A dark grey late afternoon in early 1941 at RAF Debden in Essex; ground crew prepare Squadron Leader F/C J. Wheeler's black coloured Hurricane for another evening on alert against noctural Luftwaffe intruders.
This project began earlier this year while displaying at the South Cheshire Model Show in February where I made the acquaintance of the good gentlemen of the Night Fighter SIG who had a lovely table display of noctural defenders.
Hoping to join their display at the Hinckley show I set to work on a duo of builds.
The Hurricane is a 2002 moulding from Sweet Models of Japan and comes with an unusual design in that two complete kits come in each boxing - one in typical plastic, the other completely clear - this was a cost saving measure as it meant the transparent canopies and wing lights for both planes could be added onto one sprue and did not have to be provided on a seperately moulded part.
I picked the clear model to build, its a rather strange experience.
A lot easier to see once some primer is down, this was followed by NATO Black from a Tamiya can and a gloss layer as I was concerned silvering would be a high risk on the matt black paint.
The decals are from the excellent Shelf Oddity range. Dedicated to 144th scale, they provide a wealth of unusual schemes for a wide selection of types. There are four schemes possible from this sheet, two UK based and two based in Egypt, hopefully I will get all four done...some day.
The decals are delightfully thin and conform in seconds - some care is needed while handling though. A protective coat of matt was quickly applied, followed by some metallic chipping on the wing roots and heavy exhaust staining, for which I use AK Interactive water colour pencils.
The reference pictures I found show a lot of wear on these types. The 'soot' black paint apparently wore off very rapidly, although from the monochrome pictures it isn't clear if the original temperate scheme is showing through, or just a black undercoat. Having the green and brown show through would certainly have looked dramatic, but I decided not to try and replicate this without more information.
The canopy and aerial mast were added; per the Shelf Oddity instructions, these were left in the original green and brown - this completed the Hurricane airframe.
Attached to a base, specially painted black rather than my usual white and topped with plates from Name It Plates, she duly took her first show trip to Hinckley and with co-build 109E and a Sopwith from my existing collection, brought some 144th to the Night Fighter SIG.
I couldn't leave it at that though and the display returned to my bench later on for the full vignette treatment.
I had a beautiful Albion refueller 3d print from Ray Rimes Models which came with seperate arms. These have lovely printed detail of the fuel hoses, one of which I had to very carefully sand off so I could represent in-use. Unfortunately I was not able to find any suitable decals for the refueller but painted in a typical scheme with some weathering added for a vehicle in heavy use over the hard winter. Not sure what became of the accumulator trolley since it isn't on the final scene, must have moved across to another diorama! The RAF crew figures are from eBay seller 3djson.
This finally completed the scene. Thanks for reading.
