So a Typhoon and a Tempest walk into a pub ...
Eh, that probably was funnier in my own mind than in reality. Oh well. My latest builds are a dual build of Hasegawa's Hawker Typhoon Mk. IB and Eduard's Hawker Tempest Mk. V Series 1 - both in 1/48.
These are a couple of good kits. While I have built several Typhoons (Monogram's old kit), I had never built a Tempest. Hasegawa's Typhoon is a good and easy build, with a quality typical of their late 90s releases. I'm not certain how old Eduard's Tempest kit is, but it is actually the better of these two kits in terms of fit, parts count, and detail. Building both of these simultaneously as I did, I was struck by the similarity of these warbirds. These builds highlighted for me the lessons-learned history between the Typhoon and the Tempest, where Hawker engineers updated the earlier Typhoon to strengthen a notoriously weak tail, and gave the Tempest better aerodynamics with the thinner wings. There were likely other improvements from the Typhoon and the Tempest, but those are the two I am most familiar with.
These are not completely out of the box builds. I added a resin seat with belts to the Typhoon, as well as a .008 guitar wire whip antenna. For the Tempest, I added a Quinta Studios 3D interior detail set to the cockpit. Exterior paints are AK Interactive 3G acrylics from their WWII RAF Day Fighter Scheme set, as well as Tamiya white acrylic and Tamiya flat black lacquer for the invasion stripes. The leading edges of the wings are orange yellow from Mr. Color.
I had but one problem while building these - I was putting squadron decals into place, with decal setting solution, and on the last of these, a Z on the Typhoon, I used a shop rag to dab the extra solution. You might be able to guess that the decal decided it would rather affix itself to that cloth rag than stay on the model. I checked all my left-over decals for a matching Z (had to be in RAF Sky color) but turned up empty handed. Ditto for the decal sheets in the few RAF subjects I have in my stash. I posted here for anyone that might have the decal sheet with no intent to use it, but only keavdog had one; unfortunately, the kit is in storage and he can't get to it until such a time that I will likely have forgotten that I ever had this problem. So I opted to cut a Z out of tape to get that missing Z onto the Typhoon.
All was well until I removed the masking. AK's RAF Sky didn't quite match the color of the decals adjacent to it, and even worse, I didn't get the mask lined up with that adjacent Y. It is clearly mis-aligned. Weathering allowed me to dull the glaringly brighter Sky paint, but I would have had to paint the underlying camo over that Z and completely re-do the marking. I opted to simply leave it as is.
I weathered with Flory dark dirt wash, Tamiya weathering pastels and ground up pastels.
The Typhoon looks like a mean airplane with those big, thick wings, hardened angles, and that huge intake up front. The Tempest looks like a slimmed down little brother. I'm glad I have these in my display cabinet.
Edit - photos show what I just now found while cleaning my workbench for my next build - one of the gear doors on the Tempest broke off. I currently have the Tempest back on the bench with that gear door returned to where it belongs.