Search the Community

Here's my offering...I checked with Scalemates and it indeed goes all the way back to 1973 and the first FROG kit. And I think I'll build it right OOB as the decals look alright...at least in register! Still in the bag... They look pretty good. Reasonably clean looking sprue... I'll get into it tonight. This will be a closed canopy job so I doubt I will do any fancy interior work. I think it's a tail sitter too, so some weight will have to go into the nose. And I'm not sure of the markings as there is no guide included with the plans. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! --John

Pilot Replicas is to release a 1/48th de Havilland Sea Venom FAW.21 kit - ref.48-A-009 Source: https://www.facebook.com/largescalemodeller/photos/a.459679464104014.1073741828.450176221721005/1054354864636468/?type=3&theater Box art V.P.

Hi all, Continuing my Fleet Air Arm jet aircraft build, I recently completed Classic Airframes 1/48 Sea Venom. I was very lucky to find this on ebay and I paid the price for the rare kit (most expensive kit I have ever bought...), however, its my favourite British jet of the 50's one of my favourite British aircraft. The kit was overall good in fit, although every part required some cleaning up. I replaced the (albeit rather nice) kit resin ejection seats with some even finer and more detailed resin seats. In addition, I CAD modelled and 3D printed the undercarriage as the kit parts weren't brilliant. Brush painted with hataka acrylics and weathered using Mig panel line wash plus some weathering powders. Decals were from the kit, I really like this striking scheme with suez stripes and tip tank stripes. All done, aside from a windscreen wiper and an aerial or two... Thanks for looking! Ben

De Havilland Sea Venom 1/32 by Revell / Matchbox Hello an Welcome to the "long time coming" RFI for my build of the De Havilland Sea Venom 1/32 by Revell or Matchbox which ever takes your fancy. This particular one is the Revell boxing kindly sold to me for next to nothing by the very generous @rob Lyttle . I do hope that I have done her justice dear sir. The WIP can be found HERE. She was a blinder of a kit with lots of things to add to get her the way I wanted but the foundations were good which was all I needed. Shes a lot bigger than I though for a 1/32, the cockpit had not much detail to speak of so pretty much all of it is scratch built. I used: Tamiya glue, acrylics and sprays. Flory washes. Lots of plastic card and wire. and plenty of help from the wonderful BM hive mind. ( Thanks guys you know who you are ) Special thanks to Chris Sandham-Bailey for the massive amount of reference shots. So without further ado I'll get on with the pics in no particular order taken this morning ( Friday 13th ) in a lovely Autumnal back garden in the Mid West of England. Get a cuppa, there are loads. And that Ladies and Gentlemen is that. I hope she is pleasing to you, she was a pleasure to build and I'm happy with most of what went on. Thanks once again for all the help and Companionship along the way. That's the best bit. ( The Journey ) Take care and as always dear chums. Happy Modelling. Johnny. 🦈

Hello and Welcome to a collection of my builds that I'll fill up as this CraZY year progresses. Hope you enjoy them. 🤠 Johnny Messerschmitt Me 262B-1a/U1 by Airfix 1/72 WIP RFI The Mighty "JUG". P-47 N Thunderbolt by Academy 1/48 WIP RFI De Havilland Sea Venom 1/32 by Revell / Matchbox WIP RFI Dr Spadgent's House of Horrors . ( Multitudinous modelling ) Horton Go 229 1:72 Revell WIP RFI Bell AH-1 / AB-47 1:72 Italeri WIP RFI Polikarpov I-16 Zvesda 1:144 WIP RFI Bristol Blenheim Mk.1f Airfix 1:72 WIP RFI The Mi-24v “HIND” 1/48 by Zvezda WIP TO BE CONTINUED........................................................

WW139 as aboard Ark Royal in the mid 1950s This Sea Venom was the second one delivered to the Royal Navy (the aircraft now preserved at the FAA Museum being the first) and served until 1961. The old Frog kit had its challenges but was a simple and enjoyable build. Just a few extras I added; the strakes in the intakes and some cockpit detail that you can barely see. I also used a vac-form canopy very kindly donated by @perdu that I cut to display open. I was pleasantly surprised by the decals, I thought they might break up but they were fine.

Hi mates, I think I have recovered enough from my dual Fairey Firefly builds to start a new project. The lucky kit that worked its way to the top of my stash is the 1:72 CMR de Havilland Sea Venom FAW.53, which I'll build as WZ895/870-NW of No. 724 Squadron RAN, as it appeared at NAS Nowra in the summer of '59. Ah, the summer of '59 - I was five years old and constantly mad at my older brothers for monopolising the gramophone with that lousy rock 'n' roll music. I wanted to play my Mickey Mouse records! And my folks - I really didn't care that Castro just took over Cuba, or that the Soviets crashed some spaceship into the moon, or any of that Red Scare stuff. I was just seven years away from my first encounter with injection moulded styrene...and eyeing my brother's model collection with envy. Hey, he won't even know that I'm playing with his model cars. Oops... Let's take a look at what's in the box (and a sturdy box it is!). As is the case with most CMR kits, the main ingredients are resin, augmented by photoetch, vacuform, and canopy masks. You can see the landing gear have been cast in a black resin, which is much stronger and will not deform under weight (but that hasn't prevented one of the main gear legs from breaking off from the pour stub): CMR also provide two vacuform canopies, since they know about my skills in cutting those guys out! I also purchased the optional folding wing kit which is in the next photo, along with the two decal sheets, pre-painted photoetch, and the canopy masks. As typical, the instruction sheets are extremely well done and run to 14 pages, with an additional 2 pages for the folding wings, and 4 pages of historical information and photos. Several of the photos were provided by Tony O'Toole and Steve Long, both ardent contributors to Britmodeller. Speaking of Steve, the choice of markings for this model is my appreciation of the help that he provided while I was building my Firefly TT.4. It wouldn't have been the same model without his guidance. It doesn't hurt that this scheme has nice dark blue wing tanks either! Steve helped restore a Sea Venom which was painted as WZ895/870-NW (hence his Britmodeller profile name of NAVY870). Hopefully Steve will be around to tell that story and stop me from doing anything stupid with this model. So, I'm off to don my hazmat suit and start sanding some resin! The Sea Venom will make a nice addition to my previous CMR resin builds of the Buccaneer and Scimitar. Cheers, Bill

Hello all. Since starting this in late July, I must confess I had no idea this would turn into such a marathon build. Having only joined the forum back in the Spring, I feel in hindsight that this build quickly turned into some kind of an apprenticeship, given the range of new skills and techniques it required me to learn. It goes without saying that I've been lucky throughout to receive a constant stream of support, advice, and encouragement from more people than there is space to list here. Suffice it to say that they have my continuing gratitude - you can find out who they are in the WIP over here, accompanied by the usual shenanigans: The Kit I bought this for 99p on theBay. It came in a plastic bag, no decals, and a photocopied set of instructions - I should have guessed then that it would be trouble! Descended from the original Frog moulding (which is nicely-accurate at this scale in terms of shape and size), God only knows what generation of subsequent cheap moulding this one represented - nothing in the bag to indicate the company doing the moulding, whilst the material itself was some of the grottiest (not to mention grittiest) old plastic imaginable. It came nicely concealed in more flash than Swiss Tony. The Intention I've a long-held affection for the Fleet Air Arm (due in part to a period of my childhood spent to the south of Yeovilton) and decided some time back - as others right-thinking adults have done - to build my way periodically through a series of FAA subjects as a long-term project. Having had my eye on the Model Alliance decal set for the Ark Royal Air Wing, I decided to start off with the Sea Venom done up as WW150 from the 1956 deployment, complete with attractive Wiccan nose art and fetching checkered wing-tanks. I knew nothing about Sea Venoms when I started - I now know it to be an absolute beauty of a naval aircraft with fabulous lines and curves - the winds must have loved it. I won't bore you with a list of the alterations, additions, deletions, scratching, silicone implants and other general alterations I made, (you can read the full horrors in the WIP), suffice it to say that although a formally-accurate kit to base a build of this aircraft on, it shows its age (don't we all Dah-lings!) when compared to the detailing available on kits like the CMR one recently gussied-up by Navy Bird. I'd also decided on a wing-fold. It seemed a good idea at the time when I thought (fantasized?) that this would be a reasonably quick build. In terms of references, there are one or two decent shots of WW150 floating around the web (there's copies over in the WIP) and in various publications on the Sea Venom, whilst the Warpaint drawings (that I used for panel details etc.) seem generally accurate when offered up against the Frog kit. The Evidence I decided to shoot daylight outside on this one - there's been some lovely examples of this approach by others on the forum, plus the grey stratus layer this morning gave a convincing imitation of Atlantic maritime-gey that seemed a perfect compliment for EDSG: My thanks to all of my co-conspirators on the WIP. Just in case there's any doubt about the next build, I'm caving to peer pressure: Thanks for looking! Tony

'...and every where the blue sky belongs to them' Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gloss to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 'Invert the aircraft, release harnesses and fall out' Emergency handling procedure from Sea Venom Pilot's Notes. Hello again all, The madness is upon me again! It's been a while since I posted anything visual, largely as I've had no real bench time at all of late, but after faffing around I've decided to do a sequence of related builds for the next year or so of various Fleet Air Arm aircraft from the 50s and 60s. Some classic jets and choppers from that era, that a recent visit to Yeovilton has rekindled my affection for. Here's some bench shots of the Frog 1:72 Sea Venom FAW.21 that will be the first in the series. Let's start with the good news: the decals seems usable and in good condition. Aaaaaaaand that's it for the good news... This splendid-looking aircraft has been subject of a number of builds already on BM, and whilst I love these older kits like Frog, can you see all that blasted flash? It looks more like a Frank Auerbach painting of a kit with all that baroque plasticity. Have a closer look and you'll see what I mean: As to the glazing I'm thinking this was originally intended as an insect eye rather than a canopy. Have I been given part of the old Airfix Praying Mantis kit in error? Pity the poor crew of this thing though; the moulding guys really went for a lovely 'Facehugger from Alien' approach - I'll have to call this crate 'Nostromo' now: Seriously. Did this kit partially melt in the post on the way over due to the recent heatwave or something??? Actually, I have my suspicions that as this was bought unboxed (and hence dirt cheap), it may not be an original Frog moulding as advertised but a later iteration - was the original mould of this kit ever this flashy BITD? S-oo..after having foresworn kits that need lots of correction (after my previous Dark Night of the Matchbox Meteor Night Fighter) here I am back with another kit needing as much attention probably. Of course I'm moaning too much. It's my own fault for buying it and I could always throw it away and buy a decent version. But you know I won't. I've got etch. 1/72 etch.... That will make it all better, won't it? I've some yet to do on colour and airframe details, but the notion at this stage is to to just go the whole hog, wingfolds and all, and see how we get on. BTW I noticed that Falcon do a really nice FAA vacform canopy set that included most of the aircraft I hope to do in this series, as well as that snazzy Model Alliance decal set for the Ark Royal air wing that also covers many of them, so I may have to break my embargo on any more purchases this month. bank manager... It's going to be a busy summer work-wise; I'll have to grab time at the bench as and when I can get it so my updates may not be as regular as I would hope. The main thing is that I hope you get to enjoy the journey and please pitch in as often as you want with any criticism and advice of my attempts to subdue this monster Tony

Afternoon folks - I am have a busy week finishing off kits and this one I finished this morning. Its the first Cyber Hobby I've done and I think its great. The only slight issue is that I did't put enough weight up front so its a tail sitter which is damn frustrating! You will see at the back I have put some sprue under the tail to keep the nose on the ground! So I really enjoyed this kit although I found it bizarre that the instructions just seem to leave out certain stages - whats all that about!? I used Xtracolor Xtra Dark Sea Grey for the upper sides and Tamiya Sky for the undersides and the kit decals which were fine. I am surprised how much I like it in 1:72 - I once did the Revell 1:32 version which was an aweful build! Think I will be doing some more of these and I have the Cyber Hobby Sea Vixen in my stash which I might do next. So any comments welcome Chris

de Havilland Sea Venom, pics thanks to Nigel Heath of Sea Venom FAW.22 - WW145 on display at National Museum of Flight, East Fortune, Scotland.

My second vacform, but much tougher to finish than the first, mainly due to a series of stupid mistakes when painting it. Aeroclub kit Modified Quickboost seats Berna decals 3d printed wheels and nose undercarriage In progress thread is here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234942403-sea-venom-sea-hawk-wyvern-and-skyraider/

Second model for the year completed. Again this one has been ~90 % complete for the last 18 months or so. Built straight out of the box with brush painted Tamiya acrylics. Not one of my best, but then again not one of my worst either . Thanks for looking.

Here's all the modelling I've done so far for 2012, minus a few binned failures (AZ Spitfire Vb with horribly askew landing gear, some others) and a Whif (USN Sea Hawk). I expect to finish a Merlin and hopefully a fast jet before the arrival of the new year, but this is probably pretty representative of my work as a whole. Please excuse the quality of the photos, I use my phone camera, and please excuse the quality of the models as well.

Eduard Photo Etch Detail Sets for Cyberhobby De Havilland Sea Venom Kit 1:72 Eduard Cyberhobby’s recent aircraft kits have acquired something of a mixed reputation within the modelling community. Whilst superb engineering and flawless fit can usually be taken for granted, the occasional dodgy shape issue and dimensional goof have often blotted their copybook. Their Sea Venom was no different in this regard, but despite a rather generous wingspan and skinny tail booms, some beautifully finished examples have already appeared on the forum. Now Eduard have released some photo etched detail sets to help you make the most of this interesting kit. Sea Venom FAW.21 (self adhesive) 1:72 Eduard Eduard have followed their usual convention for smaller 1:72 scale kits and have released two sets for this kit. The first is a comprehensive set containing two frets of parts. The second is from their ‘Zoom’ range and contains just one fret. The larger set contains plenty of parts for detailing the cockpit, including a full set of pre-painted harnesses for the Martin Baker ejector seats, a pre-painted instrument panel and side consoles and a variety of smaller parts. The kit’s undercarriage receives particularly close attention. There are parts for detailing the undercarriage doors, including new hydraulic jacks as well as scissor links and brake lines for the undercarriage legs. The wing folds also receive some attention and some rather nice parts for detailing the hinges are included. The external airframe is not ignored either. There are a number of surface panels on the fret, as well as new fins for the wing tip tanks. Whilst you are cutting the old fins off, you might as well remove the whole tank and reduce the wingspan to correct one of the kit’s faults. Landing flaps are included as well. These are designed to fit around the kit parts, although some cutting will be required to install the flaps themselves. The end result should be worth it though, and at least they don’t have any fiddly ribs to make life difficult. A few fine details such as antennae, aerials and a windscreen wiper round off a very comprehensive set. Sea Venom FAW.21 Zoom (self adhesive) 1:72 Eduard The ‘Zoom’ set is simply comprised of the pre-painted self-adhesive fret from the set reviewed above. Opt for this set and you’ll miss out on those lovely landing flaps, but at least there are enough parts to bring the cockpit to life and add a bit of interest to the undercarriage and the rest of the airframe. Conclusion If you have chosen to invest in Cyberhobby’s kit, then I’d recommend you consider picking up one of Eduard’s sets as well. It will make a really positive difference to the finished model and can be firmly recommended. Review samples courtesy of