Would this group accept an entry by yours truly? Disclaimer: while I consider myself rather proficient at managing this website, I am also a notoriously slow builder. However, given the time frame for this group build, I figured there might be some hope for success!

My entry is arguably one of the least successful of Hawker's creations - the Car Door Typhoon. Particularly the early production machines had plagued their unfortunate users with all possible troubles!

I have been attracted to this aircraft for some time and have just found the inspiration to start on the Hasegawa kit. So here it is. I have already started dry fitting the fuselage inserts and hope to make some progress on the cockpit during the weekend.

This is one of the many boxings of the well-known Hasegawa kit, with this particular one being dated 2004.

Any comments, encouragement, discussion is always welcome!
Best regards,
Martin

The car-door Typhoon turns out not to be such a disaster. Those mechanical things got worked out, and then a number of these airplanes were modified in 1944 to use the bubble canopy and went back to war, to make up the horrific fighter-bomber losses between D-Day and VE-day - a late friend who flew P-47s in that role told me that his first mission was D-Day, and that when they got the word to stand down in early May 1945, he looked over at the group roster and "of the 48 pilots I had flown with on D-Day, there were still six of us here. Ten others had flown their tour and gone home. The rest were gone - POWs or dead." The situation with Typhoons was similar if not worse.

The main trick with this kit is to assemble the fuselage parts for around the cockpit to the separate fuselage halves first. Get them to fit to the fuselage fore and aft and the lower join. Then put piece of .010 evergreen strip along one part on the centerline behind the cockpit. When you glue the fuselage together, you will only need to worry about a gap on the upper rear fuselage centerline, as well as the fore and aft join lines since they are not on panel lines. but it will only be minimal puttying to get rid of seams.

It is great to also see some work from the editor, Martin @editor
I'm pretty sure your build of this cardoor Typhoon, which to me is the nicest Typhoon, will be beautiful one.

It's time for the first update on the progress of this build...

Thanks everyone for a kind reception to this GB and the initial comments. After some consideration I decided to rename this thread to "Car Door Incident". Just to be clear, I believe that the numerous faults of the Hawker Typhoon cannot be dismissed as either unhappy circumstances or teething troubles, but amount to a rather poor aircraft overall. I'd be willing to elaborate more on that point later in the thread, let's just say that this makes a Typhoon so much more intriguing. But today, let me share the first progress pics!

Fuselage inserts

Already completed off-camera are the fuselage inserts which are the famous design feature of this kit. As per everyone's advice, these were attached individually to each fuselage half. If you start with the notion that the fit isn't very good and proceed accordingly by adding some plastic strips as appropriate, aligning the insert parts with the fuselage isn't really that difficult at all. Some filling, sanding and rescribing is unavoidable, but the amount of work can be kept to a minimum if one is careful about the alignment of parts.

The cockpit

Next, I examined the kit's cockpit. Hasegawa provides a rendition of the tubular fuselage frame that looks okay, but is simplified. The kit's pilot seat is plain and bulky, while the instrument panel looks entirely usable. The fuselage sidewalls offer only a bare minimum of additional detail. Overall, the kit cockpit is a mixed bag.

I decided that an open car door would offer a pretty clear view of the interior, so it would benefit from additional detailing. Also, due to the fact that the pilot's office was squeezed amidst an open tubular framework, the real Typhoon cockpit looked very busy (some would say messy), and extra detail is really needed to approximate that complexity in the model.

I started with the seat, thinning down the kit part, making an oval opening in the seat's back, then adding the padding from a bit of styrene sheet that was scored in diamond pattern. Then the seat was attached to the armored bulkhead and everything enhanced with some cabling, levers and general "gizmology.". Finally, the seat was finished with pre-printed PE steel seatbelts from Eduard.

The kit provides a simplified section of the fuselage framing but it was looking a bit bare. In reality, the entire space within the fuselage was filled with an elaborate tubular framework, which was a patented feature of Hawker's aircraft dating back to the biplanes of the 1920s (it was also Sydney Camm's personal preference over a monocoque construction).

I have added a few more members to and under the "floor," using plastic tube and lead wire.

The kit's instrument panel looked the part but really, it is hard to beat the look of a color-printed aftermarket panel, like the one I ordered from Yahu. The Yahu panel is much more detailed than the kit's panel, and it even has a bit of a 3D effect to it.

For the rudder pedals and control column, I started with the kit's parts, adding a few details of my own.

The cockpit colors of the Typhoon are a bit elusive, many modeling sources quoting either "black" or "interior green". After checking my references, I came to the following conclusion with regard to early Typhoon cockpits:

• fuselage frame and floor "skids" were painted silver
• seat: bare aluminium
• seat padding: linen
• fuselage sidewalls: interior green
• instrument panel and the side consoles: black
• interior of the car doors and cockpit sidewalls at the level of the doors: interior green or black

Here it is prior to final assembly:

Overall, I am rather excited about how the cockpit turned out. I believe it will make a big difference in the final appearance of the model.

If you have any tips or suggestions, please feel free to share!

Thank you, @johnb.

That cockpit is superb looking Martin@editor. As Spiros said, the Yahu panel really does rock big time enhanced by your touch up skills.

Having recently completed the later version of this kit series for this GB, you‘ll be spending the bulk of your build time dialing in those irritating fuselage inserts prior to gluing the cockpit and halves together. TC’s advice is dead on. .

Yes Eric @eb801, you've done a very nice job on your Typhoon project and I've been already using your build thread https://imodeler.com/groups/hawker-100th/forum/topic/hasegawa-1-48-typhoon-mk-1b/ as a guidance :).

I love "Open Door Policy", Pedro @holzhamer 😂. Saving it for later 😎.

Interestingly, the Typhoon initially had two doors (both left & right side), and opening them both would amount to a very viewable cockpit in the model. However, shortly after the initial production series the left door was wired shut in an effort to reduce the carbon monoxide contamination of the cockpit. Carbon monoxide poisoning was the first of the many potentially deadly problems that were to plague Typhoon's pilots during its service life.

With that in mind, maybe I'm only offering a 1/2 Open Door Policy...