The overall standard of moulding is good with sharp recessed detail and good fit of parts. Most of the kit is based around the T.Mk.1 moulds with new parts for the fuselage and wing-tip missile rails. Construction is swift and the overall fit of parts is excellent, just like its predecessor.

There are a few minors niggles and some big, major ones along the way thought. On the minor side the kit cockpit is a straight cover-over from the previous kit and isn't really correct for the 100 series - at this scale it debatable whether anyone will ever notice, but the conscientious out there might want to rework them using some Reheat photo-etch details.

The wing also from the original Hawk and therefore doesn't feature the correct number of vortex generators - real nit picking this, but they can be added with slivers of plastic card. The instructions give dimensions for placing the new wing fences, but these put the inner three too far outboard - Italeri seem to have gotten mixed up with the "combat” wing fitted to some Series 60 hawk which looks similar, but is not the same, as the one fitted to the Hawk 100.

The drop tanks in the kit are the standard 100 gallon units but the Hawk 100 tends to be seen with the larger 130 gallon tanks. The kit also supplies a new pair of what AIM-9L Sidewinders that are actually inferior to the existing items on the sprues, and which the instructions tell you not to use!

The upper decking of the fuselage aft of the canopy (part 20B) is still a little too square in section but Italeri have taken the opportunity to give this Hawk a more decent sized jet-pipe.

Decals offer markings for two aircraft: the first RAAF Hawk Mk.127 - ZJ632 - which was rolled out last year, and ZJ100, the BAe demonstrator in a pseudo-South East Asia camouflage finish with RAF roundels. Alas, it's here that the major niggles emerge and Italeri really let the kit down with some poor research and even worse execution.

Firstly the decal sheet is almost completely usable. The RAAF roundels are suspect in size, proportion and are printed in black whereas they should be in grey on the roll-out aircraft - the rear colour art at least gets this right. The decals for BAe demonstrator are even worse, the RAF roundels are twice the size they should be, scaling out at 24 inches instead of 12! The BAe "Hawk" logo on the tail is missing some details and the emblem for the nose is also too big. Full colour stencil data is supplied but is only applicable to the BAe aircraft - the RAAF Hawk has grey stencils.

Italeri's finishing instructions fare no better, the RAAF camouflage (on the instructions and rear colour art) scheme has the dark grey on the wing and tailplanes extending to the trailing edge whereas it should be more or less in the centre of the wing (similar in concept to the F-15). The roll-out RAAF aircraft also lacked the parachute box fairing at the base of the spine - as removing this means some major surgery it might be best to leave this alone and give Italeri the benefit of the doubt that it was probably fitted at a later date.

The artwork for the BAe demonstrator is just plain awful. Not only does the camouflage pattern in the kit not match photos of ZJ100 - assuming these are the ones Italeri based their kit on - it doesn't even match itself from view to view. Italeri also suggest that the aircraft also had light grey undersides - it didn't and the box art is also more correct in this respect. To cap it all, even the placement diagram for the decals has most of the items in the wrong place.

Hopefully one of the aftermarket decal companies out there will pick up on the Hawk 100 and issue not only better decals for the kit options but also the new Canadian Mk.115s, Abu Dhabi, Malaysian, Indonesian and Omani examples - this kit deserves better.

It's shame that someone made such a hash of things because this is an essentially decent kit that succeeds almost despite of Italeri, not because of them! The kit does build into a presentable and well priced model of the 100 series and a little cross kitting between this and T Mk.1 should yield some of the sub variants like the Series 60 or those Hawks fitted with the combat wing.

It would be nice if Italeri were to follow this one up with a Hawk 100 - but please, get someone to design proper decals and camouflage schemes next time.