The whole airframe was unmasked and the wing walk sections were masked off and sprayed XF-1 matt Black, and the prominent exhaust stains were airbrushed on using matt black, light grey and tan to replicate the reference photos I’ve got. I actually under-did the effect a bit, as to replicate the filthy state of the SC’s SH would be to invite adverse comment about over-weathering!
Once a couple of little touch ups were attended to, the whole airframe was given a gloss coat of Johnson’s Klear in readiness for decaling. The whole decaling process was completed in two hours, as the Airfix decals went on smoothly and responded well to Micro Set and Sol, although they were a little bit thick…
I missed out a couple of the stencils as reference photos showed that my airframe didn’t have them, and I had to assemble the serial number from a generic sheet. This was perhaps the trickiest bit of the build – getting five 2mm high characters to line up square to each other, equidistant, central to the theatre band and aligned with the airframe datum. Took a bit of fiddling with, I can tell you! Got it close enough in the end though. The aircraft code L was made by carefully slicing bits off the kit supplied E, and everything else went as per the instructions. Which turned out to be a mistake, as the SC Hurricane has its underwing roundels further inboard, and I’d followed the kit decal placement instructions…
It’s one reason why I decided later not to add the underwing whip aerial, as its correct placement would have it coming out of the roundel in an odd way.
Time for a wash
Then it was time for a wash. I used a homemade pastel wash made from powdered chalk pastels, water and washing up liquid, and only let it into the areas with moving or removable parts. I’m not overly keen on accentuating every panel line these days…the whim comes and goes. A little bit of wear to fasteners, removable panels and the walkways, and it was time for an overall satin varnish. I was going to experiment using a more matt varnish on the fabric covered parts to differentiate them, but having looked at lots of reference photos of the real thing, the difference is just not noticeable enough to bother, especially on a warbird.
After the satin coat had dried, I was in the process of unmasking the windscreen and the landing lights, and attaching the elevators and rudder, when disaster struck. I accidentally knocked over the full bottle of liquid cement and watched it flood over the bench, completely submerging the smaller components waiting to be attached. The radiator flap bought it, the starboard exhaust stack welded itself to the bench, the dorsal antenna wilted and the undercarriage doors were liberally splashed…
Expletives. Ooh, such expletives. Good job I live alone, as it was the sort of language that would scare children and animals, tarnish silverware and bruise fruit.
I surveyed the wreckage. Luckily, the main airframe was out of the reach of the solvent tsunami so it escaped unscathed and the delicate undercarriage was intact. Otherwise, the window I opened to disperse the vapours would also have disgorged a half built aeroplane! It was just a case of waiting patiently until the softened plastic parts had dried completely, sanding them back into shape, and then painstakingly repainting them. In the case of the exhausts, for the third time…
Then, time for more scratch-building. I noticed that the SC Hurricane has a mesh screen over the carburettor intake, so I hunted through the spares box until I found something approximately the right shape, and then trimmed a tiny bit of brass mesh to fit inside it as a filter. I also stuck a couple of tiny bits of plastic sheet together to form the rear view mirror for the windscreen, painted it and gave it an even tinier strip of metal foil to simulate the reflective bit.