Revell 1/144 Hawker Hunter FGA.9
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Introduction
Revell has done an outstanding job lately with their 1/144th kits. The
Hunter is by far one of the best kits available in this scale. When the
1/144th bug hit, it hit hard, and the Hunter is the result. You will not
go wrong with this kit and if you watch out for one area in particular
- which I will go into in the body of the article - this can be a relatively
pain-free build. Couple the kit with the Xtradecal sheet and you can build
1/144th Hunters for quite a long time.
Construction
 I
won't go into much detail on construction as Bill Powers did a wonderful
job of that in
his article. Since I wanted this to be an out-of-the-box-build, I
did not follow his advice and did not add the boundary layer plates in
the intake. His solution doesn't look to be too difficult but that would
break the typical out-of-the-box "rules".
 The
one area I wasn't too happy about - and no doubt due to my modeling "ability"
- was the area on the wings' underside where the two wing halves meet.
Even though the break follows panel lines I thought the break was too
deep to represent panel lines in this scale so I dealt with it by using
putty and sanding. I took my time and didn't lose a lot of underside detail,
but next time I build this kit I will add sheet styrene to the lower wing-part
edges (that fit "into" the upper wing) to make it a tighter
fit..
 I
wanted to finish this Hunter in a scheme you don't see that often, and
since I also wanted to finish it in a "desert" scheme, I chose
the Xtradecals for the Qatar scheme (and my thanks to "Bruce"
for giving them to me). The decals are very nice (as long as you don't
cut one of them in half, which I did <doh!>) and settle down decent
enough. I painted the kit using Polly Scale colors: BR Middlestone for
the lighter, upper color; BR Dark Earth for the darker, upper color; and
GN Big Sky Blue (in their model railroad line) for the Azure Blue underneath.
I'm not knowledgeable enough about British colors to know if these were
the correct matches, but to my eye they look correct (and when it comes
right down to it, I'm the one that has to live with my own models).
 I
only wanted a little bit of weathering so all of it was accomplished with
the oil wash I added to the panel lines. Otherwise I left the kit as is
after painting and the final dull coat.
Conclusion
Even with the problems I encountered with the upper-to-lower wing joint
this was still an excellent kit to build. Fun, not too difficult and in
the end looks splendid. There's only one thing I wish - that the 1/144th
kit would receive the same amount of attention and aftermarket as its
bigger, 1/72nd brother.
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