For the 2011 Scale Model Word show at Telford, UK, my club, IPMS Ireland, decided to do a themed display of BAe Hawks in various scales. I picked up the 1/72nd scale Italeri Mk. 100 series Hawk.
The Italeri Hawk builds up into a pretty decent representation of a Hawk but it does comes with several problems. A Mk. 100 Hawk should have four wings pylons in total plus a wingtip launch rail on each wing. Italeri only gives you two pylons in total and while they do give you the wingtip launch rails they require you to slice off the wingtips yourself; not a big deal from some modellers but for others it is not a comforting prospect. The AIM-9 Sidewinders that come with the kit are also badly formed; the fins around the head are clearly misshapen and of different sizes. It would be best to replace them if possible.
One of the nicest features of the Italeri Hawk lies with the cockpit; the cockpit features well detailed consoles for the front, the back as well as with the side consoles. The seats are also nice with some seatbelt detail.
The cockpit was painted with Revell Medium Grey and then detail was added to all of the consoles with White, Yellow, Flat Red, Reflective Green and Olive Green; the first two are from Revell and the last three are Vallejo Model Color paints. The seats were painted with the same grey and fabric with Revell NATO Olive. When the cockpit was finally painted I have it a wash with Citadel Badab Black to make it appear more used and busy.
This cockpit shouldn’t be considered a factual representation of a proper BAe Hawk of course. I prefer to paint up cockpits in a more interesting and colourful way although I will try and get the base colour right if I can; I won’t paint a cockpit lime green if it is supposed to be a light grey for example.
For all the good of the cockpit one of the downsides to the Italeri Hawk is the fit of the engine intakes. As you can see from the picture the fit is pretty bad and it required a lot of sanding to force it back in line. What you can’t see from the picture is that the fit of the intake halves required a gap to be filled on the upper and lower surface, not a great fit indeed.
The join of the fuselage halves did not go entirely smoothly either; there were seam lines to sand along the nose and underneath the Hawk as well. The seams underneath can be tricky to deal with because of several aerials bunched together underneath the cockpit and underneath the tail; unfortunately I don’t have any pictures. The Hawk might be light enough to not require any added weight but I wasn’t taking any chances. As the nosecone was too small for fishing weights I added two just behind the cockpit which places the weight over the wings and, as I had hoped, prevents the tail from tipping the aircraft backwards although, as I said, I’m not sure it would’ve tipped anyway.
As I mentioned at the start of this posting Italeri would like you to slice the wingtips off to attach the wingtip launch rails. I was less than enthusiastic about doing so and elected to leave the wings as they were. I’m not entirely sure if that is accurate for a Mk. 100 series Hawk, the rails probably can’t be removed in reality but at this stage of the build I was feeling totally uninspired by the Hawk that I didn’t care.
That’s the problem with committing to ‘single type’ group builds, if you don’t like the aircraft terribly much then you’ll quickly loose steam even if you’re supporting your club by doing the build.
I primed the Hawk in Humbrol Matt White from a rattle can; it’s probably the last time I’ll do so. There’s nothing wrong with the spray as such, it covers quite well actually but I feel paying €6 for a 150ml can is just to expensive and not value for money. I used masking tape around the cockpit to prevent any overspray but as you can see from the picture it produced mixed results.
On the one hand it did prevent the cockpit from turning white but on the other hand some of the spray worked itself under the tape and left some lumpy paint in the area. More than likely that happened as a result of spraying to close to model when I was priming the underside but in my defence the rattle can was on its last legs by then and I was struggling to get anything out of it.
The pitot tube on the front of the Hawk caused me no end of problems mainly due to me accidentally dropping the aircraft about three times in total which snapped the tube at least twice. I never found the missing sections, a quick meal for the carpet monster I guess, and it resulted in my Hawk having a much shorter pitot tube than most. A few of the kits in my small stash have quite prominent pitot tubes jutting out from the nose so I might buy aluminium aftermarket replacements.
The wing strakes on the Mk. 100 series Hawk present a bit of a mystery; apparently the Mk. 100 in RAF and RN service (Mk. 128) only have a single strake per wing as seen above in the picture, the Mk. 100 in international service apparently has four strakes per wing. The instructions for the Italeri Hawk provide for four strakes but the instructions for the Airfix Mk. 100 series, which I also have, only provides for one. I have seen pictures of international Hawks with one strake per wing and others with four strakes per wing so I don’t know which is correct really. As you can see I only put on one strake per wing and left it at that.
Sanding the intakes took quite a bit of work; I’m still trying to refine my sanding skills and not score the plastic to much. It’s probably down the coarseness of the grit used so at the moment I’m experimenting with Emery boards which have a coarse side and a fine side. One thing I have learned in regards to sanding and; indeed, to a build in general is to take things slowly. I rushed this Hawk to get it ready for my clubs display table at our national competition which resulted in some mistakes creeping in.
One of the other little problems with the Italeri Hawk is that there is absolutely no detail in the wheel wells nor are the rear wells boxed in. The fins at the back of the Hawk have no locating pins either, you’re left to a rough guess with placing those.
As I have decals for the Indonesian Air Force (Tentara Nasional Indonesia Angkatan Undara, TNI-AU) I decided to finish the Hawk in a variation of the scheme used by the TNI-AU’s Jupiter Blue Aerobatic Team.
I was only able to find the scheme on a Mk. 53 Hawk so I made my own interpretation for this one. Mk. 53 is the designation given to Hawk T.Mk. 1’s exported to Indonesia and the Mk. 100 exported to Indonesia is known as the Mk. 109.
This Mk. 109 was painted in an overall Revell Light Grey which has a slight blue-ish tint to it. Vallejo Blue Grey Pale followed for the camouflage on the wingtips, front and back, the tail and along the spine; the Jupiter Blue scheme has the camouflage only on the upper surfaces of the Hawk. The nose and the section behind the canopy were painted in Revell Tar Black. Gloss red was used to paint a small light under the Hawk near the tail and a little Vallejo Gunmetal Grey was used to detail the flare dispenser.
I believe the Mk. 100 series Hawk has a light in the front of each wing but no detail was provided for either in the Italeri Hawk so I left them out.
The Indonesian markings came from a decal set called Vivacious Vipers #2 by a company called Zotz, I believe I mentioned them in my posting about the A-37B Dragonfly I built. The markings are for F-16’s but work just as well here. I applied the decals with the help of Vallejo Decal Set and Decal Fix which are two products I can recommend as well as Vallejo Gloss Varnish onto which the decals were placed.
The Zotz decals went on very well although I did notice some discolouring on a few; it wasn’t quite silvering but a slight dirty tinge. It may have been because the decals were intended for a tactical grey F-16 or it might be yellowing; I’m not sure.
The red decals on the tail had to be very gently sliced as I couldn’t get them to bed down into the deep gaps around the rudder but I think they’ve turned out great in the end.
The Hawk specific stencils were provided from an Airfix kit called BAe Systems Hawk which is basically their offering of the Mk. 100. The Airfix stencils are much better than the paltry offerings on the Italeri sheet and really bring the aircraft alive. Despite the bad reputation of Airfix decals these went down perfectly and with little trouble. Airfix are definitely improving in that regard.
As usual the canopy caused a great deal of consternation; when I went to dry fit the canopy to the cockpit I couldn’t find the front windshield. I have no idea where it went despite searching my workspace and surrounding area from top to bottom but as the Airfix kit had already provided so much already I turned to it again; I dry fitted the Airfix windshield to the Italeri canopy and the fit worked surprisingly well with only a little surgery required for the windshield.
I carefully sliced off the front piece of the windshield and then glued it and the canopy to the cockpit using Revell Contacta Clear which dries clear, believe it or not, making it perfect for canopies. There were a few small gaps between the fuselage and the canopy, as well as the fuselage and the windshield, so I diluted down some PVA glue and worked it into the gaps with a brush. The PVA also dries clear but also thick and is handy for working around canopies avoiding the need for putty and sanding. There was also an awkward gap between the windshield and the canopy so I built up the amount of PVA glue in that area to fill the gap. After the PVA had dried I very carefully painted the frames around the canopy and added two decals.
With all of the main painting finished I began working on the undercarriage which was just the usual gloss white. Over the white primer I painted on Vallejo White Grey to build up a solid white and then added two or three coats of Revell Gloss White; the wheels are painted in Revell Tar Black. I’d usually use an ‘off-black’ for tires such as Revell Anthracite Grey but my pot of that particular colour has gone off in a sense.
From the picture above you’ll notice the incredibly shortened pitot tube and you’ll also notice I have the nose-wheel turned slightly which I thought would make for an interesting little feature. As someone pointed out to me; though, at a certain point the wheel turning causes the tail rudder to turn as well; I hadn’t thought of that.
The final stage of the build involved weathering which isn’t something I’ve quite got a handle on yet. I have a small container of a homemade concoction, a mix of black and brown oil pastels, water and a few drops of washing up liquid which supposedly breaks up the surface tension. I’ve since learned that this recipe, which I read online somewhere, calls non-oil pastels but it seems to work anyway although it is very dirty.
So I basically gave the Hawk a dirty wash with the stuff and left it fairly dirty as well. It might not be very realistic for an aircraft serving on an aerobatic team but Indonesia does have a problem with air pollution especially during a certain time of the year. During that part of the year farmers and landowners will clear away the previous years crops by setting fire to them as the resulting ash acts as a soil fertilizer. All of these fires throw up great plumes of thick smoke into the air and in the year 1997 and in 2005 things got so bad that a massive hazy cloud enveloped Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and even affected air quality as far away as South Korea.
Yes, I am using that information as a, possibly poor, defence for a heavy weathering job but whatever, it’s my model, my hobby and I like it. That’s all that really matters in the end, isn’t it?
