent business trip, I picked up the Hobbycraft Hurricane MKIIC for $12.00. I figured, for the price, I'd just build it (funny how we have this illusion when we start a kit and before AMS kicks in). When I took a closer look at the kit, I found that the it is not bad at all, when compared to Richard Caruana's drawings in Scale Aircraft Monthly (Vol 1, issue 5), and some reference photo's I found on the net. The only problems, other than a few slightly misplaced, or missing panel lines, is that the angle of the outer wing section is a little too sharp. The cockpit is a little sparse, but you can't really see inside to tell anyway, and the instrument panel is fine. The real area that needed work was the wheel wells.

So, what to do without adding huge cost to project? Add some wire and plastic to the cockpit to improve it and do the same for the wheel wells. So with this plan in mind I began building. The last Hobbycraft kit I built was a Vampire, and I was not impressed, so I wasn't sure what to expect from the Hurricane. What a surprise, the fit of most of the parts was excellent. For the cockpit I improved the floorboards and added rudder pedals, seat adjustment and canopy jettison handles and wiring. I shaved the seat back as it seemed too high to me, and added seat belts from paper with reheat buckles. I also thinned the overly thick amour plate behind the pilots head. This was all painted Model Master RAF interior green, detailed, and weathered with an oil wash and silver pencil.

Whatever detail (or lack of) there was in the wheel wells was removed. This was replaced with a new air bottle, retraction cylinders, piping, braces, cross members etc, painted aluminum, given a wash and then masked with wet tissue and Tamiya tape. The shell ejector chutes were missing from the wings, so these were added, as were the missing panel lines. I found the missing panel lines to be somewhat amusing. There were lines that were on the upper half of the wing going around the leading edge, but were missing on the lower half. There were also some on the left side that were not on the right. I guess the molds were made on a Monday. The navigation lights were cut out of the wing and the resulting gap in the wing was filled with putty, sanded and painted interior green. A piece of aluminum tubing with a blob of glue on the end (painted the appropriate color) was used to make the light. The whole area was then built up by applying layers of CA and accelerator and then polished. The result was pretty good, although I did get some small air bubbles in it. The lumps that represented the landing lights were drilled out and replaced with MV lenses. The clear covers were then installed, sanded to fit flush with the wing and polished. These area were then masked. The rest of the kit went together without any trouble.

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Next, it was off to the paint booth. My references showed that Hurricanes in North Africa took a pretty good beating, so this aircraft would need to be weathered a fair amount. This was my first attempt at pre shading. All the panel lines were painted Gunze flat black. Once that had thoroughly dried, I applied a coat of Model Master Azure Blue to the undersurface. This was masked and the Mid Stone applied. The camouflage was then masked using rolled Blu-Tak and paper and the Dark Earth sprayed. I then tried my first attempt at post shading. I let this all dry for a few days and shot a couple of coats of Future. The decals are a combination of the ones from the kit, and Flightdecs. The kit decals are for 417 "City of Windsor" squadron RCAF, in Libya, 1943 and in general are not bad. However, the wing roundels were out of register and no stenciling was provided. I therefore picked up Flightdecs set "Canadian Hurricanes". The flightdecs decals were great. The only trouble was that they are so thin that some of the stencils folded up while trying to get them off the backing paper. Luckily the set includes complete sets for three aircraft, so I had plenty of stencils. A final coat of Future was sprayed, and once completely dry, I applied an oil wash of darkened burnt sienna. Then I started beating it up. The upper surfaces were first spayed with thinned and lightened mid stone. Then a few light coats of Pollyscale dust to fade them a bit more, followed by a coat of Polly S dull coat. The Exhausts were drilled out and painted with a mix of Testors steel, black and rust. The exhaust staining was built up with very thin Gunze flat black. The cannons were then drilled out and attached. A silver pencil was used for the paint chipping. Brake lines were added to the landing gear, while the gear doors had panel lines and rivet detail added to the interior. I did some detail weathering with pastel chalks and applied a final layer of dull coat. I added a Squadron Vac canopy, which, although designed for the Hasegawa kit, fit fine. This was also my first use of a vac canopy and I almost went nuts trying to first cut it out and then mask it, as the framing is very light. I think the effort was worth it though.

Was this the quick easy build I was originally looking for? Not really. But there were no problems with building this kit. The fit was very good with only minor amounts of filler required. The extra work was all to improve detail and was by choice, not necessity. Hasegawa it isn't, but if you look at it as "bang for the buck", I got a model that looks like a Hurricane, didn't make me swear (much), that I am very happy with, for a small investment. Could I have done more? Yes, the flaps, elevators, and rudder could have been animated, but I was looking for a quick build. Maybe next time. Thanks goes to the ARC discussion board crowd for putting up with my Hurricane questions and giving the answers I needed.

Lloyd

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Photos and text © by Lloyd Curtis