Although not as famous as the Spitfire, the Hurricane played a great role in the beginning of the war. This one was part of 335 Squadron that was formed by RAF in the Middle East, using greek airforce pilots that had fled Greece when it fell to the Axis.
The Airfix kit is remarkably good. It provides a detailed cockpit, wheel bays and the option to display the opened access panels on the wings, showing the machine guns and their ammo boxes. The kit provides decals and instructions to build 2 “normal” Hurricane Mk.Is from the Battle of Britain era. However, it also includes parts for the Sea Hurricane and the “Tropical” version, so as long as I was going to use aftermarket decals anyway, I picked it up. Together with the kit, I picked up two PE sets from Eduard: one for the interior (cockpit, wheel-bays, gun-bays, etc) and one for the seatbelts. Finally, I picked up a set of masks and decals from Montex, for the specific machine I wanted to build.
The construction was straight forward and I mostly just followed the instructions from Airfix and Eduard. Then it was time for the camouflage. The illustrations from Montex were not very accurate, so I googled some photos of paper masks. I printed them, approximately to scale and used them as guides to cut masking tape.
Speaking of Montex, their vinyl masks for the canopy did not work well. They refused to stick to the curved surfaces, so I used them as guides to cut and use masking tape.
I used Mr Hobby acrylic paints. As I already mentioned, the illustrations from Montex were inaccurate. So was their suggestion for the underside color: “sky blue”. After I had finished applying it (including some nice subtle post-shading), I realized that the correct color is in fact “azure blue”. Mr. Hobby does not have this color in their range, so I ordered a bottle of Vallejo Model Air.
After that, it was time for a gloss varnish and the decals. As the roundels for my version were the same as the ones included by Airfix, I used those instead of the Montex masks. In the end, the only things that I used from the Montex set were the serial numbers on the fuselage and the little greek flags under the exhaust.
I finished it up with some weathering with Tamiya Panel liner, some dry brushing and oil paint.
What I did not get absolutely perfect, was the blue-white-blue stripes on the propeller spinner. I could not get the masking tape to follow the curve correctly. I did not glue it, as I plan to come back to it in the future.
The work in progress
The finished model
Products Used
| Kit | Box | Scale | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airfix Hawker Hurricane Mk.I |  | 1/48 | A05127A |
| Eduard Hurricane Mk. I |  | 1/48 | 491104 |
| Eduard Hurricane Mk. I seatbelts STEEL |  | 1/48 | FE1105 |
| Montex Hurricane I Trop Airfix |  | 1/48 | K48362 |
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