Kit Review: MPC/Round 2 Space: 1999 MK. IX Hawk

I can’t remember the last science fiction model kit I completed. I have a few in my stash but I actively can’t remember completing one in recent times, so this Hawk is rather a milestone. In the late 70s I did a couple of the very disappointing MPC Eagles (under the Airfix label), and obtained their Hawk as a built example from the famous collector Phil Rae ten or more years back, but brand new kits from this cult TV classic have started to come available in the last few years from Round 2, under the MPC label, as a direct result of interaction between company manager Jamie Hood and both the fans who would be buying the product on one hand, and the leading experts on the originals, on the other. This fusion culminated in the Eagle Transporter kit in 1:48^th scale, which has done great business and spawned a family of secondary releases. The first guest-star hardware to join the family is a 1:72^nd scale Hawk.

The Hawk appeared in the episode Wargames, familiar Earth craft which mysteriously appeared from an alien planet and attacked Alpha. They were mental projections, plucked from the Alphans’ own minds, as was the entire unfolding scenario of destruction, as a means to persuade the humans not to attempt to settle on the planet they were passing, no matter how compatible it seemed. This meant a craft could be designed to reflect the same general era and mode of design as the familiar Eagles, which leant itself to rapid production of the needed models. Two were built, a definitive model scaled to the 1:24^th scale Eagle, and a distance model at 1:48^th scale. They were very different in detail when studied together (both have survived and are well documented photographically, and appear at fan conventions).

Round 2 based their detailing on the “hero” 1:24^th scale Hawk and on inspection I was most impressed with the degree to which almost every detail of the original has been captured at one third the size. I studied the Hawk with a view to building a studio scale replica some years ago, amassing a fair bit of reference material in the process, and as a result I am able to say that the company has captured the important features to an amazing degree. Proportion and detail, including precise replication of the kit parts used as dressing on the original, are all there. The only notable exception I could find was the absence of the ribbing on the Saturn V-derived parts, this being more than likely due to the limitations of moulding technology. When the firm produces the promised 1:48^th scale version to go with the larger Eagle, this omission will hopefully be corrected.

Assembly was quite straight forward, though fit was not as crisp as one might have hoped for, giving rise to some seams to be dressed, mainly on the command module sides and where the fuselage, split in upper and lower halves, comes together just behind the stub wings, and at the rear. Otherwise there were few hassles. The worst parts are the tiny Lunar Module legs, five of which are produced at a third their original size. The originals were forever breaking on the studio model, and these are so fragile you hardly dare breathe on them. The one above the cockpit broke and was repaired four times, while the ones around the engine barely fit (locator holes in the wrong places?) and the modeller is reduced to “superglue and prayer” — not ideal. Whitemetal replacement parts would be highly desirable.

I built the model in subassemblies, the lateral boosters and engine, solar panel and underslung weapons pods, the X-girders, plus the underside girder/rod/pipe parts all being completed separately, including decals and topcoats, and brought together at the end. This eased painting of the fuselage and side boosters, and I noticed that proper alignment of these units to each other depends largely on all parts coming together in one go—so they needed to be fully finished at that point.

In 1:72^nd scale no cockpit is provided, just black decals for the windows. The Hawk’s interior was never shown in the program so any attempt to add one to a kit is an exercise in what-if. It will be interesting to see how the company tackles the issue at larger scale.

The biggest “wow” factor was the decals. The sheet is very finely printed, featuring over 130 markings for the craft as seen on-screen (orange trim) or the prototype model (white overall). I did the latter for simplicity, though picked up two kits and will do the on-screen version at a later date. The decals reproduce every marking seen on the original, including many which were actually drawn on by hand. They behaved very well indeed, were a delight to work with, and reacted well enough to Microscale chemistry. The small coloured bands took some work to wrap around the girders, several applications of Microsol were needed to get them to conform, and they could have done with being somewhat longer to wrap fully and seal to themselves. The anti-glare panel decals were sprayed with Micro Flat and trimmed closely from the backing paper, producing a decent flat finish in those areas, contrasting with the satin finish white I selected overall.

Improvements are always possible, and when I do the second kit I’ll make some small changes. The original had rows of holes drilled into the leading edges of the stub wings, weapon pods and solar panels, and these are represented as silver dots on the decal sheet. Dressing those edges very carefully to fully eliminate mould lines and drilling in the holes is an obvious enhancement. Being forewarned about those LM legs might ease that aspect too.

The model was a pleasure to build, notwithdstanding the acute frustration of those aforementioned LM parts. On the provided stand it looks the part, and is a milestone as the first fully accurate depiction of this craft to be produced as a conventional styrene kit. If the larger version eventuates, it will build upon the experience from this one, and be the perfect compliment to the big Eagle—as surely as the soon-to-be-released 1:72^nd scale Eagle compliments this Hawk.

Full marks to Jamie Hood and Round 2 for giving us the kits we craved long ago and never expected to be possible!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Recently Completed: Tamiya 1:48 F4U-1 Corsair (Birdcage), #61046

As a modeller who tends to have something like three dozen uncompleted projects at any one time, it’s always nice to get an older one past the finish line. This was a 2017 build that’s been playing shelf queen waiting for final details and paintwork ever since (it was a matter of display space, which opened up not long ago when I boxed for storage a batch of projects from around five years ago.)

This is the 1996 kit from the grand masters in Shizuoka City, and a sweet build it is. It can pull the odd surprise, but overall is a pretty friendly kit. To wit – the ovoid transparencies for rearward view on the fuselage sides are incorrectly identified in the plans, the numbers are reversed – swap them port and starboard and the parts fit perfectly. Interestingly, the masks for these parts on the Eduard sheet are also reversed!

The cockpit is quite well detailed, and if the canopy is to be closed you’ll see little enough. I used the decal seat harness supplied, and painted everything a dark bronze-green, as research suggested the cockpit shade of the time was somewhere about FS 34092.

I decided to depict a bird from VMF-213, companion squadron to -214, which became  the Black Sheep, when they entered combat in the Solomons campaign in February, 1943, the first Corsairs in-theatre. This is the two-tone scheme, which later gave way to three-tone, and finally to overall Sea Blue Gloss and its variations. I’m currently enjoying the 1976 series Black Sheep Squadron, which, though unavoidably compromised at a historical detail level, gives you a look at Corsairs in the field and the kind of effects the conditions created in their appearance. Solomons Corsairs were battered and heavily weathered by the elements, caked with dust and mud – one can certainly go to town on the weathering process, though I fancied something a little cleaner. Okay, a bird fairly fresh on the line!

The Tamiya Corsair is very well engineered, when it came out I recall reviewers raving about its click-fit precision. It’s not quite that easy, the folding wing option is a PITA to avoid an obvious joint line if building with wings extended, as I always do. The landing gear is very solidly engineered and fits into big receivers, but somehow the legs managed to be at different angles, meaning the wheels were a few millimetres out of alignment…

The paintwork is Tamiya Acrylics, mixed as per kit specifications – XF-18 + XF-2 (3:1) for the topside blue-grey, and XF-19 + XF-2 (2:1) for the underside grey, with soft-masked demarcations. I used Miscroscale Satin to seal both the paint and the following Florey washes, and Flat as the final low lustre after decals.

I made standby decals in case the masks pulled the paint off the canopy struts, but they were unneeded. This means I have 1943 blue-grey over black, with clear, decal material in stock in case any future USN/Marines project develops the issue!

Decals in this edition were by Scalemaster, printed by Vitachrome, and behaved generally well – I say generally as they did not offer to pull into engraved detail at all and did not seem to react very well with Microscale chemistry, wrinkling patchily. The roundel on the right fuselage side broke up somewhat after application and refused to settle in, being still wrinkled when dry. I removed it with the old tape trick, and replaced it with an identical item from a Superscale sheet; the blue is a fractionally different shade, but nothing the eye really catches. The Superscale item of course snugged down perfectly – I’d expect nothing else.

Oil wash and Mig pigments comprise the weathering – when I get a Prismacolour silver pencil I’ll take a crack at chipping but I aborted the attempt in paint when it became clear I had no control over the process at all. My hands seemed to do anything they liked, and I knew to quit before I made a mess.

The radio antennas were rigged with EZline, usually the last task of a model and not my favourite activity. I set the long piece first, pegged the mast end and managed to hold the thread in tweezers to secure the tail end (despite cramp in my right thumb…), then pegged the fuselage end of the short piece to dry over night. The upper juncture of the lines I found I did not have the dexterity for, no way could I hold the line in tweezers long enough for superglue to get hold. I made up a contraption of tweezers, two bulldog clips, a sanding block, a CD and two thicknesses of card that brought the end of the short piece into contact with the long, and left it to set. The applications of glue created a thick spot on the line, which suggests a ceramic insulator or some such, but of course there was nothing there on the real plane. The line was painted with black, some hull blue was used to touch up around the glue points and clear flat added to even out the lustre.

I hope to fit the 1000-pounder on the centreline rack, but the olive drab I sprayed it a year or more ago is very dark under a clear coat, dark enough for black decals to probably be waste. I’ll respray it in lightened olive drab when I next mix that shade, then apply the ProModeller decals for WWII ordnance and hang the bomb.

So, some work to do on her in future – hang the bomb, add the missing pitot probe (the entire project was complete and photographed when I spotted the omission – d’oh!) plus do the above-mentioned chipping.

Last year I built all 72^nd scale for reasons of storage space, and it’s nice to get back to something larger. I’ll be completing a 1:32^nd scale Bf 109 in the months ahead, too – at least that’s the plan!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Recently Completed: Airfix 1:72 P-51D Mustang (A01004A)

This is the “8^th Air Force” edition of Airfix’s new-tool Mustang kit, featuring markings for one of the famous “Blue-Nosed Bastards of Bodney.” Structurally it’s the same kit I built in 2014 and 2018. No luck with the joystick this time, and the radio mast is scratch built as always. I used SAC whitemetal landing gear as a matter of course.

I used Model Master Acryl Interior Green for the first time, and sprayed a shade to represent the plywood cockpit floor as well, something of a first for a detail seen so little (I generally do the canopy closed.) The “Bodney blue” was straight Tamiya XF-8, glossed with Microscale clear, maybe a touch too dark, but fairly close – closer than the Humbrol “French Blue” which is recommended in the plans.

I used the same graphite weathering technique as last time to vary the panel shades of the natural metal finish. It may not be perfect but it’s not bad and it’s certainly quick – an hour’s gentle masking and brushing with powdered 6B lead and the job was done. It also avoids the possibility of firmer masking pulling up previous paint or of anything going wrong with a second application of paint, if varying the metallic with a mixed shade.

The canopy was masked from scratch using Tamiya tape and Gunze fluid, which worked brilliantly on the main hood but on the windscreen it pulled the paint off the narrow struts. I rectified this by making strip decal with clear film – spraying interior green, then blue, then clear, and cutting fine strips with my Chopper II guillotine.

Speaking of the windscreen, the part does not fit as snugly as it might – you can have it tight into the lower curve on one side or the other but not both unless using a hot glue to make it grab before you release the seating pressure – but that will craze the plastic. I used white glue as a gap-filler on the left, which was not terribly successful.

It’s been observed that the drop-tanks in this kit are not very good, certainly they lack the prominent median ridge of the real thing, and I left them off this build, though I might transplant the better-detailed tanks from an Academy bird, if practical.

I love how the finished model feels “busy” to the eye. Consider the left fuselage side – the basic metallic, selectively darkened with graphite, then overlaid with clear, accented panel lines and the decals, all pulled together with final clear – there’s a lot going on to catch the eye in a very small space. The same goes for the wings – technically they should be a uniform aluminium shade and the panel lines should be filled and smoothed, as they were on the original, but it would make for an awfully plain display. This is where artistic license gets in the way of historical accuracy.

This kit was assembled before the end of 2018 but I knew there was no way I could get it finished in time to include it in last year’s tally. Painting was a fairly straight forward process but included one or two backtracks, all of which cost time. I have three more of this edition, plus a couple of other editions of the kit, and look forward to adding to my Mustang line-up in future.

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Recently Completed: Airfix 1:72 Hawker Typhoon Mk. Ib (A02041).

This is the first Typhoon I have ever done (though there was a Matchbox 1:72 Tempest II back in the 80s). Tooled in 2013, this kit looks very nice in the box, and as a Series 2 kit comes on four sprues and with two decal options. I had intended to do the more colourful scheme with invasion stripes, but didn’t trust such large decals not to pose grab and alignment problems that might result in tearing; plus I wanted to get this one off the bench before New Year and wasn’t in the market for surprises, or for backing up and painting the stripes.

Another good-looking addition to Airfix’s stable of British aviation in miniature, the model’s pleasing lines conceal a few challenges. I got the feeling Airfix somewhat over-thought the engineering in this kit, especially in the way the cockpit interior locates, and the cockpit floor/wheelwells part, which demands a certain order of assembly and unavoidably introduces the potential for misalignment. Fit problems I found inevitable, steps at the wingroot being the most serious, though gaps manifested on the horizontal tails too: whiteglue to the rescue. I expected the keyed landing gear to be out of alignment also, but surprisingly it was not – the wheels are flattened and bulged, and keyed to the struts, and once the model is “up on its feet” the flat spots are firmly to the ground. Assembly took a little time, and there was plenty of prepainting to do, between the prominent radiator/carburettor intake assembly, the cockpit and surrounds, landing gear, bay doors and propeller assembly.

Overall, though, the model looks the part, and once it was together the finishing techniques flowed along well enough. I used Tamiya’s accurised RAF late-WWII shades (XF-81, -82 and -83) topped with Microscale clears and Florey panel wash, finished with oil wash weathering and Mig pigments. I used the Eduard mask set for the canopy and wheels, and the AML masks for the Type A camo scheme. The set includes an extra sheet of straight strips doubtless intended for painting the invasion stripes.

The best part of the kit was the decals, they were superb and pulled into surface detail even before MicroSet was applied. Very thin, they grabbed a bit quickly, but are of solid tone, fully in-register, and seem especially accurate. They behaved much better than the sheet in the Spitfire I finished last, indeed I completed all decals, with the exception of the leading edge yellow stripes, in a single day of work.

Criticisms? The small antenna on the underside of the fuselage did not fit its locator hole – I fiddled and fumbled with it for a good twenty minutes, most of which was involved in getting hold of the tiny component, over and over and over, while applying a file to the base until it actually dropped into the receiver. The tailwheel is moulded as one part and must be seated before the fuselage is closed, which ups the odds of damage during handling and makes painting the unit a matter of a small brush and prayer. When the propeller is finally installed, the mounting calls for a cylindrical unit to be inserted between four moulded guides which “tension” it into place – why so complicated? The fuselage aperture had to be filed to accommodate the outer ring of the cylinder, and when it slid home it became apparent the outer diameter of the fuselage mouldings is larger than the outside diameter of the spinner backplate, leaving a strip of unpainted plastic exposed – yet with the prop now quite firmly in place there seems no way to tease it free again to paint the strip. Chancing getting camo green on the satin black spinner is not a risk I’m willing to take at the very finish, so it stands as-is, and angle of view will hopefully conceal the flaw for the moist part.

I have another of these, in the “Dogfight Doubles” edition with Pips Priller’s FW 190 (an unusual combination, as the Tiffie found its forté as a ground attack plane and probably never tangled with a 190, at least not on purpose) but it may be a few years before I welcome going 15 rounds with this kit again. There are some lessons learned here, of course, such as leaving the main gear bay doors off until after the struts are in place, which would make it easier to keep the doors aligned and not “toed-in” a bit.

Enjoyable? It’s always nice to see a project come together, but I would have to say I was happy to see this one leave the bench in the end. Maybe the shake’n’bake kits have somewhat spoiled me, but I had hoped for better alignment. Recommended nevertheless, to those with a little experience under their belts.

Building Bigger

Sometimes, with the pressure of one's daily obligations, a piece of work can be produced and clean forgotten. Below is a model build-up feature I wrote years ago, and even then it was a retrospective on a project which had not been documented at time of actual completion. I was browsing for some information in old articles and came across the text, so figured it was high time this one saw the light of day!

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As I’ve ruefully mentioned before on this blog, some modellers build bigger as they get older simply because they can’t see the small ones anymore. That’s very true for me, yet I haven’t built large scale planes since I was a kid – in fact I’ve only done one 1:32 aircraft in modern times. My previous was 34 (now 36!) years ago!

In 2014 I tackled Hasegawa’s big scale Fw 190 A-8 and had a great deal of fun with it. There were one or two hassles – the fit of the engine cowling to the fuselage left a lot to be desired and was a tough contour to fill and sand but that was about the only structural difficulty. The decal sheet was a let-down – I had selected Hans Dortenmann’s Red 1 and as with so many Luftwaffe aircraft the markings and the camouflage scheme particulars go hand in hand. It was bad news when it turned out the sheet was unserviceable, as the paintwork was fully finished. Patching the markings together from AM sheets would have been a $60 job (three sheets required). Fortunately a friend in Europe had the same kit and was doing it in different markings and sent me his sheet, which worked perfectly.

It’s a big, beautiful bird, and at this scale the problems of airbrush mottling are minimised – overspray can still be an issue but the battle for fineness seems less acute. The cockpit was easy to detail, and the 1:32 etched harness was incredibly realistic. The outer pair of canon barrels is missing – by the time I was done I was more than slightly browned off with Hasegawa’s engineering choice to simply scab them onto the exterior as optional bits, as my confidence to get them lined up in both axes while glue dried was in negative numbers, so she’s a slightly odd-looking A-8 here. Better that than make a mess after so much work had been invested…

I didn’t weather this one heavily – weathering is a skill mated t0 scale and one must learn to use a heavier hand as scale increases. I’m not comfortable with really laying on filth so this bird is in very well-maintained condition – which they must have been at least some of the time.

So why so few models in this scale? Simple, somewhere to put them. You can store four, even six, 1:72^nd scale models in the same area as the “footprint” of a 1:32^nd scale project, and you very quickly fill display cases with the big guys. I have plenty of models in this scale and would like plenty more, but until the day comes I have some sort of storage designed to receive them – shelves of the appropriate depth and at a spacing which does not waste cubic volume with empty air – I fear I’ll have to leave them where they are, buried deep in the stash.

There’s also a lot of work in a big model, even if it’s structurally no more complicated. It certainly uses a lot more paint, you’re aware of your running supplies being used more quickly. But that’s par for the course, I can only imagine the investment in time and materials the ship guys go to when they’re building the new Trumpeter 1:200^th scale battleships. Now there’s a project to conjure with – it gives a whole new meaning to the term “big scale.” It is to ships what 1:16^th scale is to armour or 1:24^th scale to planes.

Hmmm, that reminds me, I have an Airfix 1:24^th scale Harrier hiding away in the stash. After more than forty years since the basic tooling came out it might be high time it got the full treatment… If only I had somewhere to put it!

Detailing Wire

Using wire for detailing has a long pedigree, whether for cockpit connections, hydraulic lines on landing gear, or any application that calls for a fine, fairly rigid filamentary part.

I’ve not done much with wire, my previous project involved making fake coil-spring suspension parts, which was interesting to say the least, and I’ll post about that when I’m happy the job is done (twelve of them to do + sore fingers = finish it another time…) but as part of my Phantom building enterprise I found the need of wire.



While some kits have the ejection faceshield handgrips moulded right in, many do not, and if substituting better-detailed aftermarket seats you may be scratchbuilding the grips anyway. The resin seats by True Details are excellent and inexpensive, but the grips, the most visually engaging part of the seats both because of their signal yellow paintwork and because they are the uppermost part of the seat visible through the canopy, are not represented at all.

The seats on Fujimi’s F-4J did not imbue me with much enthusiasm so I resorted to True Details, which left me with the question of what to do for the grips. I had considered trimming them from the kit parts, which might have worked, or might have cost too much plastic in the cut, resulting in the grips being too small. Wire to the rescue…



I ordered up some 0.29mm (.011”) soft silver wire from Red Roo Models, and found it worked easily, the loops being formed by wrapping the wire with finger pressure only around the tapered tip of my scribing tool, then cutting the loops free with a craft knife. The seats were pre-drilled with a .020” twist drill to provide shallow locators, then superglue was used to mount the loops.

Painted up with acrylics (the black stripes spotted in with a fine-point pen, which is quite good enough for my eyesight at this scale!) they look pretty good, and I can see this technique satisfying the “loop question” on all replacement seats in future. In larger scale I could be more accurate (‘rounder’ loops and so on), but for now, that flash of yellow under the canopy is adequately catered to.