1/48
Hasegawa Typhoon |
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Article by Jim Penhale |
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This kit is the
Hasegawa 1/48th scale early "car door" Typhoon. I've always like
the Typhoon, with it's aggressive stance, heavy firepower, and usage by The
Royal Canadian Air Force. As well, there are some great colour schemes for
these planes. This particular model is marked as a 609 RAF Squadron
machine.
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This kit, as
mentioned, is of the early model Typhoon. The later versions of this
airplane had a sliding canopy much like the later Hawker product the Sea Fury.
The kit went together very well, with the slight exception of the fuselage
insert. As Hasegawa wanted to be able to do the later bubble canopy
versions as well, yet minimize their tooling cost, they designed the fuselage
molds with an insert where the cockpit is. Thus, by switching inserts the
car door or bubble canopy versions can be done. This insert wasn't a
perfect fit, but was close enough. I've seen much worse on other kits.
Beyond that, the kit was a dream. The cockpit has great out-of-the-box
detail, and all I added were some seatbelts made from lead foil. As well,
I used Aeromaster decals.
The three tone
camouflage was painted with Aeromaster acrylics. They looked terrible
until I got the gloss coat on, at which point they started to look a bit more
uniform. I was about to throw in the towel on this kit, but
"Uncle" Rick convinced me a good gloss coat would solve my problems.
It turns out he was right! The yellow on the leading edges and white and
black recognition stripes on the wing undersides were painted with Model master
enamels. Decals are provided for the black portion of the stripes but I
chose to just go ahead and paint them on.
I used metalizer sealer for the gloss coat. After decaling, I toned the
sheen down with some Humbrol Matt #49. Then, a light wash using dilute
brown paint in varsol, a little paint chipping using a Berol Prismacolor silver
pencil, and I was done.
All in all, I really
enjoyed this model. It's a great subject, a well done kit with nice
detail, especially in the cockpit. It has options for open and closed
canopies, faired or unfaired cannons (I used unfaired), two different exhaust
styles, and three markings choices. I've got some more Typhoons, which
will be done up as RCAF machines.
Jim Penhale
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