The Hunter has always been a favourite of mine and it fits in nicely with my interest in "classic" British jets, however for one reason or another I hadn't got around to buying the Academy kit until recently. I was fairly ignorant with regards to Hunter versions and I had no idea of the availability of aftermarket parts and decals. However I stumbled across this conversion on eBay-UK and saw it was for a version called the GA.11 so after going to Google's image search and entering "Hunter GA.11" I found a bunch of FRADU Hunter pictures. I immediately placed a bid for the conversion set as I had already decided which Hunter I'd like to build! The conversions seemed to offer everything that was required so when I won it I was very pleased and went out into Liverpool to purchase the Hunter kit. My local hobby shop happened to have the FGA.9 kit and I assumed this would be fine for the conversion (more on this later!) so I grabbed that and waited for the conversion parts to arrive. I then turned my attention to a little research, which basically involved e-mailing Hunter expert Bill Clark and he ran through the various versions of the aircraft with me and the accuracy of the Hunter kit. The result of his e-mails had several implications; firstly I had bought the wrong kit, as the Academy F.6 would have been more appropriate for this conversion. Bill went on to explain that Hunters originally had a rectangular flap, however this impeded the carriage of large drop tanks so a "cut-out" was made into the outboard corner of the flap to allow them to be lowered when large tanks were carried. However, all was not lost, as it became apparent that some (at least two) FRADU Hunter GA.11s sported the cut-out flaps later on in their careers. Bill also highlighted some problems and corrections (in brackets) with the Academy kit which I will list below:
- Exhausts incorrect in diameter and shape. (Aeroclub Set)
- Intake profile in the "outboard corners" too square. (File to correct shape)
- Tail "bullet" fairing too long. (Cut down and blend in)
- Tail planes located too far forward. (File slot/cut location tabs to relocate)
- Undercarriage too long. (Aeroclub Set)
- Wheels incorrectly sized (Aeroclub Set)
- Wingtip profile (Sand to correct profile)
- Cockpit far too shallow (Aeroclub or any resin aftermarket cockpit)
- Canopy incorrect with rear frame. (Aeroclub Set)
These items all had to be corrected before I could even consider the alterations to make the kit a GA.11. The changes required for a GA.11 are listed below:
- Nose cone removed and "Harley Light" installed in nose.
- Cannons removed and faired over.
- Ammunition link collectors removed.
- Airfield arrestor hook fitted.
- Cockpit changes.
- Aerial/Antennae differences, however these differ from aircraft to aircraft and are discussed later.
At this stage the project and what was required to complete it was exceeding what I had expected. I had figured I'd just get the Academy kit and PJ conversion set and had not bargained for the Aeroclub correction set, making several corrections to the kit myself and finding the correct decals. I discovered, again with help from Bill Clark, that by using numbers from two different Modeldecal sheets and using an Xtradecal roundel sheet I could get the required decals so I made an order (again) this time for all three decal sheets. Listed below are the items used in the project and their content:
- Aeroclub Hunter Correction Set
- Inj. plastic cockpit
- Inj. plastic exhausts (3 provided for various Hunter versions. 1 applicable to the GA.11)
- Metal undercarriage and wheels
- Vac formed clear canopy
- Metal detail parts such as exhaust rings, rudder pedals and control column.
- PJ Productions GA.11 Conversion Set
- Resin cockpit tub.
- Resin instrument panel.
- Resin Instrument coaming.
- Resin seat.
- Faired over cannon fuselage plug.
- Clear resin nose to represent the Harley Light.
- Airfield arrestor hook and tail bumper.
- Decals
- ModelDecal 1.72nd RAF/RN Black Serials/Text.
- ModelDecal RAF/RN Large Black Serials.
- Xtradecal RAF Roundels .
Once I had everything required, I started by removing all the PJ resin pieces from the pour blocks using a resin saw. The parts are nicely cast with few flaws and the cockpit fit with no alterations. I started work on the instrument panel, which had deep recesses to represent the locations of instrument dials. I wanted to add some Reheat instrument dial decals, however I did not have a punch and die set to allow me to do this, so I decided to sand away the back of the instrument panel slowly until it was thin enough that that instrument dial recesses were now holes in the panel. I applied instrument decals in relevant places to a piece of white painted plasticard and cut that to the same shape as the instrument panel. The pictures below are of poor quality however they give an impression of what was done.
I then painted the instrument panel in a scale black and brought out the details by dry brushing and added a few drops of appropriate colour. I added a drop of Future/Klear to each instrument face. As normal I left the ejector seat as by this stage I've normally had enough of detail painting and I like to leave it till later to break up some of the monotony during the filling/sanding phase. The kit requires the intakes and ducting to be assembled and sandwiched between the fuselage halves, so this was tackled next. I decided at this stage I'd like to fit intake covers, so I assembled the trunking without painting it, inserted the cockpit tub and got the fuselage halves joined up. The next stage of assembly was correcting the kits exhaust area which was done using the Aeroclub correction and this is provided as three pieces, two injection molded plastic exhaust halves and a white metal cast exhaust ring. The exhaust was assembled and faired in with filler while the white metal ring was cleaned up with a file as it was quite roughly cast. This was then put aside to be added after painting. I then turned my attention to correcting another of Academy's errors, this time the location of the tail plane which need moving forward 3mm. This was done by extending the location "slot" for the tail planes by 3mm using a file. The "bullet" fairing in between the tail planes also needs shortening, so this was cut down and reshaped using Milliput. I also added the arrestor hook from the PJ set, however its resin shaft was badly warped (about 90 degrees!) so I cut it apart and used some brass rod as the shaft. I also glued in the rudder which Academy provide as a separate part, at a slight offset. The picture below shows these alterations.
- [1] Extended tail plane slot.
- [2] Offset rudder.
- [3] Shortened "bullet" fairing.
- [4] Aeroclub exhaust.
- [5] PJ resin arrestor hook parts with brass rod.
The next step involved the integration of the PJ productions fuselage piece with faired over cannon ports. The Academy kits come with various styles of gun ports and the PJ resin piece is a direct replacement for the kit part, and therefore no cutting is required. However I did run into problems with this part, as it is simply too small in diameter. The pictures below illustrate this.
However there was a very simply solution to this, and that is to throw away the PJ resin piece and simply use CA or a filler to fill the gun ports on the Academy kit piece. It is a shame that the PJ insert does not fit, however no real setback. I then started to attach the resin instrument coaming, which was far too small for its opening, so this was seated on a white plasticard insert which you can just make out in the pictures below. I also attached the clear resin nose piece at this stage and sanded the whole nose area smooth, using CA as a filler where required. I also filled the location tab holes for the "Sabrina" link collectors on the underside and started to get to work rescribing the panel lines removed during this work. 
I was not happy with the clear resin nose however, as looking at it from the side; the front surface was just perfectly flat, whereas in reality the lens for the Harley light is set back a few centimetres into the nose. I found some plastic tubing of the correct diameter and cut a thin slice with a razor saw. This was faired into the front of the clear resin piece with CA, and gave the correct profile to the nose and relief to the lens. I was now ready to progress with the wings, and they were assembled along with the main gear wheels and attached to the fuselage. I've seen many comments about this stage of the build from other modellers and there is truly a split of opinion regarding how easy it is to fit the wings. I didn't have any problems at all, however I know some people have had great difficulty in getting everything lined up correctly. I took the strange step of jamming a ball point pen shaft into the intake as I fitted it to stop that area deforming as it was pushed into location. This seemed to help a lot and within a few minutes I had each wing assembled. I then went to work spraying the gear bays, gear legs and flap areas in white, which was the colour recommended to me by Bill Clark. I have seen other colours on GA.11s so I don't think there is any rule as such, rather than to check pictures of the actual aircraft you are building. After spraying the flaps I knocked over a tub of white spirit onto them and even though I quickly clean them up the spirit had removed much of the internal detail, so I then spent a few hours producing new flaps from scratch. These can be seen below:
I added the canopy parts after masking them suitably and filled some gaps between the clear parts and the fuselage using white glue. I then sprayed the area around the canopy black to give a black interior colour to the frames. I also painted the seat at the same time and started to work on the undercarriage doors, which had been previously neglected. The gear doors had some bad ejector pin marks on their inner surfaces, and they proved impossible to remove without removing the existing rivet detail. I therefore needed to replace the rivet detail and the only way I could get close was using my punch and die set (If you are concentrating you'll remember I didn't have one when I was working on the cockpit; However I bought the Historex set about six months after the cockpit was finished). I punched what seemed like hundreds of little rivet heads and attached them to the gear door's inner faces. While they are not completely accurate as they are over scale, I prefer the look of the parts with the rivets added and these can be seen in various stages of production along with the finished flaps below:
I was now almost ready to start painting and I masked off the main gear and flap bays with wet tissue paper and Maskol respectively. At this pointed I noticed a few things on pictures of my subject that I had not added to the model. These were a large rectangular box fairing under the fuselage just behind where the "Sabrinas" would be and also a rotating beacon light on the base of the tail. I added the fairing with plasticard and filler and the rotating beacon came from a section of clear sprue, attached with CA. I was relieved I had caught these issues just in time I proceeded to the paint booth. The model was sprayed using Xtracolor enamels and I was reasonably happy with the finish despite a few areas that would require a touch up. However after coming back and looking at the model once it had dried, I noticed the colour was far too dark. After checking the tin that I had used I noticed I had sprayed the aircraft in Xtracolor "Extra Dark Sea Grey" whereas it should have been just "Dark Sea Grey". The image below shows the darker shade of paint applied by accident.
Early GA.11s were painted in EDSG with white under surfaces, however the later aircraft in all over Dark Sea Grey. I therefore cleaned up a few of the areas I wasn't entirely happy with and applied a coat of Humbrol DSG. Once this had fully dried I applied a few coats of Future/Klear and began to think about decals. Seeing as I had a GA.11 with cut out flaps I thought it would be a good idea to hang the large tanks so I sorted through my pictures and came up with 8 of XF300 "860" and several pictures showed the aircraft with larger tanks fitted. These pictures showed the tanks in the "old" scheme (I assume borrowed from the T.8M fleet as the early GA.11s in the EDSG/White scheme would not have carried such tanks) so I sprayed them white, masked them and sprayed them EDSG. Looking further at pictures I noticed that these tanks had prominent stencils applied to them and I didn't have a source for these, so I drew some up quickly in Corel Draw and printed them on my ALPS printer. The artwork is shown below: 
These decals were applied to the now glossed tanks and these were left to await attachment and a matte varnish. I then turned to the main decals by first applying the roundels from Xtradecal, however I only had two of the correct sized roundels for the top of the wing and "sod's law" prevailed and I managed to get one folded over and stuck to itself. I was unable to repair is so I gave Hannants a call and ordered another sheet, which required another kit to be ordered (obviously!). While waiting for the last roundel I applied some of the black serials from Modeldecal, however these decals were extremely difficult to apply. The adhesive on the back of the decal was extremely milky and I had to wash it all off in water before applying the decal to a puddle of Future/Klear on the model. However the decals were still very thick and required quite a bit of attention to get them settled down. After spending about an hour just doing one of the "860"s on the right fuselage side I was extremely frustrated. As the decals were cut from a generic sheet they all had to be lined up and combined with the other issues I gave up on them and removed them using household ammonia to remove the future. I then went back to my PC, loaded up Corel Draw and in about 30 minutes I had a complete set of Hunter GA.11 decals (minus roundels) to print off. These proved much easier to apply as the serials such as "XF300" were printed as one decal which saved much time compared to lining up 5 individual (and very small) decals. The decaling was finished off with some minimal stencilling and finally the missing roundel which arrived with an Airfix Hawk 100. Finishing off was fairly straight forward and was a matter of some fairly light weathering, a matte coat, unmasking the clear parts and adding the tanks and undercarriage.
Finishing touches included adding a few aerials which seemed to vary from machine to machine, so again pictures need to be consulted and adding the RBF tags and intake covers. The intake covers were made from about 6 layers of tissue soaked in white glue and formed over the intakes which where protected by Clingfilm to avoid getting white glue on the finish. Sensibly I would have done them earlier but the Clingfilm worked and no clean up was required. I made the RBF tags on my Alps printer and applied them to kitchen foil before bending them into place around a piece of thin wire which was used to suspend them. Airwaves makes some RAF RBF tags however I wasn't happy with them due to their texture (they are printed onto regular paper) and also the number of "stripes" on each one. The pitot was replaced with brass rod and the cover for the pitot was a small piece of red vinyl material used for covering R/C models (I think!).
In conclusion this kit went from being just a concept when I first spotted the PJ Conversion auction on eBay to having everything purchased ready to go a few weeks later. I'd say that related to a production schedule, I rather rushed the "requirements" stage! The result was that I wasn't prepared for the amount of work, however when it actually came to it, it was not hard at all and I really enjoyed the build. Time taken was about a year however interrupted by 6 months away from home, so really not a bad result for me.
The kit isn't perfect and nor is my model; However I am happy with it as my first Hunter model. A few notable problems are:
- The PJ nose isn't that convincing as inside there should be a reflective lens, however if you look into the nose of my Hunter you just see some degree of "darkness" and nothing else.
- The fuel tanks, even though EDSG are not much of a contrast, probably due to them being Xtracolor and the rest of the aircraft Humbrol.
- The rivets on the gear doors are too large.
I'm sure you'll spot some more problems, however this is the first conversion that I have finished and I'm pleased with the way things turned out and I've even learnt a fair bit about Hunters along the way. Enough in fact to make me want to build an RAF T.7 in the near future!
(All pictures on this page are thumbnails, please click to enlarge)
     
     
    
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