1/72 Airfix Hunter GA11 Hunter GA11

by John Green

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This is my 1/72 Hawker Hunter GA11 , converted from the old Airfix FGA9 kit.  For those of you who may not be familiar with the GA11, they were converted from surplus RAF Hunter F4s by deleting the cannon armament & fitting an airfield arrestor hook under the rear fuselage.  The aircraft were issued to the Fleet Air Arm & used for a variety of training purposes from the early 1960s right through to the early 1990s when the last of them were replaced by the more modern & efficient , but far less attractive Bae Hawk.
I started by removing the kit's tailcone & replacing it with the resin tailcone from the Scale Aircraft Modelling (ex Airkit Enterprises) early Hunter conversion  & completed the conversion to GA11 spec by filling the cannon ports , omitting the Sabrinas (the ammunition link collector bulges under the nose - named after a well-endowed starlet of the 1950s), filing off their mounting points & scratchbuilding the arrestor hook under the tail.   The rest of the model was built straight from the box, barring the boxing in of the wheelwells & the fitment of an Aeroclub ejection seat.
I'd seen photos of GA11s with a number of variations of the number of droptanks carried , their colour scheme & whether or not the tanks had fins.  I settled on just 2 tanks , with fins , but decided to paint them in Dark Sea Grey over High Speed Silver as if they were ex-RAF tanks which hadn't been repainted . I should point out however that the only tanks carried by the GA11 were the 100 gallon variety (the smaller ones in the Airfix kit), so I had to adapt the inboard pylons to fit the tanks , they being designed
to go on the outer pylons .  The larger 230 gallon tanks in the kit were only carried by RAF FGA9 & FR10 aircraft & export equivalents of these two marks since only these variants had the cutouts in the outer ends of the flaps to clear the big tanks.
The aircraft's colour scheme was Extra Dark Sea Grey over white & I used Humbrol for the grey & the ever-useful Halfords Appliance White auto spray for the white .  Decals were a mix of Model Art for the squadron markings & serial numbers, Xtradecal for the roundels & the kit sheet for all the stencil markings .  All went in place painlessly.
Once the decals were dry , the landing gear & tanks were fitted, a final coat of Humbrol SatinCote was sprayed & the canopy masking removed. 
The Airfix Hunter is far from state of the art , but it's still a kit I like - a little extra work here & there , the SAM conversion where necessary & some nice decals never fail to produce a nice-looking & satisfying model.

John

Photos and text © by John Green