Today I look at an older kit that was dug out of the stash - Airfix’s Hawk T2.
Aircraft: BAe Systems Hawk T2
Brand: Airfix
Scale: 1:72
Rating: 5/5
The Kit
As with many 1/72 Airfix moulds the Hawk T2 has a very simple sprue. There are two main sections for the aircraft itself excluding the clear canopy sprue, but there is also a third main sprue that holds parts to create the wide variety of armaments and configurations you can give the aircraft. I’m a sucker for clean loadouts and since I completed the aircraft in its pre-production prototype livery, I chose to give it no armament whatsoever; but I think it’s brilliant that the kit gives builders a great degree of choice in how much of a payload they want their Hawks to have.
Despite being a ten year old tooling, the kit has aged well in terms of detail. Panel lines are recessed and the kit is generally accurate to the Hawk T2, even in its current service configuration with the Royal Air Force as a reference - Airfix clearly did a good job at making a detailed model of an aircraft that was still new to the public eye!
For the scale and overall size of the model, the amount of decals provided by the kit is astounding. Just about every label and little detail you could probably barely even see on a full-size Hawk is scaled down to be featured in this kit, to the extent that Airfix had to provide a special sheet just to allow you to identify all of the stencil decals - it’s honestly remarkable.
With all of that said, this was set to be a promising build - so let’s get right into it.
The Build
From start to finish, I have to say the Hawk is genuinely a pleasure to build. In fact, I’m willing to say that it’s the best jet kit I’ve built yet, and certainly one of the best kits I’ve built in recent memory overall. In my experience, every piece fit seamlessly - from the cockpit parts, to the fuselage, and even the landing gear fit into place seamlessly - quite literally, too. No polyfiller was required at any point in this build.
You start the kit with the assembly of the cockpit, as with every aircraft kit. A particularly interesting detail to note is how the nose wheel of the undercarriage attaches to the cockpit section, rather than being added once the fuselage halves were assembled. I think this certainly made assembling the model easier than it usually is.
As with almost every aircraft with a tricycle landing gear configuration, weight was added to the cockpit section using split-slot fishing weights (held together with clay) before the fuselage halves were glued together.
But it was here that I made a crucial mistake which would come to affect the final model, entirely under my radar for the whole build process. It was here that I realised I’d forgotten to add the back plate of the cockpit section, which meant taking apart the fuselage on a kit that was going so well beforehand.
Once this mishap was hastily corrected, the build continued without any issue, and before I knew it I had a finished Hawk T2 ready on my workbench.
Building the Hawk would turn out to be the easy part. As per the instructions, I painted the Hawk in a few silver coats, with Tamiya’s gun metal painted on the tail fin and the nose surface. I planned to use the provided decals to add the black colouring, but adding the decals directly proved to be a challenge. Many of the decals on the wings actually ripped, so my solution was a combination of both; preserve the important, more precise markings (such as the sharp curves on the wings) and paint larger surfaces. This prevented the decals from wrapping over raised edges, which turned out to just cause them to become wrinkled and more damaged. The solution turned out to be effective, and the Hawk was coming along nicely again.
Now it was time to add the smaller but equally important decals, such as the aircraft serial number and the roundels. This turned out to be a much easier undertaking, but unfortunately the same could not be said for adding the cockpit canopy; normally what should be one of the easiest parts of building model aircraft.
This was the mistake I made earlier coming back to haunt me. The rear and main section of the canopy wouldn’t fit smoothly over the cockpit, the reason being that the back plating which was forced into the fuselage was too high, and it was too late to split the fuselage again. My only option was to sand the plating down until it was no longer in the way of the canopy - certainly a strenuous task that I wasn’t expecting to have to carry out. Some of the back seat of the Hawk was removed in the process, and accidental pressure caused the port side undercarriage wheel to collapse on me.
Even now that the Hawk is finished, the landing gear is still unstable and I expect it to collapse again in a future scuffle that puts just a bit too much pressure on it.
Regardless, I (barely) managed to fit the cockpit into place, though its slightly misaligned on one side of the Hawk moreso than the other, but to me it passed off as bearable. In addition to this issue I skipped adding a clear plate to the main canopy section, purely out of fear that it would make the canopy harder to fit than it already was.
Nonetheless, the Hawk was finished to an otherwise good standard and I’m quite happy with it.
Conclusion
As stated earlier this kit is the best I’ve built by far as of yet. Excluding the trouble with the back plating which was purely a personal area, the kit assembled perfectly and genuinely without flaw. It’s a great kit for people still fairly new to the hobby, has a great variety of payload options and should still provide enough detail for more experienced builders to enjoy. The only downside is finding a Hawk T2 variant of this kit (though T1s actually use the same tooling) as they are now quite rare due to their age and a little more pricey because of this. But if you can get your hands on one, it’s well worth it. I guarantee that after this experience I’ll be building more Hawks in the future!
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