412 "Achtung - Jabo!" - Hawker Typhoon for Flames of War

Hooray!
 
In an unprecedented two (that's right - just two!) painting sessions I'm delighted to note that I've finished up my (1:144 Revell) Hawker Typhoon for my 11AD Flames of War force! And I love Hawker aircraft...
 
Pics first, then bumf:

The Revell kit cost only £1.99 from my lovely local toyshop and was evidently designed for either very young children or people without thumbs. Or children without thumbs. Or maybe it was designed for goldfish. I don't really know, but what I DO know is that my low expectations for the low-budget price tag were decidedly met. To avoid my usual longwindedness, here's the breakdown:
 
Good points:

• Dirt cheap. In fact, I'm thinking of buying a Spitfire kit just for the decals...
• It has the right armament;
• It does at least look like a Tiffie;
• The decals are actually quite high quality, and
• I've recycled them now, but I seem to recall the instructions were passable.

Bad points:

• Rather thin plastic with loads of flash in that actually-quite-awkward-to-get-rid-of-very-well kind of a way: the prop blades in particular were terrible;
• The clear plastic (canopy and base) is quite cheaply engineered;
• It came with NO OPTION FOR A RAISED UNDERCARRIAGE, and the wheel covers were modelled in such a way that you couldn't even re-jig them. I ended up scrapping the undercarriage entirely and using Plasticine (I couldn't find my ancient green-stuff) to fill and re-sculpt the wheels as raised. A pity this, and rather an odd choice when you consider (a) the flight stand, (b) the simplicity of the build and the finished product otherwise and (c) the fact that invasion stripes are hard enough to paint without trying to make a thumb-less goldfish paint them separately onto the lowered wheel covers;
• Lots of the bits are pretty misaligned - even the wingtips are problematic;
• The moving prop was very poorly engineered, and
• The underslung RP racks were very fiddly.

Luckily, I'm not an inexperienced modeller, so I managed to bodge it together in the end. I'm pretty proud of the invasion stripes, to be honest, as well as the alacrity with which I finished it. I sat down last night to base-coat some of Zzzzzz's models (the gun and the centaur - more of which soon-ish) and just thought, 'actually, I feel like painting something fiddly but achievable tonight.' So I did.

Paints are all Citadel (although I base-coated the green camo (as seen in Post 411) with Vallejo Russian Uniform): Astronomican Grey for the canopy and belly, and the camouflage is Catachan Green with Codex Grey. For the first time in a loooooong time I even experimented with watering down my paints to help me paint the straight lines of the invasion stipes!

In the spirit of full disclosure, I ought to point out that I was one of those who built scores of WWII planes through my childhood (all 1:72; mostly Airfix) so it did bring back a wave of pleasant nostalgia, but I only ever painted one. Ever. Out of almost a hundred planes that I had painstakingly built, I only ever painted the Dambusters(Gibson's) Lancaster. This was mostly because I hated painting, but also because I hated Humbrol emulsion paints. Yuck. By the time I built that Lanc I had enough Citadel paints knocking around to make a go of it.

So there we go. Happy Drax!

See you soon,

- D.