The Hawker Demon was one of a long line of Hawker biplanes all based on the Hart bomber of a few years before. This aircraft was a reintroduction of the two-seat fighter to the RAF. The prototype was a converted Hart that had the supercharged Kestrel IIS engine installed as well as two forward firing machine guns in place of the Hart's single Vickers.

The Demon and Hart looked very much the same as they were basically the same airframe. There are a few distinguishing differences, however. The Demon has long exhaust pipes, a wider radiator, and the gunners position is different. In fact, some demons were fitted with a 'lobsterback' folding shield for the gunner to offer him some small amount of protection. The Demon has a relatively long life for the period, serving from around 1934 until 1939 when the last one had been pulled from service with the Auxiliary Air Force.

Aeroclub was probably one of the earliest producers of what we now know as the multi-media kit. This kit has the basic airframe in low pressure injected plastic, with most of the other bits in metal. You are given some strut material to fill in the gaps of parts not otherwise provided. As you can imagine, the details are not bad for the medium and adequate for the job. The plastic itself is a bit soft and very thick indeed; requiring the use of a razor saw to remove the parts from the sprue. 

There is some flash on all the plastic parts, but a quick swipe with some sandpaper should remove most of the offending material. The metal parts are well done and sufficiently detailed, though they also suffer from some flash and need the mold seams cleaned up. The metal part that is the underfuselage radiator has no detail in it at all and just looks like a metal block. The single vacuformed part is the small canopy. There is no spare. You are required to make up much of the cockpit surroundings out of card, and all struts but the 'N' and main landing gear struts will have to be formed from the length of Contrail airfoil section that is given.

The instructions have a nice three view drawing on one side, which also doubles as a decal placement guide. The other is a rather generic sounding verbal construction sequence. You know, the 'make the interior out of plastic card and install the various cockpit bits' sort of thing. Not too helpful for beginners, but not a stumbling block for more experienced modelers. There are markings for one aircraft, that of 41 Squadron and they are very good and up to the same standards as Modeldecal sheets.

The kit isn't impossible to build as I built one many years ago. Here is a link to that review along with the rather poor picture I took of the completed kit.

Definitely not a beginner's kit, but one that can be built by anyone with intermediate skills who has some short run kit experience.

Review copy courtesy of me and my wallet! 

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