history

Hawker's immortal Hurricane needs no intorduction. The 14533rd (and last) Hurricane off the production line was retained by Hawkers for use as a flight test aircraft. Named The Last of the Many, it was entered in the 1950 and 1951 King's Cup air races. This limited edition boxing contains decals and parts to build this historic aircraft as it appeared during its racing career.

first impressions

The top loader box has lovely picture of the 1951 version of “Last of the Many” in its “kings cup air race” colours.

Inside you find the usual Hasegawa Hurricane Mk.11c kit: 11 grey sprues, 1 clear sprue, plus 2 white metal exhausts, 1 decal sheet, instruction sheet and not a sight of flash anywhere on my example.

kit

The kit contains the standard Hasegawa Hurricane but with a few changes showing the exhausts and the racing colour schemes, both being blue/gold but with different numbers.The colours are shown as GSI acrylic hobby color and MR COLOR but most paint manufactures will have the colours.
There are 2 versions: 1950 when the aircaft came second to a Miles Magister! (it's true, have a look at footage of the race on youtube) and 1951 when the race was actually cancelled due to bad weather.

The decals have the look of being printed “in house” and the colours and registration are perfect.
The gold stripes/piping and the letters for the fuselage are printed as one decal 15cm(6 inches) long, i'm not sure if this will be a problem but it will aid with the lining up, this also means there is a bit of excess clear decal film but I dont think this will be a problem as they should settle nicely on that glossy finish!

This is a well known kit and has been around a long time but it's still the best. The cockpit is well detailed and the outside has finely detailed panel lines. Out of the box it builds into a fine model, inside and out.

There are a couple of things to be careful of such as the seperate nose sections(which I find are best added to the fuselage sides before glueing the halves together) and the join on the bottom fabric which needs a little TLC to look right.

Hasegawa have included a pair of white metal exhausts and have altered the instructions to show where to add a little plastic card as these exhausts are slimmer than standard, you also have to trim off the oil collector ring on the front of the nose. Neither of these things should put you off building this kit as they are very simple corrections that don't really warrant the casting of a new nose section.

Another thing to Remember is that this kit has all the standard plastic parts such as guns and exhausts included, so with some aftermarket decals you can build a standard wartime hurricane, and the Mk.11c was the most widley produced variant...

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