Completed Review - Airfix Hawker Typhoon Ib (A02041)

Scale: 1:72, RRP - £9.99

The last time I'd written about this build was prior to starting the decals. I'd decided to opt for the option depicted on the box art, that of Typhoon MP126, in the markings it carried when flown by Squadron Leader Gerald Stapleton of No.247 Squadron.

In past builds I've found the quality of Airfix's decals to be very good but I had some real problems with those included in this kit. I had several break up on me, including one of the serial numbers, without which I could not complete the build. I don't know if this was a one off, lack of practice on my part or if they were bad decals, although I suspect it was more a case of the first two rather than the latter. Fortunately I had a spare set and they were applied without any further bother, indeed that could said for the rest of the build.

Weathering was once again mostly done by applying Flory Model washes. My previous builds had been very dirty, using the Dark Dirt wash. This time I wanted to refine the weathering. For the undersides I applied a Grey Wash and then for the upper sides I mixed the Grey Wash with Dark Dirt (about a 2:1 ratio) and this gave a more subtle look, which was exactly what I was aiming for.

For the first time I attempted to use oil paints to apply oil streaks but found at this scale I couldn't really get a noticeable, and realistic enough effect. Exhaust marks were airbrushed using Tamiya Smoke, X-19, and dirt was applied to the undersides in small quantities using Flory Models Sand wash.

Again this was another excellent kit from Airfix which I thoroughly enjoyed building. It looks accurate in terms of the detail and shape, and there are two notable decal options. Once I slowed down and started taking some care it went together without any real problems. Although I deviated from the instructions, I don't think that's absolutely necessary, just take care with the flexible lower wing part and you'll be fine.

And that was about it. On a personal note I think this is the best model I've built so far, surpassing my previous build, the Airfix Defiant in the same scale. I think I achieved a more realistic finish, it just took me much longer than I would have liked.

Overall Build Score: 4 out of 5, an excellent release from Airfix with the full options, in-flight or on the ground, open or closed cockpit and pilot figure. Fairly straight forward to build, accurate and with interesting decal options, what more could you ask for?

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12 Day Modelling Challenge: Day #9

Day 9 and a book recommendation! It was time to continue with the Airfix 1:72 Typhoon. The topsides had been washed with Flory Models Dark wash, mixed with the grey wash, a slightly darker mix than I’d used for the undersides. It took a few hours of meticulous cleaning before I got it to a point in which I was happy with it.


The undersides I’m really happy with, I’ve not gone for heavily washed panel lines, rather a slightly weathered and dirty finish that you’d expect a used combat aircraft to have. Topsides, I honestly think there’s little you can do here, mostly just adding a tiny bit of contrast to the grey areas but again, trying to make sure it doesn’t look overdone.

I was about to seal it all in with a flat coat, but then, searching through my bookshelves (in an un-related clear-out) I found I book which I’d forgotten about, Osprey’s Painting and Finishing Techniques by Gary Edmundson. I’ve spent so long looking for articles on the internet that I forgot I have everything I need right here!

After a brief introduction to some fundamentals, the kits used in the book, paints and the tools used, it works through the various stages of painting and finishing. Focusing primarily on 3 model aircraft, (plus a couple vehicles and a small piece on figure painting towards the end) it works all the way through step by step, painting shading, camouflage, weathering, dirt, panel lines and more. Most of paints used are Tamiya, and there’s a preference towards using oil paints for panel lines and weathering, rather than clay washes etc. but it is well explained with plenty of photographs for each stage.

The 3 aircraft are a WWI Albatross, a Bristol Beaufighter and fortunately, a Hawker Typhoon. After reading this it’s finally persuaded me to try using oil paints, so my Typhoon build will be taking a little more time to complete.

For me has been an extremely useful (re)discovery which I’d highly recommend. So much so I’ve included a link below should you wish to purchase it yourself. As I said, I’d forgotten what it was like to have all the information in one place, easily to hand. I think there’s a tendency for us, when using the internet, to pick up little bits here and there a lose sight of the complete process of painting and weathering a model from start to finish. Having said that I think book can allow you to pick and choose what to try so, in my opinion, it is book suited to all skill levels.

In the next few days I’ll pick up some oil paints, and with any hope, I’ll have some good daylight (which I think is essential for this stage of finishing a model) and I’ll show you how I got on.

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12 Day Modelling Challenge: Day #7

Day 7. I was happy enough with how the grey wash, that I tried on day 4, came out and so started washing the undersides of the Typhoon. Even though I'm still waiting for it to dry I can see a huge difference, it works really well on the panel lines, much more subtle than the dark wash that I've used previously.

I also got the Bandai Y-Wing started. Black undercoat to start with followed by several lighter shades of grey before a very light coat of white. And then, a coat of grey wash, which may or may not take it all the way back to being grey again. Guess I'll find out when it dries.

12 Day Modelling Challenge: Days #5 & 6

My Christmas modelling challenge continued on day 5 with the completion of the Airfix Typhoon's decals, no pictures as there's only so many pictures of an unfinished model that a man can take...

After that I started adding the missile racks under the wings which usually the kind of slow and fiddly task WWII modellers get to avoid, but not in this case.

While I was waiting for the glue to set I started test fitting another model, a Bandai 1:144 scale Y-Wing Star Wars fighter, that I'd recently received from Japan. In fact it went together so well that it turned into an accidental part-build!

What a kit! Just four small sprues (plus a sprue containing a stand) but the amount of fine detail packed into such a small scale is incredible

After a few months of modelling malaise I find, suddenly, in such a small kit, my motivation comes surging back. If this kit is anything to go by I can't wait to try out a few more Bandai Star Wars kits. As well as the detail the way the kit is engineered is simple brilliant. For example, the two engines on a Y-Wing, at first glance, look the same. But actually there are slight differences and the kit is engineered so that the internal clips, pegs etc are shaped and positioned in such a way that you can't get them the wrong way round.

I honestly can't see myself bothering with any of the Revell offerings now.

12 Day Modelling Challenge: Days #1 & 2

To get started I decided to tackle some of the growing number of unfinished kits I have lying around. Airfix's 1:72 scale Hawker Typhoon is probably the best painted model I've done so far, yet despite this I hit a brick wall and to date it remains unfinished.

Painting was complete it was now time for decals. I really like models that come with not only markings but stencils and this kit packed in a large number of decals for it's size. This meant it would be very time consuming to apply them all, but worth it in the end.

Unusually for Airfix I had some problems with the decals. One I lost, probably stuck to a finger while handling, which is entirely my fault. However I had two decals break up on me. Fortunately I have a spare decal sheet so I'll have to get replacements from there. Otherwise that would have written off the model as one of these decals was not something that could easily be replaced, a unique ID number for the aircraft I'm building.

So after two afternoons work I'm about 80% of the way through the decals, just the replacement decals and the undersides to do.

Build Review - Airfix Hawker Typhoon Ib (A02041) – Part 2

For me one of the main objectives of this build was learning to paint late WWII RAF colours correctly. My initial attempt on an Airfix Spitfire had not gone according to plan. Having finally built a Typhoon to my satisfaction I was determined that this time I would get the painting right.

I started by undercoating in a light Tamiya Grey and by pre-shading the panel lines with a flat black. I'm still not 100% convinced that this is worth doing.

Pre-shading

While it seemed to have some effect on the lower, and lighter, surfaces of this particular model it didn't really seem to make much difference on the upper, camouflaged, surfaces. Also I felt that with effect could also be achieved by post-shading and by washes later in the build.

On to painting proper and the undersides. The actual colour for the undersides of RAF aircraft is called Medium Sea Grey. To achieve this I used the following:

1. A base coat of Vallejo MA (Model Air) Barley Grey (71.051). I tried to make sure some of the black panel lines showed through.
2. Vallejo MA Pale Blue Grey (71.046) to the centre of each panel.
3. A thin coat, sprayed at lower pressure, of Vallejo MA Medium Sea Grey (71.049) to selected panel lines to add a slight bit of variation.

RAF Medium Sea Grey & Invasion Stripes

Another objective of this build had been the airbrushing of D-Day invasion stripes. Although this kit came with decals many don't so I thought this would be a good time to practice. The colours used were:

1. An mix of Vallejo MA White and Aged White (71.001 & 71.132). How much depends on how yellow you want it to look. This was applied over the whole area and then masked off in order for the black to be sprayed. It really pays to make sure the masking is tight here, especially in the numerous panel lines.
2. The black was Tamiya Nato Black (XF-69). I prefer using this shade of black at this scale as it's a muted black compared to the XF-1 Black which looks too bright to me.

And with that the lower surfaces were done. I hadn't done the rear invasion stripes yet, as they overlapped onto the upper camouflaged areas.

For the upper surfaces the RAF colours are Ocean Grey and Dark Green. I decided this time to use Tamiya's RAF colours as my starting point (XF81, 82 & 83). If you look the instructions for older Tamiya kits you will see they were all mixes. These are more recent paints which Tamiya brought out to be used with their 1:32 scale Spitfire kits

Starting with the Ocean Grey, this was applied all over and highlighted in the areas that wouldn't be covered with the Dark Green.

1. Tamiya Ocean Grey 2 (XF-82) was mixed with slight amount of Medium Sea Grey (XF-83). The main reason for adding the Meduim Sea Grey was that I felt the base surface with black pre-shade was a bit too dark. Without the pre-shade I would have probably used The Ocean Grey on it's own.
2. I then highlighted panel lines etc with Vallejo MA Barley Grey (71.051). Unfortunately the picture below was taken in bad light and doesn't really show this well.

RAF Ocean Grey

For the Dark Green:

1. I put down a coat of Tamiya Field Grey (XF-65) with a small amount of Dark Green 2 (XF-81). The reason for this was it muted the blue tones from the grey which I was spraying on top of. In previous attempts the green seemed a bit off if I just used XF-81 over the Ocean Grey.
2. I then highlighted the green by using Dark Green (XF-81) on it's own. Of course if you choose to spray each colour over the undercoat, rather than spray an all over Ocean Grey coat, you could probably use this colour on it's own.

RAF Dark Green & Invasion Stripes

The Sky coloured band was then added to the rear fuselage, this was simply Tamiya Sky (XF-21). The invasion stripes were painted the same as before. The one thing I will say is that I found the invasion stripes to the rear fuselage incredibly difficult to do. Getting them straight took numerous attempts due to the curvature of the surface I was applying them to and it used far too much masking tape. It was not helped by the fact that the whole model was masked at this point and fairly hard to judge their position when I had very little of the model exposed.

In the end I had to remove the excess paint with a wooden toothpick in order to get them straight. With hindsight I think would be better to do this first and then mask off the whole invasion band area and spray the camouflage around it.

Despite this last bit killing my enthusiasm for some time I have to say I'm satisfied with the result. I achieved the two things I wanted to, spraying accurate RAF colours and spraying the invasion stripes.

Now onto the decals.

Build Review - Airfix Hawker Typhoon Ib (A02041) – Part 1

As I'd mentioned at the end of a previous post I'd had a few issues when building Airfix's 1:72 Hawker Typhoon.

Source: (Lower Image) Hyperscale

The issues centered around the base of the wings, the flexible nature of this piece had meant that when it came to fitting the wheel covers, to depict the aircraft in flight, they wouldn't fit without considerable trimming and so looked quite untidy.

Out of curiosity I decided to open up another kit and see if they would actually fit prior to assembly and, as shown in the picture below, they clearly did.

This got me thinking, maybe there was a another way to build this kit, starting with the lower wings so I didn't make the same mistake again. And while I was at it, I'd photograph each step and share.

The Build

The first step was to attach the cockpit floor and the wheel wells to lower section of the wings. The wheel covers were then inserted from the other side. As I'd already established, the fit was perfect.

I then attached one side of the fuselage to lower wing piece and fixed the air intake into the correct position. From here on in I continuously test fitted the other side of the fuselage and the top side of a wing. In order to make sure the fuselage fitted there was a slight bit of filing required at the rear of the air intake and each time it snapped into place which meant care had to be take when removing it.

Next I assembled the cockpit on the half of the fuselage that wasn't attached to the wings. I remove the locating pins that would fix into other side as they weren't really need. This was because I continued test fitting to make sure everything was in place and that it hadn't moved from the correct position. Once the glue had set the cockpit was painted. If you're adding the pilot, as I was, then you will see next to nothing, especially given that Typhoon cockpits were painted black inside.


Once the pilot had been put in place, (I filled away his back and cut off his feet to make him fit cleaner), it was time to glue the second side into place. Just make sure the tail wheel and the clear light to the base of the aircraft have been put in place.

After allowing time for the glue to set I moved onto the wings. The gun bays were put in place, but as I was doing an in flight model these would be covered up by the top halves of the wings. I also made sure I drilled out the holes for the rockets launchers as there's no indication of their position of the exterior side of the wing.

And there we have it, both the top halves of the wings attached without any issues. I then added the flap to the base of the air intake just to finish things off. The instructions tell you to do this when joining the two halves of the fuselage but on both builds I found it to be far too awkward. It's much easier just to remove one the pins and slot it in later.

A minor bit of filling was required, the join at the base of the air intake is not the best. But after that it was all ready for some paint to be applied and that will be my next build post.

Too Many Shades Of Grey (And Green) - Late War RAF Camouflage

It now been a considerable time since I actually completed a model aircraft, 5 months in fact. One satisfying part of that particular build was that I finally managed to replicate the early WWII RAF camouflage scheme of dark earth and dark green.

So that just left the late war scheme, which replaced the dark earth, (brown), with ocean grey as the air battle moved out over the English Channel and beyond. Should be pretty straight forward you'd have thought, so with that in mind I decided to give it a try.

I decided I would try two kits at the same time, both built straight out of the box as the main objective was the colour scheme. The kits, Airfix's 1:72 Hawker Typhoon IIb (A02041) and the Sptifire MK.IXc (A02065A). I'd picked them both up at the Home Bargain Store in the UK which had been selling off Airfix kits for less than half price at £2.99 each.

As well as the RAF camouflage I also wanted to compare pre-shading and not, and I wanted to try airbrushing invasion stripes rather than using decals.

Before I could start on the exterior there was the small matter of the interiors, and there was quite a difference between the two. The Spitfire was absolutely basic, which was surprising for a kit released in 2009 and for a kit which actually had some nice exterior details and fine panel lines which couldn't be said for all Airfix kits at that time.

The Typhoon on the other hand seemed almost over engineered. The cockpit floor also consisted of the wheel wells. The instrument panel, rear panel, seat and air intake all had to be fitted between the two halves of the fuselage meaning it took several goes of adding a piece, letting it dry, adding another and so on. It certainly looks good, but it seemed like it required a little more effort that was perhaps necessary.

After that it was a case of assembling the wings. The lower part of the wings left awful joints at the sides of the air intake and a huge step at the rear which would require considerable filling.

So while all that filling and sanding was going on I decided to get on with painting the Spitfire (the Spitfire went together easily).

I started by pre-shading with Vallejo Model Air Black, 71.057 and then painted the undersides with Barley White 71.051 which was highlighted with thinned coat of Pale Blue Grey 71.046.

Moving onto the upper sides I couldn't really find a suitable shade for Ocean Grey so I mixed Tamiya XF-18, XF-21, XF-24 to a ratio of 1:2:2 and sprayed the whole topside. I then started on the green by using Vallejo Model Air 71.016 over sprayed with 71.017 as I'd used for my early war scheme. My reasoning was that RAF aircraft used the same green throughout the war so I could just re-use the previous colours.

But this didn't look right. Was it because I was spraying green over a grey base coat, rather than dark earth? Quite probably, so I tried to correct it and things then went from bad to worse. Then I realised actually my Ocean grey was too dark anyway. Time to get the paint stripper out.

How not to do RAF Camouflage

So once again, I'd failed with Vallejo Model Air colours and to be honest, I'm getting a bit tired of this. OK, so my Tamiya mix hadn't worked out either, I can probably correct that though. However I then realised Tamiya had extended their paint range and introduced three RAF late war colours, XF-81, 82, 83 so tomorrow I'm going to pick them up.

Still, at least I had the Typhoon to fall back on. Except there was a problem. It turns out that the lower wing piece I'd mentioned was quite flexible and so the wheel covers wouldn't fit without considerable trimming and I was planning on depicting the aircraft in flight.

Good thing I bought two Typhoons...

Vintage Kit Build #2 - A Back to Basics Bank Holiday Build

As the somewhat long winded title suggests, the recent bank holiday weekend has have given me time to build something new, or more accurately, something old.

A while ago I was given a box full of old model kits. Most of them could be classed as "vintage." Many had missing parts, almost all had no decals and so I'd put them to one side and had not really thought about building them.

So this weekend I decided to pick one out. Airfix's 1:72 scale Hawker Hurricane Mk I/IIB, a series 2 kit (02042), The plastic dates from 1979 and this particular boxing, I believe, is from 1990. Although the box was slightly crushed, everything appeared to be there, apart from the decals which were beyond use. This wouldn't be a problem as I had a suitable decal set, for a Mk I, to replace them with.

As for the approach to this build, I decided to keep it simple, closer to how I'd have built a model during a childhood bank holiday weekend.

The kit itself is typical of the time, raised details, next to no interior. With this in mind I decided to build it in flight, with the pilot seated, to fill the otherwise empty cockpit.

Of course less detail, less parts, less to worry about when putting it all together. The only real issue was the propeller, it was a simple piece of plastic fitted between the two halves and was a bit wobbly when moved. Certainly no Tamiya poly cap here, but it's all part of the charm.

Once assembled I moved onto the painting. I was going for an early war green and brown (rather than the late war grey on the box art). I this is where I had a bit of an ulterior motive for this build, I want to try two things. First, to try spraying a two colour camouflage scheme for the first time. Second, to see how accurate the colours were in Vallejo's Model Air RAF day fighter paint set.

Starting with the undersides I used Vallejo Grey (71.103 - RLM 84). I then moved onto the topside, spraying the whole area with the Dark Earth (71.029). Overall I was pleased, these two colours looked fairly accurate and of course sprayed easily. A quick matt varnish coat was added, again Vallejo  and then I masked the model with Blu-tack and masking tape ready for the topside green.

Here things went a little awry. I used, after following the colour sheet advice, US Dark Green (71.016 - RLM 73, no really...!) and I was thinking, it looked a little brownish. Against better judgement I removed all the masking to find next to no difference between the green and brown.

(I apologise  for the lack of photos at this point, it's a bit wordy for a while but stay with me)

Of course at this point I re-masked and resprayed.... OK, so no, I didn't. In the spirit of the old-school childhood build approach I was going for I found a better green and brush painted over the green that was closer to brown. And I actually ended up with a much better match, result! Which green I hear you ask? Russian Green (71.017), although I should add that the colour I got obviously was achieved over painting US Dark green base so I'm not sure how accurate it'll be straight out.

Surprisingly with a flat brush, the finish on an older kit with raised details is non too shabby if I do say so myself.

That just left the decals. As mentioned I had a set of spares. They came from Plastic Planet Club's Allied Fighters in the Battle for Greece set which cost me about £4 (discounted, they should be about £7) and contains decals for a single version of four different RAF aircraft (a Hurricane, Gladiator, Blenheim and Beaufighter)

An OK little set for the price I paid, full price, I'm not so sure. The decals had a habit of curling up and needed a fair bit of persuading before they'd settle down.

Anyway, after that rather lengthy post, here's the final pictures.

A rather tidy build all things considered, and you know what? I had fun doing it, which is how it should be!