Hello, fellow
modelers and readers!
This is the fourth of
my projected series of articles related to old Airfix series 1 models. The subject of this
article is an Armstrong Withworth Sea Hawk Mk. 100 from the German Marineflieger.
Although the Sea Hawk was originally designed and developed by Hawker, the
production was transferred to the Armstrong Withworth factory when Hawker shifted
its efforts to the famous Hunter. The Sea Hawk served in different versions with
the British, the German, the Dutch and the Indian navies.
This Airfix kit came
in the cardboard-backed acetate blister package introduced in the mid seventies.
It had alternative parts for two versions, the aforementioned Mk. 100 and of
course a British version (in fact Airfix has been known for releasing a kit of
almost every British aircraft, from the famous Spitfire to less known prototypes
such as the Fairey Rotodyne and the Saunders-Roe S.R. 53, of which I built one
some 35 years ago.) When I bought the kit many years ago, it was the only
representation of this aircraft in 1/72 scale (it certainly was until the
release of the MPM kit in this decade.)
Besides having the
characteristic "pilot+seat" cockpit of old Airfix kits, the kit has
other features:
-
The fuselage is
too fat.
-
The cockpit
canopy is smaller than the place where it's going to be glued.
-
The pylons for
the drop tanks and the bombs are molded with the outer wings sections, and
are too thick.
-
The
undercarriage doors and the arresting hook are too thick.
-
The fit of the
vertical fin to the rear of the fuselage is poor, as is the fit of the wings
to the fuselage.
-
The air intakes
are poorly represented. The same can be said of the engine exhausts and the
triangular plate behind the exhausts, which is flat and should be curved.
-
The overall
level of detail is poor: there are very few raised lines, and details such
as the pitot tube, the four cannon openings and the ejector shells are not
included.
Before starting the
construction, I had already chosen the German Mk. 100 version because I like its tall
vertical fin more than the short fin of the British version (it looks more
"modern" to me,) and I had a large
in-flight color photo and a color profile of "VA+229", an aircraft
of the same squadron of "VA+222", the German airplane represented
in the kit.
Click on
images below to see larger images
I began construction
by painting the seat and the interior of the aircraft with HU78 interior
grey-green (as in the case of the Folland Gnat I previously built, I'm not sure
if this color is correct), then I painted the pilot figure and glued it to the
seat and later this assembly to the starboard fuselage half. After that I glued
lead shot to the inside of the nose, inserted the arresting hook (which
supposedly could be moved) and closed the fuselage. It was followed with the
assembly of each main wing, consisting on upper and lower halves for the inner
section and one piece for the outer section, and the three tail pieces.
When the basic
assembly was done, I undertook the long task of correcting and filling the
seams. This time I filled the seams with super glue, as recommended by Paul Boyer in his book "Painting and
finishing scale models" and in several FSM articles. However, using super
glue without its accelerator (it's not available in my country) is a different
story: it's was difficult to know when the glue was dry, and most of the times
when it was dry it was also very hard, making sanding a pain. Moreover,
sometimes the glue didn't fill the seam completely. Therefore I was (and still I
am) not completely satisfied with the results of this method. I do think that
filling and sanding the seams is the most unwanted task of model building!
Now it was time to
start painting, and I looked at my large photograph again to be sure of the
colors... but instead of start painting, I convinced myself that I had to add to
the model some of the details not included in the kit. I purchased a caliper, a
pin vise and some drill bits, then drilled the gun ports at the front-bottom
fuselage, a hole to insert a scratchbuilt pitot tube at the tip of the port wing
and a small hole at the rear of the spine to insert an antenna made of
monofilament. I scratchbuilt the shell ejectors, and the black radome
that goes at the rear of the spine. I also drilled a hole at the tip of the nose
and the ignition exhaust hole near the port intake. I used the aforementioned
profile as a reference for measurements.
After
adding the scratchbuilt bits the model was ready for painting. I masked the
canopy and then painted its frames with HU78, then I painted the whole model
with Humbrol Authentic HB5 Sky, but after the first pass over the white plastic
I realised the paint had to be whitened, so I finally mixed it with 1/3 white to
get the shade of my reference photo. I couldn't work in my model for some time
and this light color caught some dirt, so I had to retouch it. I had read in
the October 2001 FSM article "Building big like a pro" by John
Adelmann that he sprays a coat of Future between color coats to protect each
color, with the additional benefit that minor mistakes can be easily corrected by
erasing them with thinner, so I adapted this tip and airbrushed a coat of
acrylic gloss varnish over the Sky.
Later I masked the color
demarcation line using Scotch Magic tape and the technique I described in a past
article about an Airfix Zero. It was in this model that my symmetrical masks
were really important! I wished that the demarcation line on the nose looked
completely horizontal when viewed from the front, so I had to make several
adjustments to achieve this feature. Another important thing about the masking
is that the upper color should wrap the leading edge of the wings and the
stabilators, and also should wrap the engine intakes. Therefore, correct masking
was crucial for the finish of this model.
Before painting the
upper color, I airbrushed gloss varnish over the masks to avoid paint bleed, as
recommended in another FSM article. According to some
references, the upper color should be Extra Dark Sea Gray. One of the confusing
things about this color is that there is a matt version used on Fleet Air Arm
WWII aircraft (roughly HU27 Sea Grey or FS36118 Gunship Gray, although some modelers use
a grey
lighter than HU27,) and a postwar satin and darker version (HU123) used on Royal Navy
aircraft such as the Sea Hawk, the Sea Fury, the Sea Venom and
early Sea Harriers, among others.
I painted the upper surfaces with
HU123, but even taking into account that the in-flight photo I had was taken in
a sunny day and this fact makes the colors appear lighter than they actually
are, I found that HU123 was too dark. I
arrived to the conclusion that the German Marineflieger used a not so dark grey, so
I ended using HU165 Satin Dark Sea Grey (which is not a satin version of HU27.) Later I painted the black
radome, when
it was dry I airbrushed a coat of gloss varnish and the model was ready for
decaling.
I tried Paul Boyer's
tip for old decals on this kit's decals, as always. However, the
decals became very fragile and their application was disastrous. The national
insignias cracked badly, I managed to join the pieces in the case of the
underwing decals, but I had to borrow decals from other kit to replace the
insignias that go over the wings. The edges of the other decals lifted from the
surface and dried this way despite the many coats of decal solvent I applied
over them, so I had to cut the lifted edges carefully with a sharp knife and
retouch the decals with black paint.
I replaced the
German flag of both sides of
the fin and the warning triangles below the cockpit with spare decals (the original
ones were out of register). I also added the two vertical black thin stripes at
the port side of the cockpit (ending at foot pegs in the real aircraft) and
small black rectangles with tiny white lettering to the outer side of each drop tank,
all made from spare decals. I finally added a small stripe of black decal just
before the port side of the cockpit canopy, and then painted HU165 lines
over it, to represent the grille from the cockpit air input.
After all the decals
were placed and repaired as needed, I airbrushed the model with Humbrol Satin
Cote to get an even satin finish. Then I masked and later painted the exhausts and the
plates behind them with Humbrol metal cote Polished Steel, and polished them.
The model was now ready for final assembly. I glued the already painted
undercarriage, and later the thick undercarriage doors, an uneasy task. Later I
glued the already finished drop tanks and bombs, and the scratchbuild pitot
tube, after that I removed the masking from the canopy and polished the windows.
Finally I painted the wing-tip lights, and the model was finished in August 2007.
After more than two years, the
Humbrol Satin Cote is still sticky. I've thought many times about applying a
coat of a different satin varnish to this model, but when it comes to the
action, the priority goes to building or finishing new models (by the way I
write articles when the weather isn't good for modeling)... so this Airfix
Sea Hawk will likely stay as it is today. I'm satisfied with my first
attempt at minor scratchbuilding and detailing.
Thanks for reading
and watching, and happy modeling!. Greetings from Caracas, Venezuela.
Orlando
Sucre Rosales
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