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This is the Airfix Hawk that was originally released back in 1853. Unlike the Eagles and Moonbase Alpha, this kit from Space 1999 has never been re-released. From what I've been able to find out online, this kit is quite accurate to one of the filming miniatures used in the series. That doesn't mean that it couldn't use some help.
I used various sites for reference, and came up with a few things that I was willing to do to accurize the kit. First, I removed the details on the sides of the central fuselage. Once the areas had been smoothed and flattened out, I added two parallel strips of half-round styrene running along the length of the mid-fuselage, beginning just behind the wing roots, both above and below the slot for the wing roots. These strips were blended into the rest of the fuselage with filler putty. I also added a pair of 1/4" acrylic spheres to the rear of the ship to simulate auxiliary oxygen tanks, or whatever it is they used. I also added a couple of extra pipes between the outboard engines and main fuselage, as they were not molded into the kit pieces, but are apparent on the filming miniatures. The last modification was the rotating of the forward sections of the outboard engines. The kit has them angled at 90° to the fuselage, when the should actually angle inwards at the top by about 15°. I accomplished this by joining the engine halves, cutting the forward ends off with a razor saw, and then reattaching them to the rear sections at the new angle.
The kit was initially painted with white primer, but that allowed light to come through the plastic, so I re primed with gray. Following the gray primer came 4,325 coats of white, a bit of dark gray, light gray, and some bright orange. Decal strips were custom made on blank paper, since the originals had long since deteriorated beyond any usefulness (this was an eBay purchase, and a pretty darn good one, if I do say so myself). Engine bells and thrusters were covered with Bare Metal foil. This was my first attempt at using foil, and the results are mixed. I originally tried to cover the entire main engine with one cut-to-fit piece of foil, but wound up with a few wrinkles. I eventually removed this layer of foil and replaced it with a series of smaller strips arranged in a sort of flower pattern. Though some very slight overlapping lines can be seen, you have to be very close to the model to see them, and even then, they are less annoying than the wrinkles from the first attempt.
This was the first in a group of kits I have come to call the "God*** white bastiches." Following the Hawk was a Product Enterprise Eagle accurizing, a VF-4, Enterprise-A, and Reliant. I am sooo sick of white paint at the moment, which is unfortunate, as next in the line up of kits to do are the Excelsior and Enterprise E.
