Revell 1/32 Scale BAe Hawk Red Arrows
By Garry Pritchett
This model proved to be a challenge. The plastic on a couple of sprues was very brittle and several small pieces were broken into small pieces and non recoverable. Fortunately the pieces were not critical to the build and would not be seen even if installed. Another problem was on one of the upper wing surfaces, the plastic had blistered. It was necessary to peel the thin skinned section of the wing, sand the blister edges to a feathered edge. Other than that the build was straight forward. The pilots are Master Detail USAF figures and were painted with oils and MM enamels. I did use the Eduard pre-painted SA PE for the cockpit IPs and side panels. I used the kit decal representing the overhead explosive wires as a pattern and carefully folded thin wire into the appropriate shape and glued them into the cockpit framework. The model was painted with Guards Red MM enamel. The white decals lacked the necessary opacity and the red showed through. I hand painted the white part of the decals MM with insignia white. A smarter person would have simply ordered a second decal sheet from Revell. I used small hypodermic needles for the tubes extending out of the ventral tank and the three discharge tubes above the exhaust opening.
© Garry Pritchett 2015
This article was published on Sunday, April 19 2015; Last modified on Sunday, April 19 2015