Quickboost has added a well-detailed Hawker Hunter Martin Baker Mk.2H ejection seat to their growing line of detail parts. It is a replacement for the one found in the Academy (and Italeri) 1/48 scale kits and will greatly enhance the cockpit of a model built from either of those kits. It is reported that RAF Hunters were manufactured with either Mk.2H or Mk.3H seats (and some Hunters manufactured with Mk.3H seats were retrofitted with Mk.2H seats), so Quickboost has chosen to offer the MB Mk.2H. The Quickboost seat captures the look of the prototype very nicely with crisp and enhanced details and molded-in safety belts that will greatly improve the cockpit of any Hunter.

Quickboost’s ejection seat is cast in their familiar gray resin and is made up of two pieces (the seat and a separate face curtain ejection handle). Everything comes on a small casting block. Parts are separated from the casting block with a razor saw or xacto blade. There is a little flash that is to be removed in the open areas of the molded-in emergency harness release handle and the face curtain ejection handle. However, I must caution anyone planning to remove the flash that I found the parts to be so fragile that it is not easily removed without damaging the thin handles.

To review this item, I tried to carefully remove the flash with a new very sharp #11 blade after the parts were separated from the casting block and found the flash to be too thick and the handles to be too thin. Both handles fractured almost into small pieces as soon as I applied even the slightest pressure. To remedy the situation, I fashioned thin wire into the same shapes and attached them with superglue. I decided to photograph the unpainted assembled seat to show how it should look with the flash removed and the parts in place.

The simple instruction sheet in the package includes a line drawing to show where to locate the face curtain ejection handle…but it’s obvious where to place it. Since the material is resin, it is necessary to use superglue (CA) or epoxy cement to attach the seat to the kit’s styrene plastic fuselage tub.

This product is highly recommended as a quick and easy way for a modeler to improve the cockpit detail of any 1/48 scale Hawker Hunter…with the caution about the fragile parts.

My thanks to IPMS/USA and Quickboost for the review sample and IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review this excellent little detail part.