Kitty Hawk BAe Jaguar GR.3 (WH Build) 1:48 – build review

Feature Article with Wayne Hui
SEPECAT Jaguar GR.3, 54 Sqn RAF

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A note from Geoff C…
All I can say to Wayne is “Respect!”. Many congratulations on making such a good job of this kit that I have to admit, as Wayne points out below, beat me. It’s the first kit to really do that and so I urge you to read on and enjoy the simply stunning modelling skills demonstrated by this great modeller below. We’d love to bring you more of Wayne’s work if at all possible and so keep a look out in the months and years ahead for that.

Here’s a look right up front at what Wayne has achieved with the Kitty Hawk kit…

…simply amazing!
Over to you Wayne for your story…

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Next project on my slab is the Kitty Hawk 1:48 SEPECAT Jaguar GR1./GR.3 kit. This kit, released in 2013, has been blasted by some folks due to its poor quality. It appears to be justified as this kit is definitely not Kitty Hawk’s best effort. Just from the box, there appear to be some deformation issues with the main fuselage parts and fit-up of the wings and fuselage is far less than perfect. Instructions are bad, riddled with wrong part numbers and ambiguous illustrations, but that seems to be normal practice with most kits from PRC. Typically, I found that the plastic Kitty Hawk uses in their kits are too soft and this kit is no exception. I don’t like soft plastic for model kits because landing gears will usually deform over time, especially on the heavier 1:32 models.

I researched ahead of building this kit and I found a very detailed build by Geoff Coughlin on the Scale Modelling Now site which gave me a heads up on the challenges ahead. Poor Geoff walked the miles but he gave up as he got near the finish line. I can see his frustrations with this kit and I sympathize with him. I hate to discard a kit, so I’d give it a go and see how it turns out. This can’t be worse than building a Hobbycraft kit.

For a detailed review of this kit, I refer you to Cybermodeler Online review of the initial release of this Kitty Hawk Jaguar GR.1/GR.3 kit.

I am using an excellent reference book on the Jaguar by Duke Hawkings as my primary reference material during this build. The photos in this book are as good as the Daco books in that they show many open access panels and the images are large and very clear. This book definitely makes me want to open up more panels and do some scratch building. However, the binding of this book is extremely poor quality as almost all of the pages in my book have broken off from the binding and fell out during this project. I saved the book by stapling it together with four heavy-duty staples.

Cockpit…