Chip's Hawker Typhoon ***Finished***

[Molly-new]

I will be building the 1/72 Hawker Typhoon IB by NOVO.

[Martin R]

Cool! OOB or improved?

regards,

Martin

[Motley]

Never seen this kit before, looking forward to seeing it build

Tom

[Molly-new]

Cool! OOB or improved?

Original plan was to go OOB, but having done some research it appears there are a few flaws with the kit. This model is the later model, with the bubble canopy and whip aerial, so should therefore have a four-bladed prop. Having looked at the kit closer, mine is a one-prop version :



To overcome this I will now be building it in flight, which is helped as the undercarriage doors are molded closed:



I have also had to source a pilot and seat to busy up the cockpit a bit, and also use a stand from the spares box.

The instructions are pretty basic:



Discounting the un-required parts, the kit only has 24 parts, so I should storm through this.

[Marek]

one propeller blade, maybe it is a potato masher version? Is that the most ancient frog mold? I did not know they were molded with undercarriage up.

[Molly-new]

Had a good day at the desk today, though all the work is on scratch building items, and hardly working on the actually kit parts.

On dry fitting the fuselage together to checkout how much cockpit detail was needed, I noticed that there was nothing to go into the air-intake, and you could see straight through to the tail. I have therefore built my interpretation of the radiator to improve it.

I started by using a piece of plastic card (actually an old credit card that works wonders for scratchbuilding) and an off cut of plastic mesh from a Sherman:



I then added a piece from the spares box to add interest, and painted them appropriately. Once fitted into the air-intake they seem OK:



The cockpit now has the seat fitted onto a length of sprue, and I added half a barrel to imitate the pneumatic system air-bottle behind the seat. Further bits of sprue have been used to secure the radiator in place:



I have also had time to paint up the pilot figure. Not brilliant (Damn you Macro for showing up my painting flaws) but at this scale and with the canopy in place I reckon it will do:



May even get a bit of the actual kit assembled tonight.

[Marek]

Looks not bad at all. I would not bother in worrying about how it looks on pics at this moment. It will look really smart after you put it together.

[Motley]

Looks good so far love the deatiling on the air intake

Tom

[Martin R]

Chip,

Many bubble-top canopy Typhoons had the 3-bladed prop.

There is also a subtlety in that there were two sizes of horizontal tailplanes for Typhoons; the first, smaller type, is similar to that provided in the kit; the later type was larger and was identical to the Tempest tailplane. The larger tailplane was introduced to deal with issues introduced by the 4-bladed prop, so theoretically if it had the larger tailplane a Tiffy should have had the 4-bladed prop; however, there were a shortage of 4-bladers, so some Tiffies with the large tailplanes had the 3-bladed prop.

So, to cut through the verbiage:

As the kit has the smaller tailplane included, then it would only be correct to have a 3-blader prop, so the kit is internally consistent here. However, whether the kit colour options actually had 3-blade prop and small tailplane, I cannot say. Chris Thomas, on the BM forum, is a font of information here, and could probably tell you, if you're bothered.

1) Does that make sense?

2) Is it useful?

regards,

Martin

[Martin R]

Sorry!

I also meant to say that I like the scratch-building you are doing!

regards,

Martin

[Molly-new]

Hi Martin, thanks for all the info. I had actually made the prop as a 4 blade:



but thankfully also printed off a 3 blade prop so to change it is not going to be a major problem. It also gives me chance to re-paint the spinner as 245 Squadron appear to be blue & white in most reference pictures that I have seen.

[Molly-new]

The fuselage is now together:



The bottom of the Air-intake has needed some filler though:



The detailing should look OK once the new prop is in place:



And the added detail in the cockpit came out OK:



Next step is to put the wings on...

[TimJ]

Great bit of scratch building.

[Molly-new]

As the old girl is going to be in-flight I need to have rear wheel in the withdrawn position. To do this I drilled a few small holes, which I gradually widened:



Then with a variety of files it became a shaped slot:



Into which fits the wheel:



One of the rockets was missing, so I have knocked up a replacement from plastic card.



I won't be making a new rocket as it is easier to just remove the one next to it. Apparently the rockets could be fired in banks of two, or all eight together so it should not look too odd.

I knew I should have stuck to an OOB build.

[lancfan]

Chip, they would have been fired in pairs one from each side to balance the aircraft.

David.