Building the Eduard Hawker Typhoon

Manufacture: Eduard
Scale: 1/48th
Kit: # 1131
Build Series: Ben Builds Season Four: The "Spiffy" Tiffy (Completed) 

Background

I have to be honest, I don't know much about RAF aircraft. Sure, I can usually recognize a Spitfire or a Hurricane, but when it comes to the later war aircraft like the Typhoon or Tempest, I am mostly in the dark. I probably wouldn't have even looked at this kit, if it weren't for a group build called "The Spiffy Tiffy" group build, being hosted by the International British Modeler. This build was focusing on Typhoons in any scale, and by any manufacturer, which intrigued me as I had never build one before. Typhoons were one of those aircraft that looked mean and impressive and I thought that the group build would give me a good reason to try my luck at building one. So, I grabbed the 1/48th scale Eduard kit and boy am I glad I did!

The Kit

First off, this was a great model and I thoroughly enjoyed branching out into RAF aircraft. It really gave me some appreciation for the Tiffy. I enjoyed myself so much, that I ended up building and purchasing several additional British planes and I have plans to pick up a few more in the coming months.

As I mentioned before, the group build only focused on the Typhoon, any make, model or version. Some builders built in 1/72nd, others went with the larger 1/24th scale kits, I stuck with my favorite scale and selected the early "car door" version in 1/48th. For some odd reason, I typically enjoy building the early versions of subjects, so this was a perfect kit to continue on with that trend. 

During the kit selection process, I found out that this Eduard kit is actually a reboxing of the 1/48th scale Hasegawa Typhoon. That means that it has the typical Hasegawa habit of adding inserts into certain areas of the model, in order to give the molds more flexibility. All of these types of kits share typical sprues of common parts, but for each unique version, Hasegawa gives you inserts, so you can make a particular mark. In this Typhoon's case, the canopy and cockpit areas were different, so I had the inserts for those sections. 

On a personal note, I am not really against the idea of inserts and I understand why some manufacturers choose to do this practice, but most of the time, inserts can tend to be a bit fidgety. Hasegawa's line of P-40s come to mind, where you have to replace the entire tail section depending on the version you're building.  This leaves a nasty seam and step to contend with, but that comes with the territory.

For the actual Tiffy build, the kit was a real pleasure to work on. Not only was the box loaded full of extras like decals, resin parts, masks, and photo etched pieces, but the part fit was really solid. The only issues that I had, focused around the P.E. parts and some of the kit's plastic inserts. They gave me a bit of a pause, but that isn't really surprising and I was able to pull it off. 

Truth be told, I am not a huge fan of P.E. parts, mostly because of their size and their innate ability to fly off of the sprue and be swallowed up by the carpet. In the Tiffy's case, most of the PE levers and switches were super tiny and very difficult to work with, and once the cockpit was closed up, almost impossible to see. Due to this fact, I ended up leaving a few of the smaller, hidden parts off the kit. 

Building the kit was relatively painless and most of the steps were a joy to work through. As I had mentioned before, the plastic inserts around the canopy and spine of the aircraft did leave a bit of a seam and step that had to be dealt with, but with some fitting, sanding and filling we got it done.

Paint was typical late war British Dark Green, Ocean Grey and Medium Grey. I used a mixture of Vallejo, Mr. Hobby, and Tamiya paints to get this all squared away. I used a top coat of Future to seal it all together and to get it ready for decals. The decals went on nicely, with just a little bit of Micro Set and Sol to help them along the way. After that we sealed it all up with another gloss coat and tried my hand at weathering. 

Weathering is still a very difficult concept for me and I am sorely lacking in a lot of the necessary techniques, but it is a work in progress and I'll figure it out one of these days....I hope lol. I actually do not have any store-bought washes, so I ended up making my own sludge wash with some pastel chalk and weathering powder by AIM. I used a few drops of dishwashing liquid to breakup the surface tension and then applied it all around the kit. The results were alright, so I added some color pencil chipping and some oil stains and streaks with Testors Rubber. I finished it all off with some semi flat coat and called it a day.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a great project and an awesome kit to work on. Not only do you get Hasegawa molds and Eduard detail parts, you also get resin upgrades pieces, and a beautiful decal sheet. All of those additions really made this build a great time on the bench and I would recommend the kit to anyone, who is a fan of RAF aircraft or Eduard kits. Truth be told, I was a little bit skeptical at first, about the PE and all of the added resin parts, but they weren't too bad and really spiced things up. As I mentioned before, I ended up leaving off a few of the PE levers, as they were absolutely lost in the cockpit detail. I just didn't feel they were all warranted, so I kept them in the spares box. I think the cockpit looked sufficiently detailed, so I was happy with the end result. Feel free to checkout the completed Hawker Typhoon build over on my YouTube channel!

Thanks for joining me today, stay safe and happy modeling.