MPM 1/72 Hawker Sea Hawk FGA.4/6

MPM 1:72 HAWKER SEA HAWK FGA.4/6

Reviewer: Simon Skinner (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 9 March 2003

Kit Details:

MPM Hawker Sea Hawk - 1/72 - #72094

Aircraft History:

The Hawker Sea Hawk was brought into the RN (Royal Navy) to replace the rather disappointing Supermarine Attacker, and became the first real RN high performance jet fighter. Developed from the P.1040 and first flying in late 1947 the type showed some promising qualities, with the first production F.1 model flying in 1951. In 1956 the Sea Hawk saw combat service in the Suez Canal crisis where it was used as an interceptor, bomber and attack aircraft and served four aircraft carriers. It remained in active service until 1959 before being replaced by the Sea Vixen.

The Kit:

Since I have previously written an INBOX Review of this kit for SMAKR, I will make this brief as you are welcome to read my comments further there. There are 35 light grey limited run parts in the kit on two sprues with one clear canopy part on another. Panel lines are finely recessed and there is a minimal amount of flash found on the sprues. A few ejector pin marks will need removal when undertaking the project. The bottom of the box also contains five detail photographs.

Instructions:

Booklet style in A5 size, with a brief history and technical data in four languages, sprue diagram, six stage exploded assembly views and four-view diagrams showing painting and decal information. Humbrol and FS numbers and names are provided for the external scheme but highly disappointingly, there is no painting information supplied throughout construction.

Construction:

The cockpit is made up of a floor (with molded pedals), seat, control column, rear bulkhead, side panels and main instrument panel, all of which are in plastic as there are no resin or etched parts in this kit. These are assembled mainly into the lower forward fuselage half (with molded lower wings) although the instrument panel and rear bulkhead go into the upper half. At least 3gm of nose weight needs to be deposited in the nose to prevent tail sitting.

Before placing the fuselage halves together, some blanking off plates for the engine and exhaust areas with a central platform acting as a spar is trapped inside, a engine mount is affixed underneath the platform. The upper forward fuselage fits quite well but a good amount of cleaning up around the join lines is needed. The gun troughs were opened up slightly as they are only engraved lines on the kit.

While this was drying the rear fuselage incorporating the fin and adding on the arrestor hook and tail planes can be assembled. Again the join lines needed cleaning up. The fit of the rear fuselage section to the forward fuselage needed a few dry guns but ended up fitting well, however, the join lines are prominent where the two meet and need to be attended to.

The basic airframe was now complete. The undercarriage can be added, the doors are molded in one-piece and need to be carefully cut at the appropriate sections to display the model with its wheels down. Here you can see the engine part underneath the spar acts as the inside wall of the wheel bays with the bulkheads doubling up to box them in, resulting in, my opinion, are rather realistic interior portrayal. The nose wheel bay is the otherside of the cockpit floor. The undercarriage struts need a bit of cleaning up and present themselves as being sturdy, although fiddly to insert. The prominent landing light on the nosewheel door is not depicted and there is no port wing pitot probe provided either.

The canopy is crystal clear and fits well providing a nice view of the cockpit making it worth while to spend some effort in there. A small air scoop is added just above the starboard intake and the MPM instructions give three different views of adding this part to help ensure precise placement.

Colour Schemes:

There are three examples to choose from, two Royal Navy FGA Mk.4's in upper extra dark sea grey over sky scheme. One is from 810 NAS, HMS Albion, from 'Operation Musketeer' in the Suez crisis, 1956 and the other is from 806 Sqn on HMS Centaur. The third aircraft is an Indian navy FGA Mk.6 in upper extra dark sea grey over white undersides from 300 Sqn INS Vikrant.

Decals:

I said in the INBOX review they were produced by MPM/Propagteam, but they are actually printed by Cartograf and are thus in absolutely perfect colour register, with a small amount of stencilling. This is the type of kit you want to buy two of, just so you can use both the lovely RN and Inidian roundels! The decals need only a short amount of soaking time and conform to the model surface very well. The only drawback is they didn't like any rough handling at all, and had a tendency to curl up.

Addendum supplied by Trevor Boxall - Mark, your readers should note on the MPM Sea Hawk FGA.4/6 kit that the decals printed for the India roundels are wrong, and will need to be replaced from spares or aftermarket set. Cartograf have printed the decals as Green/white/Orange (ie: green on the outside as Blue is for the UK roundel), when in fact India roundels are Orange/White/Green (ie: Orange on the outside). This is a pretty blatent and unforgiveable error by the companies concerned. I am not aware if these decals have been replaced in later releases of this kit (I also have this kit and checked my box and found the error as noted by Trevor, when I got the kit I remembered thinking these decals seemed odd - Ed).

Accuracy:

Both the instructions and my world encyclopedia of aircraft book agree that the wingspan is 11.89 m and length 12.09 m for the FGA Mk.6 (which has no external difference to the Mk.4). Converting the dimensions of the model to full scale it would come in at about 11.8 m and 12.0 m respectively, which is highly acceptable or around the 10 cm difference in real life. The model captures the look of the Sea Hawk very well so in all other respects I didn't have too many qualms with it.

Overall Recommendation:

A straight forward limited run style of project for those who have a few of these kits under their belt. Other than the tailplanes, there are basically no alignment pins or tabs so everything must be butt joined together. It looks the part, and I would highly recommend to all but those not confident with limited run style of kits. It is certainly a massive leap over the old Frog and Airfix and their reboxings by other manufacturers.

Related Reviews:-

MPM 1/72 Hawker Sea Hawk Mk.100

Related INBOX Reviews:-

MPM 1/72 Hawker Sea Hawk

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