Author Topic: Belize Defence Force Seahawk  (Read 9691 times)

Offline Weaver

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Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« on: May 11, 2015, 07:50:18 PM »
Okay, late, but I'm in with a simple paint and weapons job. A Hawker Seahawk of the Belize Defence Force:



« Last Edit: May 11, 2015, 08:17:07 PM by Weaver »
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Volkodav

  • Counts rivits with his abacus...
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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2015, 08:28:47 PM »
Looking forward to it, always love your work.  I've got a 1/48 Trumpy kit to do at some point, most likely RAN FAA rather than anything different like yours, I am far too parochial and build far too few kits to do otherwise.

Offline apophenia

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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2015, 08:22:19 AM »
Cool! Are you going to use the BDF emblem as the roundel?
Froglord: "... amphibious doom descends ... approach the alter and swear your allegiance to the swamp."

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2015, 06:20:54 PM »
Cool! Are you going to use the BDF emblem as the roundel?

Yep - same as their Islanders. Actual cammo will be different though.
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2015, 02:13:14 AM »
Looking forward to this...though I must admit that overtime I read the title I seem to misread it as "Belize Defence Force Skyhawk"...maybe a future build ;)
All hail the God of Frustration!!!

You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it.

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2015, 08:19:27 AM »
Looking forward to this...though I must admit that overtime I read the title I seem to misread it as "Belize Defence Force Skyhawk"...maybe a future build ;)

Maybe that's because I actually typed Skyhawk in the first post and then spotted and fixed it about an hour later.... ;D
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Volkodav

  • Counts rivits with his abacus...
  • Much older now...but procrastinating about it
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2015, 10:05:10 AM »
Same, same, but different?

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #7 on: May 18, 2015, 02:47:44 AM »
Not much has happened on this, partly because I've been busy with family stuff and partly because I decided I wanted an aftermarket bang seat for it. As luck would have it, the correct MB Mk.2 seat came up on Hannants right next to a Mk.8 Sea Harrier seat which would be perfect for a late 1970s upgrade, so I got the Mk.8.

Other than that, minor trimming and gluing.
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Claymore

  • It's all done with smoke and mirrors!
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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #8 on: May 18, 2015, 05:19:41 AM »
Looking forward to seeing some pictures of this one.  :)
Pass the razor saw, there is work to be done!

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #9 on: May 22, 2015, 09:10:01 AM »
Well that was a blow: came to use my Montex canopy masks, and the main ones arn't even vaguely the right size: too small by far (canopy sill line too short). I was about to slag Montex off, but then I remembered that the masks are intended for the Special Hobby kit (Montex SM72121) rather than my Hobbyboss one, but I assumed they couldn't be that different, right?

Wrong: I havn't got the Special Hobby model, but I've just offered the masks up to an Airfix Sea Hawk, and they fit perfectly. I suspect that Hobbyboss have made their canopy oversize so that you can fit it in the open position, slid back over the fixed "hump" which would be difficult without making it bigger due to it's unavoidably over-scale thickness.

Just goes to show: if you're going to slag off a company, make sure it's the right one.... ;) ::) :-[

I think I'll use traditional techniques for the Sea Hawk canopy since it isn't very complicated. There's an Eduard set, but it's twice the price of the Montex one and I don't want to get to the point where I've doubled the cost of the kit with aftermarket bits.

Buggeration and sod...... >:(
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Claymore

  • It's all done with smoke and mirrors!
  • Alt Hist AFV guy with a thing for Bradley turrets
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #10 on: May 22, 2015, 04:05:57 PM »
Being primarily an AFV modeller, I really have no idea what your on about and wonder why an aircraft needs to wear a mask in the first place - all very Zorro-like.  Nevertheless, you have my sympathy.  ;)

As for the cost of after market stuff... well past bordering on the rip off department.  :(
« Last Edit: May 22, 2015, 04:09:59 PM by Claymore »
Pass the razor saw, there is work to be done!

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #11 on: June 14, 2015, 09:40:05 AM »
Think I'm dead.   >:(

Had the model FINISHED tonight, and instead of taking a picture of it, I went to put a coat of matt varnish on it to seal in the decals, some of which have proved a bit fragile. Within a minute of being sprayed, the whole thing went white and some of the decals started bubbling. I'll see how it looks in the morning (it's 2:27 am on the 14th here) but I'll be amazed if it's okay.

The coat below the varnish was Humbrol gloss acrylic and the top coat was Humbrol matt acrylic, both out of rattle cans, so they should have been as compatible as any two paints ever.

It was looking really nice too...... :( :( :(
« Last Edit: June 14, 2015, 07:10:25 PM by Weaver »
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Kerick

  • Reportedly finished with a stripper...
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #12 on: June 14, 2015, 11:52:29 AM »
Leave it be for a week or so and see if it changes. Might be humidity. Can you keep it somewhere with AC and dry air?

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #13 on: June 14, 2015, 07:08:40 PM »
Yep, it's dead.... :(

I'll post up the pics I've taken because there are some interesting things about this "modern" kit.


First up, the intake splitters. Good that they're actually there, less good that they're about a scale foot thick at the leading edge. Left hand is how they come, right hand is after a bit of filing:




Next, the trailing edges. The kit moulds the entire wing and fuselage in one piece, in contrast to Airfix's multi-piece jigsaw, but unfortunately it has the whole upper and lower wing in one piece, instead of a recessed lower that would give you a thin, one-piece trailing edge. At best, this was always going to give a thick leading edge, but on this kit, the trailling edges don't even meet! No amount of sanding seemed able to get this out, so in the end, I decided to leave it on the split flaps, and fill it inboard and outboard of that. The pic shows the filled aileron to the left and the original trailing edge on the flaps to the right:




And lastly, the rear fuselage. This is a separate component with a left/right split instead of the top/bottom split of the rest of the fuselage. It's separate in order to allow for the different fin on the German versions, but the position of the split seems to be determined by mould size rather than logic.

Instead of being at the thinnest point, just in front of the fin, they've put the split right across the complicated exhaust "pen nib" area. To make matters worse, they've then made the middle bit of the pen-nib a separate and none-too-well-fitting insert, which means you have THREE joint lines crossing this concave, difficult-to-sand area. You have to install the jet pipes before closing up the fuselage, which make sanding this area even more difficult and complicates paint masking too:




Few more things that I didn't get pics of:

The canopy is oversize in order to let you display it open. Unfortuantely this means that you HAVE to display it open since if you have it closed, it doesn't mate up with the solid hump behind it, leaving a very conspicuous step.

Although the box goes out of it's way to state that the kit makes both the Mk.100 and Mk.101 Marineflieger Sea Hawks, it doesn't include the radar pod for the Mk.101, which makes it a bit of an empty claim.

Real Sea Hawks had five rocket hardpoints under the outer wing which could carry up to three 3" RPs each. The kit has five sets of blank holes on the inside of the wing moulding, but only includes eight single rockets. I suspect that again, this is an issue with mould size. However, if they hadn't pointlessly moulded each rocket in two pieces there'd have been room on the sprue for at least two more, and the "option" sprue with the German rear fuselage and tailplanes was much smaller than the rest; if it had been the same size as the others, it could have included extra rockets and/or the radar pod.


At the end of the day, you can build it into a nice model, but it's not the shake-the-box exercise it looks like on first inspection:





« Last Edit: June 14, 2015, 07:41:24 PM by Weaver »
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #14 on: June 14, 2015, 07:28:16 PM »
And here's what I ended up with.... :(

The top colour is Hu.30 Dark Green out of a rattle can. This is much better (i.e. closer to the RAF colour) than the Hu.30 in tinlets by the way, which is notoriously "bluey". Ironically, I wouldn't have minded the bluey version on this model since that would be quite like the real BDF colour. The underside grey is the car-sop rattle-can colour. I did consider overall green (like most of the real BDF aircraft) but there was a seam to conceal on the front fuselage, so the demarcation line "happened" to go along it.

BDF flags were printed on white decal paper using an image grabbed from the web. Serials and buzz numbers were from a Fantasy Printshop Luftwaffe multi-size lettering sheet (best "generic" lettering I've found) and the stencils were from the kit.




Weapons and pylons came from the spares box. I think the pylons were either Hawk or Harrier ones. The bombs are painted Hu.88 Deck Green (just 'cos I like it). The back story was going to be that this is how the aircraft looked at the 1978 Farnborough Air Show just after being refurbished, so the bombs would be fake anyway.




The grey and the green were acylic so the whole thing got a light coat of Humbrol Acrylic Gloss Varnish before decalling. The self-print decals were also sealed with the same stuff. Surprisingly, a couple of the Fantasy Printshop decals didn't stick well and had to be stuck back down with a dab of varnish. Then the weapons and undercarriage were added, and it got a coat of Humbrol Acrylic Matt Varnish, which seemed to be going on okay, but then sagged unexpectedly on the right wing (the model was suspended nose down for spraying  so I could do all of it in one coat). I took it off the hook in the hope that the sag would self-level out, and that's when the bloom started at several places, spreading within minutes to the whole thing.




Here's the bloom close-up. It's actually cracked, not just misty, which makes me think it's not going away any time soon, certainly not in time for today's deadline:



« Last Edit: June 14, 2015, 10:14:36 PM by Weaver »
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Volkodav

  • Counts rivits with his abacus...
  • Much older now...but procrastinating about it
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #15 on: June 14, 2015, 07:43:52 PM »
What an absolute shame, you can clearly see how good it looked under the clear.  Love the Seahawk and this one was well on the way to looking great, hope you can save it.

Offline LemonJello

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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #16 on: June 14, 2015, 08:56:00 PM »
Ouch. My condolences - you've suffered what I fear the most, a clear coat going "bad" for some reason.  All that work and "bam!" Murphy makes an appearance. 

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #17 on: June 14, 2015, 10:13:22 PM »
Cheers folks. On the upside, I have another one of these kits and I printed a full sheet of the Belize decals, so it should be possible to have another go at some point, and I'd definately do some things differently next time.
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Volkodav

  • Counts rivits with his abacus...
  • Much older now...but procrastinating about it
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #18 on: June 15, 2015, 08:54:42 PM »
Surely you should be able to lightly rub it back or strip the clear coat then repaint and decal?

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #19 on: June 17, 2015, 07:47:06 PM »
Surely you should be able to lightly rub it back or strip the clear coat then repaint and decal?

To do that effectively, I'd have to take all the stores and u/c off, and some of that is superglued, so the chance of breaking it is high. Easier to start again with the other kit to be honest: it's not like I had a specific plan for it anyway, and some of the nice bits (painted seat and canopy) will transfer across.
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline Weaver

  • Skyhawk stealer and violator of Panthers, with designs on a Cougar and a Tiger too
  • Chaos Engineer & Evangelistic Agnostic
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #20 on: June 17, 2015, 08:40:25 PM »
Here's what the cockpit and canopy look like on:







"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

"I've jazzed mine up a bit" - Spike Milligan

"I'm a general specialist," - Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Twitter: @hws5mp
Minds.com: @HaroldWeaverSmith

Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #21 on: June 18, 2015, 02:45:05 AM »
Look good to me
All hail the God of Frustration!!!

You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it.

Offline ChernayaAkula

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Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #22 on: June 18, 2015, 05:20:39 AM »
Just a thought: apply another gloss coat on top of the 'dusty' dull coat? Might even things out again. *shrugs*
Cheers,
Moritz

"The appropriate response to reality is to go insane!"

Offline KiwiZac

  • The Modeller Formerly Known As K5054NZ
Re: Belize Defence Force Seahawk
« Reply #23 on: June 19, 2015, 08:00:29 AM »
If it was me? I'd do something to the canopy to make it look crazed by the sun, sand/file the tyres to look flat, and present it as a gate guardian at a Belize AFB.  :-*
Zac in NZ
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