Aires

1/48 Hawker Sea Hawk Wheel Bay For the Trumpeter Kit

Stock Number: 8438

Reviewed By  Chris Durden, IPMS# 29474

MSRP: $17.95 Website: www.aires.cz The Aires wheel bay set for the 1/48 Trumpeter Sea Hawk is a relatively simple detail set consisting of 15 parts in grey resin. The set includes replacement parts for the main and front wheel bays, all of the landing gear doors and several small detail parts. All of the castings are very crisp and free of flash or air holes. The level of detail is very impressive, even on the very delicate actuator arms (part 14) - more on them later. Preparation of the parts was straight forward although I did find that the pour stubs on the landing gear doors were very tricky and require care to remove them without breaking something, especially on the front gear door. I managed to remove everything without any breakage and then test fit all parts. I found that the main wheel bay insert was a drop fit. The front bay comes in two parts and I had to do a bit of scraping and sanding to get the front portion (part 13) to fit correctly - the aft portion (part 12 was a drop fit as well. Painting went quickly after consulting some excellent pictures that a fellow Hyperscale user forwarded to me (thanks to Chris Hughes). I used PollyScale and Citadel Miniatures paints followed by a pin wash with brown Detail-It and a finishing flat coat. Installation into the fuselage was a simple matter to accomplish and the final result looks impressive. Oh, and remember the delicate actuator arms? Despite being carefully protected and kept on the poor stub for painting they ended up launched somewhere into the carpet-monster when I dropped them - all that was left was the pour stub;-( My thanks to Aires for the review sample.