IPMS South Africa - Building Pat Pattle's Hurricane

You are here: Home

In Scale

Scale Modelling Articles

Building Pat Pattle's Hurricane

Written by Pablo Calcaterra- IPMS Toronto, Canada

Sunday, 22 August 2004

Page 4 of 6

Nose section:

One thing I found is that the Hasegawa nose is slightly wider than the HC one. After sanding a little bit of the joint area, both halves were glued together with epoxy as this piece was now resin. To strengthen the joint, I used pieces of plastic inside the halves. It took me several sessions of patience, sandpaper and putty to achieve a decent and smooth union of the halves. The panel in contact with the wing had to be sanded as Hasegawa has a different approach to this area.

But the panel under the nose is shorter than needed because HC’s lower wing halve does not protrude as far forward as Hasegawa example. So I could already see that a gap of aprox. 3 mm. was going to appear between the wings and the underside of the nose. After bending and shaping the resin piece a little bit, it was successfully attached to the nose. Again some putting and sanding was required (my resin copies were not as good as they could have been).

Bottom of nose section.

Nose section with original filter.

Tropical filter:	I used the HC one which I attached with epoxy. The joint was treated with putty and sanded smooth where needed. But then I discovered after reading an article that the shape was wrong in profile. This was confirmed after verifying with several pictures and scale plans. As this model was a tribute to Pat, I decided to correct it. The difference is too great (looks like a Spitfire filter) to be over looked. I carefully cut out the intake itself and sanded the new joint areas. When the filter had the correct depth, the intake was glued back in place and putty and sanding achieved the correct profiling work.
Halfway with new tropical filter.
	New tropical filter.

Before painting:

No problem was found with the fit of the tail horizontal surfaces. The photoetched gun bays doors were curved a little bit to follow the wing shape and glued with cyano. Some filling was required where the photoetched parts had a small gap with the wings. The spinner came from the spares box. It was a Airfix MkI De Havilland. Some sanding was required to improve the shape and size. Backplate and spinner itself were glued together. I masked everything with wet tissue paper and the fun begun!