1/48 Airfix BAe Hawk 209

Indonesian Air Force

by Alexander Sidharta

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  Indonesia Independence Day 2005 

 

Based on one of the most popular trainer aircraft in the world; the British Aerospace Hawk, Hawk 200 series was intended truly for air-to-air mission. Installed with Adour 871 engine, Hawk 200 is more powerful than its predecessors. Also, because of its single seat configuration and additional of Westinghouse’s AN/APG-66H radar, the shape of Hawk 200 is very much different comparing to its dual-seat families. 

Indonesia ordered 24-32 Hawk 200 in early 1990s but the number of aircraft actually delivered is unclear. Indonesian Hawk 200 was called as Hawk 209 and serves in 2 squadrons: The 1st Squadron in Pontianak and 12th Squadron in Pekanbaru. Both squadrons operate mixed of Hawk 109 and Hawk 209. 

Indonesian Hawk 209 saw many combat missions during its service, spreading from Aceh to East Timor campaign. On May 13, 2003 4 Hawk 209s of Skadron Udara 12 (12th Squadron) were assigned to escort C-130s to Aceh dropping troops to the conflict area caused by separatist rebellion. To clear the area, the Hawks did low-level, high speed passes in the dropping zone just before the C-130s did their job. No bullets were ever fired during the missions.

One of the Hawk 209s used in that mission was TT-0214, piloted by Skadron Udara 12’s commander and acted as “Sriti” (some kind of Swallow bird) flight leader. 

In 2001, I had the opportunity to see TT-0214 up-close and personal when she was visiting Jakarta. More, the pilot allowed me to sit and taken pictures of me in her cockpit, and this was my first experience sitting on cockpit of an active-duty Indonesian AF fighter aircraft. 

So I think it’s very understandable if I want to have TT-0214 model in my shelf ! 

Just until recently, there was no decent single-seat Hawk kit ever produced by any kit manufacturers. Matchbox has it in 1/72 but IMHO, the shape of the kit is seriously awful.

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Thankfully, Neomega of Russia released a resin conversion for Airfix Hawk 100 which was a wonderful “dream-come-true” to me at first. However, further on my inspection, I was not impressed by the quality of the kit. Although the exterior side was smooth, the panels were not made by engraving the edges, but made from thin panels embossed to the main body. It was still acceptable if the panels were accurate, but unfortunately they weren’t, although not totally wrong either. The interior side was rough and there were bubble-marks all over the interior. Fortunately, none were in the cockpit area but there were some in the nose landing gear well area.

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Neomega’s instruction didn’t help much. Only a small printed paper showed breakdown parts of the resin kit. But, the quality of the cockpit, front panel and electronic/avionic box behind the cockpit were top-notch. Neomega gave one vac-formed canopy which neither very clear nor scratch-free. During the process of cutting the canopy, suddenly it cracked and my attempts to contact Neomega has no answer. 

I cut off the front fuselage of the Airfix kit as per Neomega instruction then I joined the rear Hawk 100 fuselage halves. Airfix fitting was good and minimal filler was used. I re-scribed all of the panel lines as the kit panel lines were shallow. I also sanded the whole plastic surface to eliminate the grainy appearance. Some basic panel lines & rivets were corrected and added, but into a minimal amount of works. Filling-in the chaff/flare housing above nozzle was done but still, I didn’t want into super-accurate work on this one.

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The main landing gear housings were too shallow, so I cut and deepened them. Adding walls into them and added some wiring using solder-wire & small spare-parts to make them look “busy”. I replaced the plastic parts using Aeroclub white metal undercarriage which were crisp & more accurate. This enhanced much to the landing gear areas. 

Airfix-supplied wing had their own-problems. No mini outboard fences supplied, in-accurate small fences (Hawk 100/200 series has smaller and greater number of small fences on wing’s upper surfaces than Hawk 50/60 series), thick trailing edges and bad join of the wingtip fairing-housings to main wing. The wing was thick while the wingtip parts were thinner so there were quite noticeable “step” on each wingtips! L

If modelers want to cut and drop the flaps, other problems will arise but I don’t want to write them here. I have experienced them on my previous Airfix Hawk Mk.53. 

Joining the wings to fuselage straightly would make the wings “bent-down” so some cuttings and sanding required to make the wing’s dihedral angle correct as it should be.

Well… now move on the front part… 

Painting the cockpit, front panel, etc using Gunze’s lacquer Medium Sea Grey required no “protective” layer of Future when washing with oil applied. Satisfy with the result, I moved to NLG housing which required Airfix kit parts. The fitting was bad and required some cutting/sanding because the profile of the Airfix part was different (it was for Hawk 100, which has different nose) and it was quite hard to “push” it into the resin nose. There was a slot for the electronic/avionic equipment behind cockpit but my references showed that the base of the e/a equipment was at the same level as the canopy sills. The resin had it below. More cutting and sanding…. 

Frankly speaking, the layout of the front panel and e/a equipment was different to our Hawk 209 but correcting them would required a heavy scratch-build. So, it was out of questions….

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After forcing to join the front fuselage halves with a lot of superglue pouring into the kit, finally I got a Hawk 200 nose ready to be joined with the rear fuselage. Couldn’t wait any longer, I joined them. The result was “fantastic”… : the nose was pointing up ! L 

I grabbed all of my references and luckily a SAM magazine came with profile drawings which help much. I cut the nose off again and about 2mm of plastic sheet inserted at the upper join to make the nose a little bit pointing down. The modification caused a much better appearance now. At this point, I haven’t realized a problem that found later. 

A lot of my trusty Squadron putty used this time to fill the gaps. Sanding and priming was heavily required this time to make the join disappeared. There is no line there on the real aircraft. 

Installing the intake required filling as well. Mine needed almost 1.5mm thick plastic to make the profile smooth to the rear fuselage. This made the wing needed another small surgery but it was easily fixed. 

I added the formation-light panels on both side of the fin, rear fuselage just in front of the stabilizers and below intakes as some of Indonesian Hawk 209 has them. TT-0214 is one of them.

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After priming, I sprayed MM FS 30219 Dark Tan for the first color, then using soft-mask method; I sprayed Humbrol 116 Dark Green & Gunze acrylic H-320 Green for substituting Humbrol 117 which was too “light” to my eyes. Underside color was painted using MM FS 36495. 

Gunze’s lacquer super clear coat was then applied for the decal base. Model Alliance decal for stencilings and 12th squadron badges, which unfortunately too big. Insignias were from Scale Nutz’s “Indonesia Forever” sheet but were translucent so I had to paint the red portions over the decals. Serial was from Carpena & formation lights decal from CAM 

I applied Gunze’s lacquer clear once more to protect the paints and decals from oil wash. Lacquer was much stronger than Future so there was no single area which peeled off during the washing. 

I “armed” my Hawk 209 with a pair of Hasegawa AIM-9P (using -9J) on wingtips but the nose was a little bit too long. I cut about 1mm at the nose and glued it back. IMHO, it looks better. Single-rail AGM-65 launchers LAU-117/A were modified from triple-rails Maverick launcher, again from Hasegawa, and mounted to outer pylons.

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Did I mention the problem arouse because I modified the nose/rear fuselage join? Well, the vac-form canopy became too short and there’s no way I can display it closed with no gap. No big deal, because why in the world we display a model with canopy closed while we have well-detailed resin cockpit inside ?

I added tiny small details to the canopy and glued the canopy to the canopy sill using CA glue after installing Airfix’s windshield.

The overall shape could be seen now and definitely the Neomega nose was too “fat” in side view! There should be a slope straight profile from windshield to nose which the kit didn’t have. Well, nothing I could do now and had to live with it. However, it does looks like a Hawk 200 and accuracy-wise, I could only hope somebody will release a better product.

 

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I had CMK’s Hawk undercarriage set in hand which was superior but too late to be installed, so I used the MLG doors only to replace the Airfix’s. Installing the metal Aeroclub landing gears were very easy as they were direct replacements of the plastic parts in better appearance & strength. 

After all are done, I glued other small details like photo-etched HUD taken from spare, scratchbuild antennas, lights, etc.

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 Well, all were done and I have my Hawk 209 in my collection.

Alex

Jakarta, Indonesia

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Photos and text © by Alex Sidharta