Well…..I ‘was’ hoping to have this built and ready for painting tonight but after trying to fit the rear instrument panel cover, it became very apparent that something was wrong as the cover sat far too high. The actual problem was with the idiot building the model as somehow I had the front and rear instrument panels mixed up;
This meant VERY carefully removing both etched instrument panels and the rear kit supplied one, the kit supplied instrument panel wrongly glued in the front was left in place. On the plus side I took the opportunity to glue some plastic sheet to the rear instrument panel cover as it is about 1.5mm too short so this will be sanded to shape tomorrow and painted before gluing it into place. I also made a new rear panel using one from another Airfix Hawk as a template.
On the upper fuselage there are two rectangular vents that are very poorly defined on the kit but luckily Kuvalainen supply etched ones. The areas where they go were carefully scraped out with a modelling chisel and when done, the etched parts were glued into place;
The flaps were finished off tonight as well and although they are not quite like the real aircraft they are near-as-dammit for me;
Another detail added was the rear navigation light as these are quite prominent on the actual aircraft;
This was made from 0.88mm diameter rod that was drilled out at one end then a ‘ball’ glued into the drilled end. This ‘ball’ was actually from a water filter cartridge that I broke open a couple of years ago as the cartridges are full of them in various sizes and these are ideal for jobs like this, the end of gear sticks in 1/35 trucks and jeeps or the width indicators found on German WW2 vehicles.
Anyway I’m hoping to get the build completed tomorrow as apart from sorting the undercarriage and canopy it is more or less done so I can then start painting it.
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