Iterali 1/72 BAe Hawk

  For the more attentive people out there, they might of noticed that I am making an Iterali 1/72 BAe Hawk Mk.100 in colours of the Royal Australian Air Force I was going to do the BAe demonstration aircraft, shown below

 That's the actual picture used on the Iterali box, now I was going to paint it this colour, until I sprayed it with the primer and decided it looked better grey.  And thus it turned out as the RAAF's trainer, I'm not too sure if they are used as 2nd Line Interceptors just like the RAF's Hawks where back in the 90's I believe??  And actually checking on Wiki, the RAAF never used the Hawk 100, it was the Hawk 127 for the geeky ones of us out there.  Well onto the fun parts of it, I had problems once again with getting some weights for the nose.  In the end I just used a lot of fishing shots that where strategically placed in the nose cone to weigh it down, thankfully it worked. :)   

  That's it dry fitted before I had finished the cockpit tubs.  Thats my bed sheet btw, funky eh?  Well once that was all done I started to play around with what I weapons I wanted to put on it.  I've taken liberty's as I am not sure how many hard points the Hawk 100/127 has, I know it has 2 hard points on the wing, one in the middle of the fuselage and two wing tip's for AAM's (Sidewinder's I believe not sure if it's cleared to use the ASRAAM yet).  But I have seen that the Hawk 200 has 4 wing hardpoints (2 each side) so I went with that.  Next was what I was actually going to put on it.

  Here you can see the original fuel tanks that came with the kit and the centre line 30mm Aden Cannon.  I also have 2 x Matra SNEB rocket pods and 2 x 100 gallon (?) fuel tanks from a Harrier GR3 kit that I am not going to make now.  I know that the Hawk is cleared for the SNEB's but the fuel tanks look a bit OTT for the Hawks little wings, and to be honest they looked a lot like floats to me... imagine that, a Hawk Floatplane.  Don't think I have ever seen an Jet-fighter float plane, except for the Convair F2Y Sea Dart. Anyhow I noticed that the kit came with 4 Sidewinders (I think they are AIM-9L's for some weird reasons...) two of them are to be used on the wing tips anyhow (not shown in the picture above) but the other two where random bits in the kit not to be used... maybe Iterali are gonna make an Hawk 200 in the future??  Well I went with the 4 Sidewinders instead of anything else, oh and the original fuel tanks as well.  The Sidewinders will be put on the two outboard stations with the fuel tanks in the middle with the cannon in the centre line station.  You get the idea in the below picture.

 Not that I look at it, I think the outermost hardpoint for the Sidewinder looks too close to the Fuel Tanks... hhmm... I can always snap them off and re-attach them at a later date.  I'm quite proud with how far I have gotten with her.  The cockpit is the best I have ever done I think, dry-brushed some of it and hand painted the rest.  I am thinking that an Eduard Zoom kit might of been a better idea tho.  I might try them on my ME 110 C-2 when I get around to doing that kit.  One problem I have come across tho when dry fitting the canopy of for the Hawk.  The back "headrest" is leaning to one side so the canopy does not sit right, I can either file down what I have buggered up OR have the canopy open.  I'm thinking open, means less work. ;) More to come as and when I do it...

  Peace!

  Dazz