Hurricane Mk.IIc
Expert Set

Arma Hobby, 1/72 scale

Reviewed by Graham Carter

The Hawker Hurricane hardly needs an introduction but suffice to say that the kit represents the four 20mm cannon-armed variant widely used for night fighting over Europe and for convoy and troop attacks over North Africa, the Middle East and Far East when fitted with a tropical filter under the nose.

This Polish company has won praise for its series of Hurricanes which have been acknowledged as the most accurate ones available. I have no reason to doubt these claims after examining this cracker of a kit. I assume the “Expert Choice” moniker refers to extra PE, masks and larger choice of markings.

The flimsy end-opening box has a nice CAD illustration of S/Ldr Denis Smallwood in LK-A attacking He111s during the Dieppe Raid on 19/8/42 and on the rear are small colour side views of the four decal choices. Inside is a largish plastic bag containing the single sprue, a small transparent sprue which is loose inside the bag - tut! tut! - and another bag containing the PE set, masks (for the canopy, wheels and landing lights). There is an 8-page A5 instruction booklet as well as the 75x120mm decals sheet printed beautifully by Tachmod.

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Thumbnail panels:

The parts are crisply moulded in light grey with restrained (dare I say “scale accurate”?) surface detailing - I do like the depth difference between panel and moveable flying surfaces gaps, as too often these are scribed the same depth in kits. The metal wing panelling is very nice and the fabric covered fuselage stringers are just lovely.

The cockpit is suitably detailed with relief tooling on the fuselage interiors and separate parts for seating, pedals, control column, backing structure and instrument panel - a decal or PE can be used here.

While there are more detailed PE interiors available from the likes of AirWaves, Eduard and Extratech, Arma provides more than enough in this scale.

The wheel wells and undercarriage legs are are exquisitely done with roof and side-wall details, retraction jacks and nice door detail as well. Tyres are weighted and even have tiny raise ‘Dunlop’ letters! Carburettor and radiator intakes are multi-part with PE details and the cannon are finely moulded, showing how over-scale the FROG and Academy ones were.

The exhaust night shields are a combination of plastic and PE parts, while the landing lights each have tiny PE lens inside.

A two-part tropical intake is provided for one of the decal choices.

The canopy comes in three parts and what fooled me for a moment was that one is slightly wider to fit over the fuselage hump for an open option - clever!  The mask set will allow nice sharp frame delineation.

There are colour call-outs in each assembly step and part using a light blue circle which then refers to a paint chart covering paints by Hataka, AKRC, Lifecolor, AMMO, Humbrol, Vallejo and Tamiya - very comprehensive and much appreciated; well done Arma!

Marking Options

The decal sheet contains some airframe stencils for the non-black schemes, plus four choices:

• BE500 LK-A, 87sqn, 1942 of S/Ldr D. Smallwood in overall Night Black on top of its previous grey/green scheme, apparently roughly painted as ARMA claim “with camouflage translucent from below” (!) which I take to mean the previous colours show through.

• The same aircraft, pilot and unit in August 1942 with a rough scheme of Mixed Grey (Ocean Grey) and Dark Green over ‘translucent’ Night Black. Again I assume this means the black is thinly covering the Medium Sea Grey underside. Perhaps this was an interim scheme prior to the one above or afterwards.

• Z3899, JX-W of 1sqn, Tangmere November 1941 in OG/DG/MSG with sky spinner and rear fuselage band

• HV520 FT-Z of 43sqn flown by S/Ldr Micky Rook from Maison Blanche in Algeria in December 1942 in DE/DG over Sky Blue  with a red spinner and white rook on the rudder - the rook is a European bird. This aircraft has a tropical filter.

Decals are beautifully printed with a high gloss finish.

This is a wonderful kit and most modellers will be able to produce an excellent model from the parts without recourse to any extras.

Thanks to Arma Hobby for the sample

Review Text Copyright © 2020 by Graham Carter
Images Copyright © 2020 by Brett Green
Page Created 20 January, 2020
Last updated 20 January, 2020

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