Sea Venom, Sea Hawk, Wyvern and Skyraider

[Rizzo]

I've been enjoying making a WnW Pup recently, but needed a bit of a break from it, and this kit seems ideal as it's so different. It'll eventually be part of a 4 aircraft vignette, for HMS Eagle during Operation Musketeer: I was only aware of the Classic Airframes kit when I was looking for a 1/48 Sea Venom, but that goes for silly prices on ebay. As well as being much cheaper, this kit looked more interesting to make and seems to have good accuracy. I've not found a work in progress thread for one here though, so thought it might be of interest to someone. Here's what you get in the box. Vac form wings and fuselage, injection molded foward fuselage and tail, and metal details.

Edited March 3, 2014 by Rizzo

[Rizzo]

One of the first things I'll need done is the jet pipe, so I can make the cut-out for it in the vacformed parts.

The metal parts look a bit rough when you start with them, but clean up quite easily:

[Martian]

I shall be following this build with both interest and envy as this is one kit I wish I had in my stash.

Martin

[Rizzo]

I've just glued together the fuselage pod- the fit so far has been excellent.

The kit has you build up the cockpit on one side, so lots of dry fitting is required, but it all went together quite quickly. Everything is built up around the metal nose gear bay.

I scratch built some of the missing details on the right side (although I think I've used a FAW20 as reference by mistake....), added in the front bulkhead, and replaced the kit seats with some modified resin mk4a ones.

Other than that, all the detail needed is provided in the kit. The only problem is working out what goes where- there's loads of parts, and not so many clues as to what they all are

I did also spend ages getting Aeroscale decals into the instrument panel, but you can't see the damn things now... should have taken a photo before I glued it together.

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Great start mate - I'm watching with jealous eyes!!

Lovely pair of Martin Bakers too!

Cheers

Jonners

[Silver Fox]

Looks fabulous so far. I sold on my Sea Venom earlier this year and have pangs of regret every time I see one being built.

Watching with interest.

[Simon Cornes]

Great start, whose seats are those?

Simon

[woody37]

Great work in that pit, love the seats

[Miggers]

Bet they're Uncle John's Si.

Knowing the man behind this kit Rizzo,whatever challenges you meet along the way,

the result will very accurate and immensly satisfying to the eye.

[Rizzo]

Thanks for the comments

Simon, the seats are Pavla. The bottom half isn't the same as the ones a Sea Venom used, and needs some modification to fit (as with the real thing I guess!). The top half looks exactly right, to my eyes anyway. Just needed the handles added.

Here's the cutout in the lower half of the fuselage for the jet. One thing that the CA and 1/32 matchbox have in common is lots of missing detail in this area. The Aeroclub kit looks better to me, but is still limited by what can be done with a vac formed part. So I've started building this area up a bit, first by adding in the 'roof' of the cutout with plastic card. When both halves are together I'll add more of this in with milliput.

[Rizzo]

The next step was getting all these parts stuck together... As with most things so far the fit was great; no big problems at all. You just need to take care when sanding the wing halves down. And I'm finding it best to hold back a bit with thinning down the trailing edges, and instead sand down the outside faces to get a sharp edge to them, once it's all been glued together.

Here's my hi tech approach to getting the booms lined up:

I used slow setting epoxy resin, so I had loads of time to get it right.

No matter how good the fit is, with a kit that needs metal parts, vacform parts and injection moulded parts all joined together, you're going to need some filler. With this in mind I've used loads of glue in the joints so it all looked a bit of a mess to start with. And once the epoxy resin had set I flooded the joints with CA glue.

The only place it didn't have such a good fit was the starboard intake. With the correct join to the fuselage, there was a bit of a gap to the wing behind. You can probably put that down to me not being careful enough with cutting the wings out.

After a bit of filler it was looking a lot neater though:

I've boxed in the wheel bays with plastic card. The metal part will stay hidden behind this as it still provides the support for the undercarriage.

And I've also drilled out the gun ports, and started to clean up the front undercarriage bay

I won't have the joins right without a layer of primer on things to see where it's at- it's really hard to tell with transparent CA glue and different coloured parts everywhere. But before that I need to get the tail and wingfolds sorted.

[NavDoc]

Very neatly done ! I'll be interested in seeing how this comes along -

[fu_manchu]

Brilliant

I have one of these in my stash but have been in two minds about building it, this might inspire me!

[thorfinn]

Inspiring work so far, and that "front office" is beautiful. I've got the old Rareplanes 1/72 vac kit, and this is tempting me to finally give it a go.

[scorpiomikey]

lurking

[feifeitim]

Great work so far Rizzo! I'll follow your build with interest!

[Rizzo]

With my workspace in a loft conversion, I've not been up there much recently- it's just way too hot...

So not much progress on this one to show. I've got most of the outer wings in place though. Just the rescribing to do on these bits now.

[AnonymousAA72]

Coming along nicely! I'm lucky! I also have one in the stash....Aeroclub's Vampires and Venoms were superb little kits...my two built Vampires (now approaching 15 year old!) are ear-marked for a bit of a restoration job soon! Looking forward to seeing some paint on yours!!!

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Great job so far. You don't fool us with this "oh the kit's really easy" stuff; anything with multiple materials like this one s hard to do well, and there's some sweet skill on display (on a much under-appreciated aircraft, IMHO - tends to be missed between enthusiasm for Vampire & Vixen)

[Caerbannog]

Impressive

[albapfalzd3]

Wonderful job, I have the Classic Airframes kit minus the Canopy but would love to get my hands on one of these Aeroclub kits. Look forward to seeing more of this one.

Roy

[Rizzo]

I've nearly got the fuselage to the point where I can start the rescribing, but while I was waiting for some filler to dry I had a look at the undercarriage. Nothing much that needs changing from the kit parts, but I didn't like the nose part so much- it's all cast as one part (wheel included) so I had a go at reworking it a bit. After chopping it up and generally making a mess of things I decided 3d printing would be much better, and I've spent some time this afternoon making a new part for it.

It'll take a few weeks to arrive, but I have the part on order from shapeways.

If anyone else has this kit and wants the new nose gear, I can make the design public.

http://www.shapeways.com/model/1250332/sea-venom-nose-wheel-1-48.html

Edited August 15, 2013 by Rizzo

[RMCS]

Fantastic work...

[Colin W]

Looking good, this is a great little kit and if the cockpit is any measure then you are doing it justice.

If you look on ARC (where we used to Post before Brit \Modeller) there are builds by Darius and myself from many years ago.

Colin

[Norman]

Looking great !!