This one came as a bit of a surprise a few years ago and has been released in two boxings; one from Revell Germany featuring parts and markings to build either and RAF of Swiss aircraft. The other is a Revell/Monogram boxing with two RAF subjects and none of the optional Swiss parts such as the extended "Sabrina" gun blisters and Maverick missiles (mean sods). It is this latter boxing that I have built.

The first thing that struck me upon opening the box was the size of the model – this is one big sucker, almost the size of an F-4 Phantom (I compared the Hunter fuselage to that of a Tamiya Phantom – there isn’t much in it). The breakdown of the kit parts – separate wing leading edges, fuselage spine, tail cone and nose section means that potentially Revell could do an early single-seat or even a Hunter T7, although this is highly unlikely, more’s the pity.
Because of the breakdown of the kit parts, it was possible to work on several areas at once; the one thing all areas had in common was a lousy fit of parts! As noted in last months Notice Board, this is no Tamiya/Hasegawa kit and boy, it is obvious. I had managed to get my mitts on the replacement resin cockpit set put out by the now defunct Kendall Model Company (KMC) which although nominally for a Hunter F6, was a noticeable improvement over the kit parts. Dry fitting of the new tub showed up a rather poor fit – it was too wide – and a fair amount of shaving, sanding and swearing was needed to get a decent result. Armed with some useful colour cockpit photos that were downloaded from the Thunder-and-Lightnings site (www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk) I set about painting the interior. As with any number of post-war British jets, the basic interior colour is black, for which I used Xtracolour Tyre Black with pure black for the instrument faces and the various details picked out in grey, white and yellow. The only real colour in the cockpit is provided by the ejector seat!

Now that everything has been assembled, I have come to the conclusion that the kit cockpit would do nicely if the main instrument panel and ejector seat were the only items replaced. All that black paint hides just about everything else.
One area that really annoyed me was the bifuricated (big word, that) intake trunking which is made up in three stages and then clipped on to the rear of the nose section. I found that after much aggravation, the best way to deal with this was to glue the assembled impeller fan and interior intake walls (parts 27,30 and 31) to the upper intake trunk (part 25). I then glued the lower intake trunk (part 26) to this lot and taped it firmly together. With that done, I glued the two splitter plates (parts 28 and 29) into place and left the whole shebang to go rock hard overnight. ("That’ll learn ‘em!")
The next fun job was mating the completed tail cone to the rear fuselage. This resulted in a rather nasty step all around the join which was filled and sanded (and filled and sanded, and filled and sanded?) with gap filling super glue and accelerator. With this done and cleaned up and polished to within an inch of it’s life, the nose was mated to the front of the fuselage after first clipping that pesky intake assembly into place (don’t glue this!).
Once again a nasty step was encountered and dealt with in the same way as the tail cone.

The wings by comparison went together fairly easily, although once again the fit of parts was less than wonderful. The wings have separate dog-tooth leading edge extensions and wing tips, all of which needed a measure of fiddling and filling to fit properly – even the navigation lights needed sanding back flush (!). Be sure to drill out the actual light bulbs inside the clear lights and fill them with Tamiya Clear Red (port) and Clear Green (starboard) before glueing them into place. Also make sure that the location hole for the sway braces for the 230 gal underwing tanks are drilled out in the dog-tooth extensions before it’s too late. One thing I noted was the presence in each lower wing of rows of flashed over holes which presumably would have allowed the fitted of the rocket rails so often seen on Hunters on active duty in the Middle East. It would have been nice to have had those included in the kit, as the SNEB rocket pods provided were only briefly used by 208 Squadron Hunters shortly before the unit disbanded in 1967.
With the wings assembled and tidied up, they were mated to the completed fuselage and after all the other fit problems encountered, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was done with very little fuss, although some filling was still needed. With this done, the 230 gal and 100 gal underwing tanks and their pylons were assembled and cleaned up and my attention turned to painting the beast.
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Painting and Markings
Most Hunter FGA9s were finished in the bog-standard RAF scheme of Dark Sea Grey and Dark Green over High Speed Silver, with the latter colour gradually being replaced from 1966 onwards with Light Aircraft Grey. Most foreign operators retained the same basic finish, with notable exceptions being Abu Dhabi with their scheme of Stone, Dark Earth and Azure Blue (with a racy red cheat line) and the Dark Earth/Dark Green and Light Grey scheme favoured by Singapore.

In terms of markings, the kit provides options for two RAF machines, one from 208 Squadron whilst part of the Aden Strike Wing during the ‘60s and a more subdued machine from 45 Squadron based at RAF Wittering in 1975. The latter machine is typical of Hunters late in their careers with two-tone "B" type roundels and Dark Sea Grey/Dark Green/Light Aircraft Grey camouflage. The 208 Squadron machine has the earlier red/white/blue "D" type roundels and High Speed Silver undersides. For some reason, Revell provide both the 208 Sqdn blue "Speedbird" marking and 8 Sqdn roundel side -bars! These should be cut away from the roundels if this aircraft is modelled.
Inspection of the kit decal sheet (which is very good, by the way) revealed a lot of cracking and I decided to go with one of the Aeromaster sheets for the Hunter - number 32-002 Hunter Part II. This sheet has markings for two RAF machines, an FR10 of 1417 Flight and an FGA9 of 8 Sqdn which carries roundel side bars for both 8 Sqdn (yellow/blue/red strips) and 43 Sqdn (black and white checks). This was because both 8 and 43 Sqdns served with the Aden Strike Wing at the same time for a brief period. The FR10 is simply an FGA9 with camera ports in the nose and would be a straightforward conversion to undertake.
As usual, Xtracolour paints were used for the Dark Sea Grey/Dark Green topsides and once dry, were completely masked off and Tamiya X-11 Chrome Silver was sprayed on the undersides. The underwing tanks were painted Dark Sea Grey and Chrome Silver.
With the paint dry, the decalling was started and yet more problems arose. The underwing serials provided on the decal sheets are broken up to allow them to fit over the wheel well covers – but don’t. I found this out the hard way and had to very carefully cut away wet decals and reposition them. Not impressed. Then I very clumsily managed to damage some decals but once dry, was able to repaint and repair them. I used Aeromaster sheer ST32-02 for the stencils. Whilst nowhere near as comprehensive as the kit decals, they still give a good smattering of stencils and a suitably "busy" look.

Conclusion
So there it is – the first 1/32 scale model that I have built in a very long time. Was it worth it? Most definitely - although I encountered no end of aggravation (some of it self - induced) the end result is one very nice model of one of the classics of the jet era. I think that perhaps one can be a bit spoiled by the ease of which most modern kits go together and it doesn’t hurt to put in a bit of graft to get a result – if anything it is all the more satisfying. As I have mentioned, I built quite a few Luftwaffe subjects last year and wanted to do something different and this has certainly been a change. This is easily the best Hunter on the market in any scale and I can recommend it to anyone who likes the type and doesn’t mind putting in the work.

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