Building the Academy P-36A Hawk

Manufacture: Academy
Scale: 1/48th
Kit: # 12238
Build Series: Ben Builds Season Three: The P-36 Hawk (Completed) 

Background

I have always liked the look of the P-36! There was just something "interesting" about the plane, with it's mismatched nose gun calibers and big radial engine. It always peaked my interests and to this day, I have only ever built two P-36s: a 1/72nd scale, Monogram kit from 1989 and this 1/48th scale Academy boxing. So, let's talk a little about this one.

The Kit

I had a blast building this kit. The parts went together very well, with minimal fit issues. The parts were flash free and crisply molded. The decals were clearly printed and went down without any issues. The cockpit looked OK, but it wasn't as busy as I would have liked. I did end up adding some homemade seat belts and closing the canopy. There just isn't a lot of detail to show off, so I figured it would be fine to close everything up.

Since this kit allows you to make a few different versions of the P-36, there are a few areas where you might need to remove some molded in details. If you are building the Hawk 75 version, the kit is pretty much ready to go, but if you want to build the Pearl Harbor version as I did, you have to remove some details. If I remember correctly, you have to sand down some louvers around the fuselage nose, some dive breaks under the wings, the wing guns and a few panels here and there. Not too bad, but a bit tedious.

Even though I did enjoy the build, I did have a few issues with the kit. Nothing that should dissuade you from picking this one up, but first off, the cockpit wasn't as accurate as I was hoping it would have been. I found some issues with the floor and the instrument panel, so I did my best to rectify that by adding basic styrene details.

My other real issue was the wheel bays. The kit parts were molded with a canvas covering detail that did not match any of my references. Now, as I understand it, these covers were sometimes carried, but none of my references showed them installed. And when I did find images of these covers, they did not look anything like the kit parts. So, I decided to take advantage of this, remove them and just try my hand at scratch building the bay interiors.

I tried to represent the interior details with strips of styrene, cut down and shaped to look like internal ribbing. I wanted to get the look close enough to my references, but since this was my first attempt at this sort of thing, I gave myself some leeway. I ended up going for more of an artistic representation, rather than a 100% accurate recreation. It was fun process! The finished product was not exactly perfect, but I am happy with the end results, so if nothing else, it was a good learning experience for me. I really wanted to just try it out and to see if I could actually build those types of details. I did my best and that is all one can hope for. 

Conclusion

Despite the kit's few issues like the cockpit and the wheel wells, I think that overall, this was a very nice project. There is a lot of potential with this model. A more experienced builder could include resin add-ons and updates and have a great basic kit to build off of, or a beginner builder could take their time and practice their modeling skills. Either way, I would recommend that fans of early WWII aircraft check this kit out. Build it and have fun with it. I know I did!

Feel free to checkout my completed P-36A Hawk build over on my YouTube channel!

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