HOBBY BOSS 1:72 HAWKER HURRICANE MK.II

 

Reviewer: Kevan Vogler (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted:  13 November 2006

Very recently, the modelling hobby has seen the emergence of a new player on the field going by the name Hobby Boss. Their first contributions have been a series of 1/72 WWII aircraft and 1/48 WWII tanks all designed to be easily assembled with low parts counts.

As for who exactly Hobby Boss is, I have heard that they are a division or affiliate of Trumpeter. However, there is no evidence to support this on either Hobby Boss boxing or on their web site. In fact, the only other company mentioned is a Huihuang Electric Appliance Co. Ltd. of mainland China.

With the buzz I’d heard about them on some of the modelling forums I frequent and all of the questions some people are asking with a bit of trepidation before deciding to buy or not, I decided to take a shot at one. My local hobby shop had a stack of various Hobby Boss aircraft and I grabbed the Hawker Hurricane. For price reference, my Hurricane cost me 130 Czech Koruny which is about average, if perhaps a little below, for a 1/72 WWII fighter kit in my part of the Czech Republic.

Open the box and.....

The first thing that hits you is that this isn’t packaged like the typical model kit, primarily because the parts breakdown isn’t like a typical model kit. The bulk of the box’s volume is occupied by a black, vacuum formed retaining piece that the kit sprues and main components are secured in until you’re ready to use them. A novel idea if a bit of over packaging.

The kit itself is 20 grey styrene parts and three clear. The upper part of the fuselage, vertical stabilizer, tailwheel, cockpit and radio mast are all molded as a single piece as are the lower fuselage, wings, main landing gear bay and wing mounted 20mm cannons. For the complexity of such parts to be molded in single pieces and to be completely blemish free is astounding to say the least. All panel lines are engraved.

As smaller sprue includes the radiator, horizontal stabilizers, a choice of standard and Vokes filters, wheels, landing gear, propeller components, exhaust stacks and a couple of extra cockpit parts. The two small clear sprues contain canopies, one closed and one open.

On with the build....

I started by putting the fuselage sections together, alignment is nearly foolproof due to the three big pegs in the upper part that fit nice and tightly into three big sockets in the lower part. I’d say this step could be done without glue, but there are some gaps at the wing root and in the nose area, so I ran a bit of  CA glue into these gaps to close them up a bit. There were a couple of sharp edges on the rear fuselage where the parts met, but a tiny bit of work with a sanding stick solved the problem.

Next came the gunsight and headrest for the cockpit. The headrest and sight both have mold seams on them, but nothing a couple of swipes with a sanding stick won’t cure. The sight is small and I dropped it a couple of times, but both parts fit well.

From here, I went to the horizontal stabilizers, both of which fit very tightly into their spots without glue. I advanced to the radiator, engine filter and exhausts; all of which fit with ease but could use a bit of glue to hold them in spot.

The propeller and landing gear went together without issue, but  the canopy needed a bit of filing at the bottom of the front panel with a half round file to get it to sit over the cockpit correctly. 

Some parts will need glue and others won’t, most of the smaller parts could benefit from using glue to keep them in place.

I had the majority of the kit together in under 20 minutes.

Instructions and decals....

If this kit has a true weak point, its the instructions as there are some confusing things in them.

It looks like Hobby Boss might have tried to make the construction drawings between their two Hurricane kits common. I have kit #80215 in which both options are standard Mk.IIs with the standard engine filter. Kit #80216 is a MK.II “Trop” with the larger Vokes filter.

The first step in the instructions tells me to put the standard filter (part A19) onto my model, but every other drawing in the instructions shows the Vokes filter (part A16) in place.

With the canopy option, the closed canopy is shown in proper orientation to the rest of the aircraft in the construction drawing, while the open canopy option is shown pointing backwards in relation to the aircraft.

The painting and marking guide is in full colour, which is a plus, but the colours aren’t very good and the  dark sea grey and dark green upper surfaces come out looking like two shades of green in the instructions so a certain amount of care and attention should be given and possibly other sources referred to before putting paint to model. Paint call outs are for Gunze paints only.

The decals give you two options:

The 3 Squadron machine is in standard day fighter camouflage while the 87 Sqn. machine is done up for night fighter duty with a black underside.

The decals are glossy and with the exception of the fuselage roundels being slightly out of register, they look good.

As I wrote this review primarily to see how the construction process works with the simplified parts breakdown, I have posted it before painting and decaling as I suspect those aspects will be no different than any other model.

Accuracy....

Bearing in mind that Hobby Boss makes it clear the moment you open the box that fun is being given higher priority than nut and bolt accuracy in their models, it is fair to say you won’t be taking home any prizes if you try to enter one of their kits in a competition.

However, toylike they are not, you definitely know you’re putting together a scale model and not a toy while you’re working on it.

Some of the surface structures are a bit overstated and the landing gear wheels on my Hurricane are rather underscale, I must say I like the overall impression of it and it looks Hurricane enough to me for the money and time I spent on it.

Hasegawa and Tamiya it is not, but sitting in bare plastic in front of me as I write this review, it doesn’t look unlike one of Academy’s newer 1/72 kits.

Recommendations:

The impression most modelers seem to have so far is that theses kits are more geared for beginners and they will work for that, but owing to the lack of clarity in the instructions some guidance from a more experienced modeller would not be out of line.

If you’re an experienced modeller with a ton of unfinished kits on your bench and just want to have a completed build to re-energize yourself, these kits might just be the ticket.

If there’s one group of people I could really recommend these kits for it would be war gamers. Most war gamers I know don’t care to spend a long time building and detailing what will essentially be a game piece. Additionally, most typical models don’t stand up well to a lot of handling. The Hobby Boss kits are very simple to get together and are rock solid when complete. They have more the weight of resin than styrene kits when done.

Generally I think any modeller of any level could tackle one of these kits, just remember the word “representation” rather than “replica” when you’re building one and I doubt you’ll come away disappointed.

I had a lot of fun building mine and I’d like to give Hobby Boss a big round of applause for bringing fun back into the hobby and hope they’ll be with us for a good long while as a provider to the hobby.

 

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