Kitty Hawk SEPECAT Jaguar T.2/T.4 1:48

[Mike]

SEPECAT Jaguar T.2/T.4
1:48 Kitty Hawk

A great many of us were saddened by the premature retirement of the Jaguar from RAF service, which marked the end of an era of a fighter bomber that started life as a fast jet trainer and progressed to an initially underpowered strike fighter that some said "could only take off due to the curvature of the earth", through successive upgrades became a competent aircraft in the right hands that proved its worth in the Gulf War before being withdrawn in April of 2007.

The two seat trainers were conversions by extending the fuselage forward of the intakes to accommodate an extra cockpit, which necessitated the deletion of one of the 30mm DEFA cannons from the underside to accommodate some relocated electronics. 38 of the initial T.2 variant were delivered to the RAF, and later upgraded to T.2As matching the GR.1a standard for consistency, then a major upgrade to "Jaguar 96" standard led to a new designation of T.4. Throughout its service life the trainers were capable of carrying weapons into war if necessary, although this facility was never needed.

The Kit
Kitty Hawk began their new range of Jaguar models in 1:48 with the release of the Jaguar A in French service, reviewed here toward the end of 2012 – where does the time go? We had to wait some five months before the release of a British Jag in the form of the GR.1/3 reviewed here, and that was just over a year ago too. After some delays, we're now finally able to build a 1:48 Jaguar two-seat variant without resorting to scratch-building, or casting about on eBay to find one of Neil Burkill's excellent Paragon conversions that he patterned for the old Airfix kit.

The New Sprue

The kit arrives in Kitty Hawk's standard top opening box that to me seems a little too small to fit the contents, as it's a tight squeeze in there even after the bags have been removed from the equation. Inside the box are seven sprues of light grey styrene, one of clear parts, a fret of Photo-Etch (PE) brass, and two decal sheets of modest proportions. The instruction booklet is slightly smaller than usual and printed in black and white with the centre page printed in glossy full colour containing the painting and decaling instructions. Realistically you'll have to remove this sheet from the booklet to get a full picture of the camouflaged Jag, but also so that your build instructions aren't disjointed, so that's exactly what I've done. The kit will be familiar if you already have a single seat variant, as it shares six of the seven sprues with the other aircraft. The reduced diameter main wheels and reduced chord slats on the wings have been carried over from the GR.1/3 boxing, but the nose wheel is still a little large when compared to the real thing, and you are still advised to install an APU exhaust in both air-brake bays. The curve of the inner wing leading edge is also the same as other boxing, and I have reached the conclusion that the start and end points are about right, but the curve is too long and sweeping on the kit. The 1:1 leading edge is straight for most of its length, but curves more sharply toward the root. It is most definitely fixable, but you'd have some additional work ahead of you, plus some making good of lost detail due to sanding. In truth, once the model is "bombed up", it's not that noticeable to most folks and doesn't scream at me from my cabinet.

Construction is almost identical to the earlier boxings with the exception of the cockpit and nose section, which is covered first in the instructions. You have a choice of two types of ejection seat, although there is no information given on which to choose for your chosen decal option. A set of seatbelts is supplied in PE for each of the earlier Mk.4 or later MB9b seats, but they aren't shown installed on the Mk.9b for some reason. The cockpit tubs are separate from eachother, and each has a PE instrument panel, and side consoles, plus cockpit sidewall parts and a control column each to allow either seat to control the aircraft. The nose gear bay is built up with the wheel and leg installed, and the two cockpits are glued in place, the front attaching by a ledge under the rear of the tub, while the rear seat is located on two pegs on top of the gear bay. The long nose section then encloses the assembly, but don't forget to install the small oval windows in the nose sides before doing so. Two coamings cover the instrument panels and their HUDs are added to the top with a piece of clear styrene representing the glass. One gun barrel is inserted in the port trough and the shroud is added around it, while the starboard side is faired over and moulded into the side of the nose, which reduces any remedial work. The canopies have two static sections in the form of the sharply sloping windscreen, plus the section between the two cockpits, which has a built in blast shield to protect the last man out in the event of an ejection. A pair of PE rear-view mirrors are added to the inside of the openers, which both have small tabs on the rear to facilitate easy location and setting the correct angle. If you elect to close the canopies however, you will need to trim the tabs and fill their location slots before gluing them in place.

The rest of the build follows the earlier boxings, so I won't repeat the process again apart from where they diverge. The new sprue contains a pair of CBLS-100 practice bomb containers along with the small bombs it carries, plus the chaff and flare dispensers that sit under the rear fuselage and are peculiar to RAF useage. The other weapons are held on the two sprues that came with the original French Jaguar A release, so a great many of them have no use with a British Jag, but the following can be used:

2 x AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles
2 x OBL755 Iron bomb
2 x Matra 155 rocket pods
2 x BGL480 Laser Guided Bomb
1 x fuel tank

The inclusion of only one fuel tank precludes the use of two underwing, which is often seen on trainer and single seat aircraft alike, although if you have two or more Jags in your stash, one could be sacrificed from another kit and a "clean" airframe could be built down the line.

Markings
Only two decal choices are provided in the box, but they are sufficiently different from eachother to suffice for many of us. Watch out for a proliferation of new sheets aimed that the trainer variants to cater for the later grey machines amongst others. From the box you can build one of the following:

• Jaguar T.2 XX842 33 of 2 Squadron – wrap-around grey green camouflage.
• Jaguar T.2 XX830 of the Empire Test Pilots School – Raspberry ripple red/white/blue scheme.
  

On my review sample the decals were a little poor, having registration offsets between the whites and reds that have resulted in poorly centred roundels and offsetting of the text on the white band for the drop tank on the ETPS scheme. The smaller sheet contains decals for the weapons, and as it is simple block colours and stencils, there is no registration to critique.

Conclusion
At last! We have the 1:48 Jaguar trainer in injected styrene that many have been waiting patiently for so long. The kit will build well if you take care with test-fitting, and should look great once complete, but again the issues with the decals detract from an otherwise good product. If you plan on depicting the EPTS machine, you would be well advised to seek out new roundels, and try to adjust the white stripe on the drop tank by either painting the background white and cutting out the text, or widening the decal with some extra white decal material. In terms of shape of the new section, they appear to have got the canopy sill line right, which affects the line and shape of the canopy if you get it wrong, as evidenced by the Neomega 2-seat conversion of yore. I need to check the canopy parts in place to check properly of course, but so far it looks good.

I would suggest some aftermarket wheels to correct the issue with the nose wheel, but there don't yet seem to be any good quality ones other than the Paragon wheel sets that are becoming more scarce as time goes by. Many of the recent aftermarket sets will fit this kit if you feel the need up upgrade the detail, with the exception of the cockpit and possibly the nose gear bay.

Recommended.

Review sample courtesy of

and available soon from major hobby shops.

[Mike]

Following a quick tape-together, I think they've got the new nose and canopy down pretty well. The canopy parts fit together well in the closed position too, if you cut off the tabs, which is also good news, as the trainers look good with the canopy closed.

[Antoine]

The box says T.2/T.4, but there are only decals options for two T.2???

[Mike]

Yeah... shame that, but I'm sure the AM guys will be rubbing their hands with glee. Does anyone have a list of model-related changes between the two variants, or was it all under the skin?

[Caerbannog]

Sepacat???

Thanks for the nice review

Rene

[stever219]

The proportions of the roundels for the II(AC) Squadron jet look a bit off: too much red, not quite enough blue, but I could be wrong.....

[Antoine]

Yeah... shame that, but I'm sure the AM guys will be rubbing their hands with glee. Does anyone have a list of model-related changes between the two variants, or was it all under the skin?

That would be most interesting, yes.

Now, onward to an IM. And a E?

[Mike]

I can't believe no-one pulled me up on the spelling of SEPECAT until Julien PMd me - amended now

[guillaume320]

Two observations from my part:

- The ETPS scheme is missing the large white underwing serials.

- The right hand side of the forward fuselage doesn't have the optional part for a cannon on this side, so this precludes making a French E from the box. (The E model retained 2 cannons...) If they ever decide to release a French box, they will need a whole new forward fuselage part.... I think this is a bit odd...

Otherwise I'm happy with this release...

Mike: You said the leading edge slat has been corrected in the GR1 box. I crosschecked my boxes but I can't see a difference between the slats in the A and the GR1??

Best regards,

Guillaume

[Caerbannog]

I can't believe no-one pulled me up on the spelling of SEPECAT until Julien PMd me - amended now

Didn't I? ;-)

Rene

[Julien]

Didn't I? ;-)

Rene

You did!

[Mike]

He did... I'm not well though