Our local model club topic for this April through June is "Nifty 50's" and my selection was this Korean War Hawker Sea Fury. This was my first non-WWII subject in quite a while.
I read generally good things about the Airfix kit so I grabbed it and added the following upgrades:
- Barracuda nose correction set
- Barracuda engine front and spinner set
- Eduard seat belts
- Fundekals "Sea Furies, Part 2" decals
- Eduard canopy masks
- Brass rod for the guns, pitot and IFF antenna
- 0.3mm wire for the whip antenna.
I really wanted to like the kit and enjoy this build, but the kit had a number of shortcomings that knocked down some of the momentum. In general, the panel lines are excessively deep, some of the rivet detail is overdone, Airfix missed the gunsight, there's a large amount of flash, trailing edges of the wings are thick, and sink marks and molding flaws are common.
There are also some good points: the landing gear bay and landing gear are well executed, the overall shape is good, the wingtip nav lights are clear plastic and the kit offers the optional configurations of wings folded, wings extended or in-flight.
The Barracuda upgrades for the nose and spinner were definitely an improvement over the kit parts, which in my sample were molded poorly and lacked detail. They fit very well and were easily able to replace the kit parts. I scratch built a gunsight from parts from the spares box.
The main surprise for me was related to the wings. I chose the extended option, not thinking that the joints where the wings fold would be a big deal -- but I was wrong. The fit was very poor both in the vertical dimension and horizontally along the fold joint. The joint has a complex panel line geometry with multiple "tabs" and intricate panel line features. The overall fit was not good and required complete filling, sanding and rescribing of the entire arrangement. In addition, the kit wing trailing edges are very thick and required sanding to approximate scale thickness.
Once the wing joints had been cleaned up, it was relatively smooth sailing for the rest of the build. The only other real time suck was cleaning up flash on the 3-inch rockets.
The model was primed with Mr. Primer Surfacer 1000, since I had a big chunk of resin in the front. Mr. Color paints were used for most of the main camo. The underside and fuselage sides were painted in Sky and the upper surfaces were painted Extra Dark Sea Gray (EDSG), each with 10% white for scale effect. I used AK real color zinc chromate yellow for the landing gear areas to simulate "Hawker Yellow".
I tried a slightly different painting sequence than usual. Sky was first on the undersides and fuselage side areas. I then masked the areas where the invasion stripes would be applied and masked the Sky areas. EDSG was applied next to the upper surfaces. I then masked the EDSG areas, removed the masks from the invasion stripe areas and painted these sections white. The white areas were masked and then the black stripes were painted. This sequence had the benefit of thinner paint application in the invasion stripe areas as well as avoiding any see-through issues of painting white over the Sky-EDSG interface on the fuselage invasion stripe area.
After a gloss coat using Mr. Color GX100, I applied the fundekal decals, which went on very well. Another gloss coat followed to prep for a panel line wash.
I used Tamiya enamel panel liner for the pin wash and followed this up with a flat coat of GX114. A Tamiya black-brown thin mix airbrushed over control surface panel lines and engine covers, and exhaust areas was next, followed by some detail painting, general clean up and chips and scratches with colored pencils. Weathering was kept light as many on-line photos of Sea Furies indicate the aircraft were well-maintained and in good condition.
Even with the extra drama of the wing joint work, I'm happy with the outcome. The model looks the part and will be a nice addition to the display case shelf (which is running out of room).
Thanks for looking! Comments and critiques are always welcome.