So I finished the first part of this build log with the model primed for painting.

This one wears the desert camouflage scheme, so it got a layer of Azure Blue on the underside, which was then masked off, followed by a layer of Mid Stone on the upper surfaces. Then there’s the tedious business of masking off all the curves for the “A” pattern camouflage, before applying the final layer of Dark Earth. Here she is, masked and ready for the final colour:

And with the full camouflage pattern in place, and the whole lot coated with gloss varnish, ready for the decals:

The decals were a problem. Although some of the kit decals could have been used for the particular aircraft I’m building, they turned out to be freakishly fragile, falling apart on even the gentlest of handling. So I used Xtradecal for the markings, and Aviaeology for the airframe stencils, including all those wire terminal bonding marks that bedecked British planes of this vintage. (Later, I was going to partially sand most of those stencils back off again, as part of the process of turning this into a well-worn airframe.)

Here she is with the decals applied:

Annoyingly, there’s a stonking great paint seam that shows up beautifully in the shiny surface of the starboard roundel. I thought I’d checked and sanded these, but apparently I didn’t check well enough. At least it will be less noticeable once the surface is finished in matt.

Panel lines and a little preliminary weathering, next. I used LifeColor’s Liquid Pigment again, and was again pleased with the result. If you want to read more about that, take a look at my description of its use in a previous Hurricane build.

I lightly “bleached” the horizontal upper surfaces with a thin application of white paint added to my next layer of varnish—this aircraft had been sitting around in the desert sun for quite a while by the time it arrived at Ismailia.

I then added a little smoke staining on the upper wings, streaming back from the barrels of the inboard guns, before painting in a reddish rectangle of what would have been doped linen in the real aircraft, placed there to protect the gun barrels until they were fired. (The Mark IIB also had two pairs of outboard guns, which weren’t consistently fitted. The Hasegawa kit comes with the option of omitting them, and I decided to do that—they don’t seem to be evident in the picture I have of a similar Hurricane at Ismailia, and it makes sense that these guns might be removed when the aircraft was transferred to a training unit, both to improve stability and because they would be more usefully retained in active service.)

Then I dotted the aircraft with silver paint, to represent paint chipping around panels that would be removed during maintenance, stone strikes to the leading edges behind the propeller and general wear and tear at the wing roots and around the cockpit. (When creating this sort of “exposed metal” on the Hurricane, you do need to keep a structural diagram at hand, to remind you which parts were made of wood or covered in fabric.)

Finally, some exhaust and oil staining. I have pictures of desert Hurricanes with very dark plumes of exhaust stain showing up against the light camouflage:

And I have some interesting images of what happens to the oil that seeps out of the engine compartment and plumes back around the Vokes filter, across the wheel-bay and on to the underside on either side of the radiator cowling. In contrast to many Hurricane models I’ve seen, the underside seems (in some situations, at least) to be stained more on either side of the radiator, rather than directly behind it:

So that’s the appearance I tried to reproduce, which makes for a rather grubby looking final product—not to everyone’s taste, but then again a deliberate effort to depict a rather war-weary airframe.

Here’s the completed model: