Italeri 1/72 BAe Hawk T.1A/51/66

ITALERI 1:72 BAE HAWK T MK.1/51/66

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: May 2008

Kit Details:

Italeri No.186 - BAe Hawk T Mk.1/51/66

Aircraft History:

Pinched from Michael Johnson's review of the same kit:-

The British Aerospace Hawk has been in RAF service for more than 20 years. During its first 10 years, the Hawk has been used as the RAF’s advanced trainer, taught pilots tactics and weapons skills, became a fighter and thrilled millions as the mount of the Red Arrows aerobatic team.

Today the Hawk is still in production at Warton – but as a very different aircraft to that conceived over a quarter of a century ago. The sound performance, structural integrity and handling characteristics of today’s Hawk have their roots in a RAF requirement of the late 1960’s.

By the late 1960’s, the RAF’s basic trainer, the Folland Gnat and the advanced trainer, the Hawker Hunter needed to be replaced. In 1970 a new Air Staff Requirement (ASR) 397 was issued, outlining the requirements for a new trainer.

At the onset, it was realised that the new trainer needed to be exportable, which required it to be ground attack capable. The contenders were the Franco German Alpha Jet, the Hawker Siddeley

HS 1182 and the BAC P.59. By March 1972, the contract for 176 aircraft for the RAF was awarded to the HS 1182, the name Hawk was chosen in August 1973. By the early 1980’s the Hawk was the principal trainer of the RAF and the mount of choice for the world renowned Red Arrows.

The Hawk was designed from the onset to have 5 hard points, allowing a flexible weapons load to be carried. Weapons training and airfield defence roles began in 1977 and 1983 respectively with Hawks carrying 30mm centreline Aden guns, rocket pods and bombs for ground attack training. In early 1983 89 Hawks were converted to be adaptable with the AIM-9L Sidewinder AA missile. After this conversion, aircraft were designated Hawk T.1A.

The Hawks first export success was in 1977, when Finland purchased 50 Mk.51 export versions from Hawker Siddeley (later Bae) Export success grew, with Air Forces around the world purchasing the Mk50/60 series.

The Hawk100 and single seat 200 series aircraft are now in production, with the US Navy now flying a highly modified carrier capable variant, the T-45 Goshawk. Australia and Canada have also recently commenced using Mk100 Hawks for trainer operations.

The success of the Hawk continues unabated, with many more countries expressing interest in a versatile aircraft seen as the optimum solution to meet a number of firm requirements.

The Kit:

Packaged in the familiar end opening style of Italeri's there are two light grey plastic sprues and one clear sprue, none of which are bagged. The main canopy section was floating loose in the box and was thus scratched. The parts are of very good quality, being flash free, relatively crisp and the panel lines are nicely detailed and engraved. There are a few ejector pin marks to be wary of, particularly around the undercarriage, but overall they are not in areas to cause any real concern. The kit looks all the bit a weekend project - although you soon realise it is not.

Instructions:

The fold out 8 page sheet has pages about the size of A5, but a bit narrower. In spite of what it says on the boxtop, the instructions indicate the Hawk is a 60/80 Mk 1. Not being overly a bit enthusiast nor expert on this aircraft I am not sure what the subtle differences are. A sprue layout follows the front page and small (that is, like font size 3!) multilingual information about building the kit. As usual, a letter is assigned a paint colour, with generic name quoted from ModelMaster range, and some FS numbers also. I think this is a great part of Italeri's kit, but it's just a pity you have to research their research on the colours used - if you get my drift! Detailed exploded assembly views follow and are very easy to follow, they total 7 in number. There are perhaps a couple of small areas one needs to test fit first when interpreting exact placement from the instructions. Four view diagrams of painting and decal guide for three versions (Swiss, Finnish and UK) conclude the instruction sheet, the former two of these are also repeated in full colour on the bottom of the box.

Construction:

This starts in a nicely detailed cockpit where the kit supplies a tub that already contains rudder pedal triangles and side consoles with finely raised detail. Two well detailed seats, including harnesses, are affixed into the tub, along with a pair of nice control columns and a pair of instrument panels, both of which also have raised console detail. As no decal is supplied for the panel, you will have to do what I did and that was to pick out the detail by drybrushing. Unfortunately the console is very generic.

The rear bulkhead caused a little bit of consternation, because it is extremely easy to NOT affix in the precise position. The rear seat leans against the bulkhead (I removed the tiny bit of flash I initially thought was a locating pin behind the headrest) which itself must be at the correct angle to sit correctly in the fuselage half. After a quick test fit this was easily sorted out and everything was installed nicely. Just remember that the canopy has to fit over this later which should aid in how you install the cockpit. The rear tailpipe is placed inside the fuselage half, and again it pays just to test fit and make sure it is sitting correctly, otherwise it may be off-centre. The fuselage halves closed perfectly and only a quick run over with the hobby knife on the seams was all that was needed afterward.

The wings are broken down into a lower wing piece onto which two upper halves are affixed, overlapping because they contain the flaps. The main wheel wells are disappointing, they are not boxed in nor is there any detail provided. The tailplanes fit without any problems whatsoever although you need to check the dihedral as the kit will allow you to have too steep an angle.

There is a panel to place behind the cockpit on the upper fuselage which also fits nicely and the intakes are added in, although there is a small step where they meet the bottom of the fuselage which required sanding, filling etc. There is a hole just forward of the tail fin which looks like something is meant to go into it, but in fact it is trying to replicate the starter exhaust. This is poorly done because there is no real detail to make you think it is an exhaust. I simply painted it black and hoped for the best.

For wheels up modellers like myself the gear doors fit nicely while test fitting revealed no major problems with the undercarriage deployed. You will need to cut the doors as marked in the instructions to display open wheel wells and have undercarriage deployed. Curiously, there are holes in the wheel doors so these have to be filled in for those like me who have wheels up models. The canopy fits very well but the screen between the two crew stations needed a lot of test fitting and trimming before it would fit. Unfortunately the main canopy is molded in a single piece, meaning no option to have the cockpit open without performing some surgery.

With the main airframe completed it was time to move onto the smaller components of the kit, including underwing stores. Only a pair of sidewinders or a pair of drop tanks are provided for underwing stores, and I chose the Sidewinders. A large gun pod can be affixed under the fuselage and it was far too tempting so I whacked this underneath. It fits very nicely in many respects, except that it doesn't quite follow the contour of the fuselage so a very small amount of filling is needed.

In many respects it is great to see the extra detail Italeri have provided in this kit by ensuring small leading edge flaps, wing fairings, blade antennae and underwing strakes are all provided separately. This improves the accuracy of the version you are building. However, on the other side of the coin it makes for some very fiddly and patient assembly. All the small parts that have locating pins, fit well but usually need some coercion to dry at the correct angle. All the small parts that do not have locating pins, including the nose probe, will also attach well but are a little more complicated due to the fact that the instructions are not quite precise in where the part goes, and there are no marks on the model to help pick its exact position, so a few photos didn't go astray. Not all blade antennae are affixed, it will depend on which version you are doing and Italeri generally give you the right information accordingly.

Colour Schemes:

There are three colour schemes to choose from in the kit with four-view marking diagrams in the instructions, and all of which feature somewhere on the box in colour. They are:

RAF Hawk T.1A, Brawdy 1988, No.234 Sqn -1TWU in an upper dark gull grey low-viz scheme over light ghost grey undersides. This aircraft is featured on the boxart.
Swiss Hawk Mk.66, 1st aircraft delivered to the Swiss Air Force, Emmem 1990 in a predominantly red and white scheme, and light ghost grey inner wing sections. A colour view of this aircraft appears above on the bottom of the box.
Finnish Hawk Mk.51, HavLv 21, Finland, presumably also around 1990 in upper two-tone dark green camouflage scheme over light ghost grey undersides. A colour view of this aircraft appears above on the bottom of the box.

After much initial debating I chose the boring RAF T.1A example to Finnish off so I can Swiss it through the air! The instructions indicate FS 36231 which translates into Humbrol 140 - camouflage grey over FS 36375 Humbrol 127 - US Ghost Grey. I think this is wrong, particularly anything RAF that is covered by a paint scheme preceded by "US". Of course the T.1A was also used by the Red Arrows so with appropriate markings and aftermarket sources this kit could be used to do same. Interestingly I have seen a photo of a Red Arrows hawk carrying a pair of underwing sidewinder missiles and the Aden cannon pod under the wing. Both pod and pylons are finished in the same Ghost Grey colour as the low-viz markings which looks a little weird against the red.

After scouring through references and reading a few other items I chose not to do it in this colour, and instead painted the upper fuselage in RAF Barley Grey and Light Aircraft Grey undersides - both from the Humbrol range (167 & 166 respectively). It just looks a helluva lot more convincing to me (which is what counts!) but probably a touch too dark in hindsight. The definitive scheme according to several reference sources (including aftermarket Hawk Decal sheets) suggests that the aircraft should be British standard 627 undersides and 637 uppersides which when translated are Humbrols 166 Light aircraft grey and 165 Medium Sea Grey respectively. So, I will leave you to make your own judgement.

On the same subject, if you decide to do the Finnish scheme, the best thing to do is look for references on the Internet of its two-tone green camouflage as I understand this scheme is also not quite 100% accurate. It pays to research if you are a stickler for painting accuracy!

Decals:

This is where I realised I made the mistake of choosing the RAF version. The decal sheet is produced by Zanchetti and is in the main in good colour register with a matt finish. There are stencils included - not an absolute plethora of them but enough to keep most modellers happy. The sheet is as usual clearly split up into sections for the different air forces plus a section common to all. The decals were very thin and I soon found that the colour register for the RAF roundels is just not quite spot on - very close, but a bit too pastel for my liking when compared to references (although could also be due to the fact I chose a slightly different shade of grey to what Italeri suggest). The decals were very stubborn when they landed on the surface of the model, grabbing hold of wherever they landed, so needed copious amounts of water to get them to move. One decal tore but I was able to replace from the spares. With a bit of care though, the decals conformed very well and were sealed in with a gloss cote with the painted on effect, before the whole model was given a satin finish. I've had better Zanchetti decals than this before.

Accuracy:

As already mentioned the painting information is poor from Italeri and sometimes I wonder if they just go with the most common Modelmaster paints rather than accurately depicting colours (even if it means a mix). The kit itself looks excellent as a finished product although checking a few photos there are different antennae in different places which I think is just mainly the way that aircraft now go, so you will be best keeping your references beside you. Probably the main areas are the upper IFF aerial is too far forward on the nose and there is the absence of the blade UHF aerial underneath the cockpit - note that this is for the T.1A version as the Swiss and Finnish versions didn't have them to my knowledge. Dimensionwise the kit is overscale in span by a couple of millimetres and almost half a centremetre underscale in length. In all other respects though the kit captures the Hawk look very well.

Overall Recommendation:

Overall, in spite of some of the comments and challenges above, this really is a nice little number from Italeri, it looks very convincing and builds up into a great little model. The level of detail is pretty good for the scale, and I would have no hesitation recommending it to intermediate modellers and above.

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