Thanks Gentlemen for the kind words...
Today was a great day for building Hurricanes !
It all started by doing some detail painting on the various Spitfire cockpits. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I had all of the cockpit parts painted for the Hurricanes. Things just happened to line up...
So having the parts ready for the next obvious step, and wanting to see the results of my recent work, I decided to start gluing parts together...
But before we get to that part, lets go over the details first.
Here's the interior of the Airfix Hurricane. Getting the instrument panel in was a bit tricky. I had to spread the lower sides of the fuselage in order to get the IP to fit into the grooves where it belongs. The fit is so good, that glue wasn't needed. But I glued it just to be safe.
Here's a few pictures of the Airfix cockpit after painting was completed. They really did a bang up job on this kit. The details are fantastic right out of the box...
Here I have installed the seat and armor plate.
This picture shows the details inside the wing, just in case you want to build yours with the weapons bays opened up. I'm building this one closed...
I wanted to see how the wing section was going to fit. Here's a test fit in progress photo. I checked the fit of the upper wing panels before gluing.
Here you can see the upper wing halves glued in place.
One word of caution here. The main wing spars are a tad too thick. They cause a very slight gap at the leading edge. I was able to hold the gap tight as the glue dried... and ended up with a perfect fit along the edges of the wings.
I found this out the hard way, but was able to fix it before I glued on the other upper wing half.
What I did was take a single edge razor blade and lightly scrape away at the top of the spar until the wing fit very nice. Then the other wing upper half simply fell in place...
Then I decided to glue the wing onto the fuselage. The fit was amazing here. No gaps were present anywhere. Once I had the wing installed, I added the part that covers the lower engine compartment. The final part was the lower fuselage fillet, that goes all the way to the end of the fuselage.
A little hint here: If you really wanted to build a Sea Hurricane, the parts are in the box to do it. 🙂
I'll be saving these parts for my Hasegawa kit. I'll try to use the Airfix parts rather than mess with the resin bits included included with the Hasegawa model... but that's another project for later, and we will see how it goes.
In these next photos you can see just how tight the wing root filets are. With careful gluing, no filler will be needed.
Here's how the cockpit looks once everything was in place. The IP decals snuggled down very nice into the raised details. Some "Solvaset" was used, and the decal lined up perfectly with the plastic dials that are cast into the part, giving it a three dimensional look.
I then turned my attention to the Classic Airframes kit. I used a white pencil to draw in the dials on the IP. Once I was happy with everything, I glued the completed cockpit assembly into the fuselage. Here's how it looks now.
Next I glued the lower wing half in place of the CA kit.
The fit wasn't as nice as the new Airfix kit, but I didn't expect the fit to be as GOOD as it was. In fact, with careful gluing, there was only one tiny gap present that needs to be filled in...You can see it here in this next picture. The gap is where the upper wing joins the fuselage and the lower wing at the same time. I was very pleased at this and had expected much worse...
Here's the end result of todays work... not counting the Spitfire parts that were painted. but that's another story.
The Airfix metal wing Mk 1 is on the left, the Classic Airframes "cloth wing" is on the right... Both are at the same stage of construction.
I hope to get some paint sprayed on these two, and the BP Defiant soon.
I'm calling it a night.
As usual,
Comments are encouraged...
Good night.
