The Hawker Hunter is a subsonic British jet aircraft developed in the 1950s. The single-seat Hunter entered service as a manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, and later operated in fighter-bomber and reconnaissance roles in numerous conflicts. Two-seat variants remained in use for training and secondary roles with the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Navy until the early 1990s. The Hunter was also widely exported, serving with 21 other air forces.

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The Swiss Air Force adopted the Hawker Hunter in 1961, many of them refurbished and modernised ex-RAF aircraft.

By 1975, plans were laid to replace the Hunter in the air-to-air role with a more modern fighter aircraft, the Northrop F-5E Tiger II.

The Hunter remained in a key role within the Swiss Air Force; like the RAF's Hunter it transitioned to be the country's primary ground attack platform; and would remain in this role until the Swiss government purchased 32 MDD F/A-18 Hornets as replacements in the late 1990s.

The Patrouille Suisse, the Swiss Air Force's display team, performed in Hunters for many years; only during 1994 the Patrouille Suisse transitioned to the F-5E, and the aircraft was finally dismissed.

I wanted to represent a Patrouille Suisse example (Code J-4030) in full Swiss AF style camo pattern (But without red and white drawings on the undersurfaces typical of the last period with the team) of the late 70's the beginning of the 80's.

This is the best Hawker Hunter F9/Mk 58 kit released in 1/72 scale by Revell of Germany.  I was surprised by the high quality of the mouldings and was equally impressed with the fit of the model, assembly the pieces was a pleasure, everything fit with precision and required just a bit of filler in the nose area and on the wing roots, the two half fuselages fit perfectly and the cockpit was a surprise with detailed instrument panel and a nice ejection seat.

In all, construction of this model took a couple of weeks, there were no fit problems apart from the lack of proper locator points for the well flaps and some other minor issues.

What is the best in this kit are the wheel wells that are really nicely done, once painted and photographed, they look like the real thing.

The model was finished in Humbrol enamels applied with a handbrush, the undersides were painted using a mix of Humbrol 56 and Humbrol Metal Coat 2001.

As I wanted to represent a standard late 1970's Patrouille Suisse example, I had to replace the fuselage commemorative strip (Celebrating the Swiss federation anniversary) with the white code J-4030 was obtained by some Tauro spare decals that fit perfectly for that purpose.

I finally used a bit of Microset and so they settled on to the surface perfectly. On top of this went my standard wash of selfmade “wheathering oil colors” and this was sealed in with Tamiya matt varnish. I used just a bit of CMK's stardust on the wheels to "dirty" them up, and finally the model was complete.

Happy Modelling to everyone.

Alex Cimenti

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