Special Hobby 1/72 scale De Havilland D.H. 103 Hornet F. Mk.1

Kit: No. 72046
Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: Special Hobby, available from International Hobby Supply, P.O. Box 426, Woodland Hills, CA 91365, 818-886-0423,
www.internationalhobby.com
Price: $29.98
Comments: Mixed media, 87 parts (53 injection-molded, 20 resin, 12 photoetched brass, 2 photo-film), decals
Pros: Delicate surface scribing, nice resin details, good photoetched parts, good decals
Cons: Lots of parts cleanup needed, some fit problems, too much dihedral

The de Havilland DH. 103 Hornet was one of the most elegant aircraft ever designed. It was first conceived as a private venture to meet a perceived Royal Air Force requirement for a long-range high-speed fighter for the Pacific theater in World War II. It first flew in July 1944 and served well into the 1950s in both land and naval variants.

Special Hobby's Hornet has crisp surface detail, but flash and the large sprue-attachment points required a lot of clean-up. I also sanded a few imperfections and slight graininess on the surface of the parts. No mating surfaces have locating pins or tabs, and parts are numbered on the instruction sheet only, both hallmarks of such short-run kits.

The resin and photoetched parts are well-done. The 10-page multi-step pictogram instructions are comprehensive, but the locations of some parts are imprecise. The decals have markings for three aircraft from two RAF squadrons.

The cockpit floor and rear bulkhead are simple, but the resin instrument panel and seat look nice. The fit is good after sanding the butt joints. I had to remove a couple of mold plugs from the interior sidewalls. There's no detail on the sidewalls. No reflector gun sight was included, so I made one from scrap clear plastic and installed it before adding the canopy.

Lines are engraved inside the fuselage halves for locating the resin cockpit, but I had to grind them away - along with more plastic - to get the cockpit tub to fit.

The under-nose gun troughs are a resin part that replaces that area of the fuselage. I didn't need filler, but had to clean up the joint with sandpaper. The resin tail-wheel bay (part No. E5) required some filling and sanding.

The wings have good surface detail, but the trailing edges are too thick for scale, so I sanded down the insides. I glued the wing halves together before shimming the resin radiators with .020" strips top and bottom for a better fit.

The fit of the nacelle halves is good, but the resin exhaust stacks and the nacelle openings needed a little cleanup. I test-fitted the nacelles on the wing and made adjustments at this stage to prevent problems when the wings would be joined to the fuselage. The bottom edges of the main-gear-well front bulkheads should be just inside the front edges of the gear-well openings and sit vertically inside the cavity. There is no interior gear-well detail.

While cleaning up the mating surfaces of the horizontal stabilizers, I adjusted the joints so the elevator hinge lines were parallel and aligned.

The injection-molded canopy didn't fit well on the fuselage. All the inside edges had to be thinned and contoured to make a reasonably close fit. Also, the rear edge of the canopy framing should have a concave curve to go around the fuel-tank filler. I tacked the canopy in place with tiny drops of super glue, then filled the remaining gaps with Krystal Kleer. The lower front of the windscreen frame didn't fit right, perhaps because the shape of the upper nose should be rounder and fuller.

Adding the wings to the fuselage was tricky. The roots molded on the fuselage produce too much dihedral - nearly 7 degrees instead of 3 - and not enough sweep. I sanded the mating surfaces of the wings to correct these problems. The sweep was set so the main spar line was straight from wingtip to wingtip.

The kit provides rocket rails and bomb pylons, but no weapons. The main-landing-gear struts and wheels look accurate, but the retraction braces are the wrong shape. The photoetched compression scissors are a nice touch.

The gear doors do not have any real means of attachment, so I made retraction arms from copper wire and glued them in place with super glue.

The propeller assemblies needed some minor trimming and fitting. The props are "handed" with rotation from the top inwards. My sample's prop spinners were 1mm too small in diameter.

I used non-buffing aluminum Metal-izer for the finish and sealed it with Polly Scale clear gloss. I chose the colorful No. 65 Squadron markings. Also offered are two painted schemes (light aircraft gray and PRU blue) for 65 and 19 Squadrons from earlier years. Decals are crisply printed and thin; they required Solvaset to snuggle down.

This was a challenging kit due to the cleanup and alignment problems; I spent about 25 hours on it, but it's a beautiful addition to my RAF collection.

- Ross Whitaker