I've wanted to do a Curtiss Mohawk build for a number of years. The only Mohawk kit in 1/48 scale that I know of is the Academy/ Hobbycraft RAF Mohawk which is not suitable because of a very inaccurate cowling. I had also wanted to do a fixed gear Hawk 75 in Thai markings and I used Hobbycraft's Hawk 75 kit as a basis for that model. It had the same completely wrong shaped cowling. For that model, I modified a Monogram B-17G cowling and adapted it up to the Hobbycraft fuselage. This was before Clear Prop had released their beautiful Hawk 75 kit.

This worked out okay, but it was a lot of work and not as nice as I would have liked.

When I found out about the Clear Prop Hawk 75, I thought I might be able to use the fuselage of that with the wing of the Hobbycraft P-36 kit to get the MOhawk conversion. So I purchased the two kits. The Hobbycraft molding has been re-released by Wolfpack productions with additional PE and new decals. This is the kit I got. ANd of course I aqcquired a Clear Prop Hawk 75.

Once I opened these kits up, I realized that the Clear Prop kit was much nicer all over than the Wolfpack kit and I would actually only need the landing gear wells from the Wolfpack kit. So that's my plan. I will graft the retractable wheel wells from the Wolfpack kit onto the Clear Prop wings and use the Clear Prop kit for the main body parts. I am sure there are other things I will have to do, but I will tackle those when I get started on this.

I am actually in the middle of four other builds, but I kind of like the idea of having multiple kits going at the same time so that I can get to painting and weathering more often. So this project will be started very soon.

Excellent job on using the B-17 cowling on the Hobbycraft kit, my friend @clipper! The Clear Prop kit looks very nice! Good idea to work on multiple kits!

Thanks for stopping by George (@gblair), Spiros (@fiveten), and John (@johnb).

SO to be clear on a few things I wasn't clear enough on in the first post. The photos of the partially built Hawk are from a few years ago when I converted the Hobbycraft Hawk 75 kit to have a more accurate cowling.That kit has been built and resides in my display case. The current project is to use the Clear Prop Hawk 75 (fixed gear) kit as the basis for the RAF Mohawk. The Mohawk has the same engine and cowling as the Hawk 75 but has retractable gear.So I will use the gear wells from the Wolfpack boxing of the Academy kit (and whatever else might be useful) to modify the Clear Prop kit so that it has retractable landing gear.

I knew that the Wolfpack P-36A kit was a reboxing of the Hobbycraft / Academy model and would have preferred to buy the Hobbycraft P-36A kit for this conversion (as it is cheaper),. However, at the time, I could not locate one , so I ended up purchasing this. I tried to justify the extra cost to myself by telling myself that I could use the entire wing from the Wolfpack kit. But really, I just spent too much on it and should have kept looking for the HC kit.

And as I mentioned, the Clear Prop kit is so nice that I will use most of it for this project, only cutting the wheel wells from the WP kit wings and grafting them into the Clear Prop wing to get the retractable gear. This avoids having to do a more difficult conversion on the WP kit to change the cowling like I did previously.

Anyway, if that was already clear to you guys before, I apologize for the wordiness and repeat explanation.

As an aside, I also use Scalemates for research before buying a model, but sometimes I let my emotions (desire to have something) overrule my logic (wait until I can find something cheaper to use). 🙂

@clipper, all clear now, Carl.