AWaNGB "Night Reaper" Hurricane Done

Well, we won't be taking the next IPMS Nationals by storm with this one, but it is at least done, which is a major accomplishment for me as a modeler.



The kit itself is the 1/72 Mk I / Mk IIb, although the aircraft modeled is a IIc. I fabricated the cannon out of hypodermic needles and fine solder, but I didn't bother modifying the surface features of the wing other than to pencil in the panel lines for the rectangular loading (?) hatches. Lazy, yes, but there are times I need to decide what my modeling mojo will bear.

I think I did a decent job with basic construction and seams, and did better than my usual putting down the basic paint. A major fault, however, was in using a very wrong gray for the topside camouflage. My attempt to tint it with 'filtering' was not terribly successful. And as I mentioned before, my penciled panel lines are rather heavy and amateurish. Next time I'll use a harder, finer pencil. I think the weathering came out okay for a first try at 'dot filtering', but in future I'd like to aim at something more subtle.



I am pretty happy with the underside black, which I mixed by adding white to black until it started becoming noticeably gray. It seems lighter in the bottle than it does on the plane. I also applied it a bit streakily, which worked well.



Another thing I tried on this that isn't very apparent in the pictures was to use a very flat clear coat on the cloth-covered ailerons and rear fuselage, and a more semi-matte clear on the metal parts. I think that worked well. I also made the external fuel tanks rather more glossy than the rest.

The landing lights are rhinestones covered with cellophane tape. This looks good, but the 'frame' of the tape overlapping the wings doesn't take paint well, even after being coated in Future--I suspect it doesn't hold the Future very well either. I had to re-touch these several times.

As for the scheme, I followed the old Aircraft in Profile 5-view drawing. This includes a white wrap-around belly band the long black lines on the wings, not seen on other renditions. I really like this scheme--sharpest looking thing on a Hurricane, I think. Again, decals were courtesy Vic, to whom again a big thanks! They performed very well, and, unless one presses one's cornea right against the plastic, they look painted on.



So all in all a fun build from which I learned quite a bit and hopefully have developed my basic skills some. Now I just have to wait for it to get dark so I can go ambush some Heinkels.

Stuart