1/72 Airfix Hunter F Mk.74

Gallery Article by Gareth Phua on Aug 9 2003

  Singapore National Day 

 

This is the Airfix 1/72 Hawker Hunter FGA.9 built as an SADC F Mk.74. Singapore Air Defence Command(SADC) is the earlier name for what is today, the Republic of Singapore Air Force aka RSAF (it is NOT the Royal Singapore AF). I did research at the RSAF Museum and decided to build the aircraft as aircraft number 511. The kit was not without its problems but they (the problems) were alot easier to address than resin kits. I replaced the "pitot" tube on the wing with a needle as the one from the kit was too thick and it was broken anyway. The pilot and everything else was from the kit. Loadout was for an air intercept mission, hence the lack of SNEB rocket pods, only 2 fuel tanks and guns.

 

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I wanted to portray this Hunter as an SADC bird when Singapore took delivery of her very first fighters. Colours were custom-mixed by Nakamoto of Achtung Japan Hobby, who's selling these RSAF SEA Skyhawk colours in his shop. They were not exactly accurate for an SADC Hunter since the SADC took delivery of their Hunters in BS colours before finally repainting them in the 80s(I think) in FS colours while the colours by Nakamoto are more FS-based. Still, when I went to the museum, the 2 Hunters there were painted in what looked like FS colours to me. In any case, there was a long discussion between Kwek, Mike Yeo of Horizon ModelTech and myself and the longer the discussion got, the more confused I became. I therefore decided to go for the lazy man's route, use FS colours.

Decals for the early SADC roundels were kindly contributed by Kwek, while the numbers were ALPS printed from an ALPS printer borrowed from a friend. Again, many thanks to Kwek for helping me with getting the ALPS printing going.

Gareth Phua   Wingnuts Singapore

      

Photos and text © by Gareth Phua