When the two kits arrived Friday, one look at one of them convinced me to start right in.

When I saw the lower rear fuselage was separate, an idea struck me build a Sea Hurricane IIc. The Airfix Hurricane Sea Hurricane part fit perfectly with only a modicum of modification to angle the edge so it would fit to the model.

The "trick" to this kit is following the instructions. Be sure all sprue attachement points are cleaned up and the mating surface is smooth. Take care in assembly and I only needed CA glue on the centerline of the forward fuselage, and that might have been due to me not getting the fit perfect.

The surface detail is incredible. You can't see it without painting the model, but you can feel it. Scale raised rivets on the wings, all detail very petite and accurate.

This is the best Hurricane kit in any scale.

You don't have to wait for the release of the kit as a Tropical IIc if you have aftermarket decals. Everything for all versions of Hurricane IIc are in the kit now.

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Great entry, Tom @tcinla
My favorite Hurricane type, looking forward to it.

Here it is painted. I think you can start to see the incredible raised detail on this amazing kit through the paint.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Really nice painting, Tom @tcinla
The detailing is amazing.

Fantastic job so far, my friend @tcinla!

Here's "Nicki" finished.

This airplane is the best example I know of how most "research" is conducted: follow the leader. Which isn't a good idea when the "leader" done screwed the pooch.

Back in 1973, when Airfix brought out their 1/24 Hurricane, they did a book about building the kit and the things you could do with it. A Very Well Known British Modeler modifed the kit into a Sea Hurricane IIc, and declared it was all white, despite every photograph he might have looked at screaming "No! You're wrong!" The lesson there is LOOK a the friggin' photo and SEE what's there. For the next 30 years, nobody did that (but me when I did this plane using a Hasegawa kit back in 1998).

In fact, the photos of 835 Squadron Sea Hurricane IIc's reveal the white Atlantic camo was overpainted on the standard FAA scheme, with the white wrapping around the nose and the wing leading edges. Someone then decided that "Nicki" had D-Day stripes on the lower wing despite there being no photograph of her that way (this was "extrapolated" from a photo of another airplane tipped up on its nose.

Then there is the matter of misidentifying the airplane regarding markings. It took me a whole 10 minutes with Der Google to find the interview done in 1999 with Lieutenant Allen Burgham in the old Navismagazine site, the guy who was flying Nicki in March 1944 (before D-Day) when he shot down a Ju-290. As he said in the interview, he couldn't understand why people kept saying "Nicki's" codes were "7-N" and the serial was "NF691" when "my logbook clearly records Nicki as 7-K and serial NF672."

Like I say, it took 10 minutes asking Google for photos of Sea Hurricane IIcs and then clicking on the one that took me to the old Navismagazine page.

So, using the kit decals for the national markings and cutting up the "N" on the Aeromaster "Hurricanes at War Part 1" to create a K, and piecing together letter and number decals to get "NF672", here is Nicki correctly painted and marked.

Full review Thursday at Modeling Madness.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Remember, all versions can be made by what's in the kit.

Very very strong likelihood.