Scale aviation modeller international

for early Hurricanes converted

to Sea Hurricane standard. I

applied Alclad Aluminium to

most of the internal visible parts

first, before adding Cockpit

Green and Satin Black. I used a

light wash with diluted Tamiya

Smoke to pick out the details.

I made a representation of

the 4-point seat harness from

small strips of Tamiya tape, and

the latch and clasps from a set

of generic WWII Reheat fittings.

Fitting the seat harness required

drilling a small squared-off hole

in the seat armour plate. This,

and adding the scratch-built

headrest is best done before, not

after constructing the cockpit!

The control column sits a bit

too high in my opinion, almost

touching the reflector gun sight, so

I shortened the lower part by about 1

mm. Normally I do not build models

with anything but all controls

at neutral, as flight training

procedures require this for parked

aircraft. However Airfix provides

separate control surfaces so I

glued the control column slightly

towards the port side. Remember

that in this position the port aileron

should be pointing upwards and

the starboard one downwards,

but only by a few degrees.

The kit supplies quite detailed

gun bays; one option is to leave

the gun covers off, exposing all

eight .303 Browning machine guns

and their associated ammunition

canisters, but I decided to finish

the model with closed covers.

Next were the landing lights,

with the prominent black frames

and the upper wing parts glued to

the lower wing. The enclosed wing

spar ensures correct wing dihedral.

To close up the fuselage, I again

deviated from the instructions

by gluing the fuselage sides to

the upper wing inserts first,

before closing up the fuselage

undersides. By doing it this way I

achieved a near perfect fit without

any filler required. I did not drill

out the gun ports because they

were going to be covered with

red protective tape in the form

of the supplied decals, as seen in

numerous period photographs.

Remaining parts were fitted

as per instructions while a few

missing items were added from

plastic sheet, sprue, and fine wires.

This included the oil collector

ring behind the spinner, the

prominent brace on the inside of

the oil cooler, the rear view mirror

on top of the cockpit, and the

inside and outside cockpit grips.

Even with these additions it

seemed only a very short time and

my model was ready for painting.

PAINT AND DECALS

I used Xtracolor Sky, Extra Dark

Sea Grey, and Slate Grey as the

Fleet Air Arm (FAA) colours of

the day, which was applied free

hand. I know that the FAA used

template mats but I still like a bit

of light overspray at this scale.

Decals went on without fuss.

They reacted well to Micro Set and

Sol and were sealed with MicroScale

Matt. Since the plastic is slightly

grainy I overlaid the gloss Xtracolor

with a few coats of Humbrol Clear

to achieve a smooth surface.

In the IWM movie of the

squadron taking off it appears

that one of the upper camouflage

colours, probably slate grey, was

much less reflective compared to

the other colour, as if it had been

recently re-applied. Because the

Sea Hurricanes spent all their time

out on the open deck this seemed

an obvious repaint job, so I buffed

up my MicroScale Matt varnish

coat to achieve minor differences in

reflection. Unfortunately this does

not show up very well in the images.

Weathering was done behind

the gun ports and on the underside

representing oil stains. I added

prominent exhaust stains on the

fuselage sides, while other wear

and tear was kept restricted to

engine and gun cover screw heads,

as apparent in the available images

of contemporary airframes.

I decided to leave the cockpit

open, as this was often the case

just before flying off the cramped

flight decks of the carriers.

CONCLUSION

Airfix continues its current string of

very nice, newly engineered, and very

reasonably priced kits with this Sea

Hurricane. It is on par with any Far

East-developed kit and offers some

clever engineering, which makes for

an easy build with near perfect fit.

I highly recommended this kit to

all Hurricane lovers, even with the

few small items missing that I had

to add. My thanks to Airfix for this

review sample and the editor for

allowing me to build this nice model.

Added items such as head rest, rear view mirror, seat belts, and cockpit grips

Added oil collector ring Arrestor hook and added rear catapult fittings

KIT REVIEWS

WWW.SAMPUBLICATIONS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2018 • 59

056-63-Reviews-0918.indd 59 16/08/2018 17:34