Farewell Review: This was the last project on my workbench

Thank You everyone for your kind farewell words. I will leave you with this build review I wrote a few weeks ago. It is the FLY 1/32 Hawker Hurricane Mk. IIc. It will be finished in Royal India Air Force markings while operating in the Burma theater. There are several reviews of the FLY Hurricane on the internet. They vary a bit but overall it is a Limited-Run kit with all the issues often associated with these types of builds. It has it's Pros and Cons. The best feature is the surface detail of the wings which is a realistic combination of both raised and recessed rivets and panel details. The Fuselage detail is not bad either but I feel some of the included detail is to soft, or not recessed enough and is already being lost as I apply the various paint coats. The kit includes some resin parts but none of there pieces are anything to write home about.

The instructions are in color but can be vague in places so use many external references. This kit includes some resin 20mm cannons but they are poorly molded. Pieces that should be molded in resin are not, and the supplied resin and plastic suffer from poor details, lack of detail, or very soft. The instructions show detailed parts but when you locate the part it lacks the detail illustrated. The cockpit detail is not bad but could have been made so much better with the addition of nicely detailed resin parts often found in other limited run kits. I therefore fabricated a lot of extra detail myself to busy up the cockpit area. The included PE parts are average with nothing special being offered to make it an exceptional kit. Despite these short-comings the overall fit of the parts are good, especially the fuselage halves and wing halves. As common with these types of kits there are no locating pins or markers. This does provide some challenge when attempting to fit the fuselage assembly into the fuselage. I closed the fuselage halves 1st then inserted the cockpit assembly into the closed fuselage from below. Before I did this there was tons of dry-fitting as I added more and more detail to this area. The cockpit assembly needed lots of help to secure in place. I used stripes of plastic wedged into places to secure if firmly in place. The outer wing sections need help to secure to the inner/middle wing sections in the same manner. Lots of strips of plastic to create reinforcement or the wings would not stay secure. After lots of dry-fitting I got the wings to fit well with the fuselage. I attached the middle wing section 1st to the fuselage before assembling and attaching other pieces of the wing. Another disappointment for me was not having separate flap sections so I could deploy the flaps in lowered position. The tail flying surface controls are all separate and fit fairly well. The nose intake for the tropical version fits awful and needed shims and tons of filler. Make sure you thin the molding block on the resin wheel well assembly so that the middle wing section fits into the fuselage. It needs to be sanded until the floor almost disappears. The canopy sections fit well to the fuselage. Despite the challenges I have enjoyed the overall build experience. I am currently in the weathering stages of the final build and painting steps. I purchased metal gun barrels for the 20mm cannons. I also purchased Eduard Steel seat belts. I will be using the included India Air Force decals. I purchased the masks for the camo pattern and did use them but they were horrible. They had no sticking power what so ever, none!

84 additional images. Click to enlarge.