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Trumpeter Sea Fury & Seahawk.


dwh

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You don't mention scale but the comments about both subjects apply to both 1/72 and 1/48 scale kits (the 1/72 Sea Hawk is marketed by Hobbyboss.

IMHO the Sea Hawk is a very nice kit and definitely worth spending the money on. The only issue is that the fit of the front and rear fuselage parts can be tricky.

The Sea Fury is again a nice kit in terms of fit and details but there are a few inaccuracies I don't like. Said that, in 1/72 at least I would consider this the lesser of a number of evils and buy it anyway

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The Sea Hawk is a great little kit, just a bit basic.

The Sea Fury gets quite a lot of negative comments, and certainly has some accuracy issues as well as the over the top rivets. But then the Trumpeter Wyvern has both of those problems, and nobody seems to mind with that one :shrug: I would try to get hold of alternative decals for both of them though, the kit ones are really not easy to get good results with.

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As stated above the Sea Hawk is nice

The Sea Fury is okay except for the crap wheels, gear legs prop and spinner.

The canopy is ill shaped, the fuselage aft of the cockpit is incorrect, the exhaust fairings

just plain wrong, the cockpit is woeful and the wing fold is taking the mick.

Other than that its not bad.

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If you get the Trumpy Sea Fury then keep the box as it's a lid type and people get excited over that and ditch everything else

You may mock but have you ever tried repacking a Revell kit? It is impossible I say!

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Broadly, yes to both. The Sea Hawk is by far the better effort, fixes are available for much of the Sea Fury shortcomings except the dreadful-shaped canopy -I've heard that can be whittled down to a better approximation of accuracy, but it is still pretty shameful! Barracuda's corrected wheels and fuel tanks are worth having, I think there is a replacement prop available but not sure where...the other stuff NAVY870 mentioned I'm not sure about (what's up with the wing-fold? I'm not disputing, just not smart enough to know!).

The funniest thing about the Sea Fury is that it is supplied with separate cowling panels that you can open to display...absolutely nothing!

I know we're talking 1/48 here, but if I had my time again I'd track down a 1/72 AKI resin Sea Fury -pricey, but with all the aftermarket bits I lavished on the 1/48 Trumpy one, I'd still come out ahead and with a better model...

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The wing fold bears little resemblance to the real thing.

Lots of boxes and gubbins in there on the kit that I've never seen in 30 years round the oil leaking

big sods

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Thanks for all the input guys, I shall be purchasing them for the stash,

Homebee, thanks for picture posts they definately look and resemble the aircraft concerned, Excellent builds by the way.

Derek

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I really liked the Seahawk, but be careful installing the nose gear bay walls. I did something wrong and couldn't get the fuselage together without cutting a big chunk of the wheel well sidewalls to get it closed up.

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The Sea Fury is okay except for the crap wheels, gear legs prop and spinner.

The canopy is ill shaped, the fuselage aft of the cockpit is incorrect, the exhaust fairings

just plain wrong, the cockpit is woeful and the wing fold is taking the mick.

Other than that its not bad.

A good case for Airfix to give us a new one.
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The wing fold bears little resemblance to the real thing.

Lots of boxes and gubbins in there on the kit that I've never seen in 30 years round the oil leaking

big sods

Jeez, that must have been fun! TBH, I didn't pay any heed to the insides as I built mine un-folded. Many thanks for the insights.

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The Sea Hawk is a great little kit, just a bit basic.

The Sea Fury gets quite a lot of negative comments, and certainly has some accuracy issues as well as the over the top rivets. But then the Trumpeter Wyvern has both of those problems, and nobody seems to mind with that one :shrug: I would try to get hold of alternative decals for both of them though, the kit ones are really not easy to get good results with.

never read any comments to this effect on the Wyvern, care to elaborate?

dwh, if you want a 1/48th Sea Fury, I'd suggest the Hobbycraft kit is a better starting point, but that needs work as well.

At this point someone usually pipes up about the accuracy of the Falcon vac kit, this thread is worth a read, as it's all about 1/48th Sea Fury's, and has pics of all of them.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/69728-hawker-sea-fury/

(Note Venomvixen in linked thread is Navy870 daughter, and has had access to the real thing as well, hence the detail pics)

A Sea Fury from Airfix to the standard and price of their new Hurricane would be a joy to behold!

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(Note Venomvixen in linked thread is Navy870 daughter, and has had access to the real thing as well, hence the detail pics)

She describes the kit's faults better than I

Glad I spent all the coin educating her :)

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The Seahawk is a lovely little kit but the Sea Fury is terrible in terms of accuracy. I would always advise adding a bit of detail to the Hobbycraft kit as it is far more accurate.

Martin

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Would this be the Hobbycraft kit to get?

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/112123-hobbycraft-hc1531-korean-war-sea-fury

If so, I can ad it to my list.

Any Hobbycraft Sea Fury is fine, they are all the same base kit.

Note, you sometimes see Kitech Sea Fury kit, this is the same kit as well, not a copy as i have read on occasion, but the plastic is different, the Hobbycraft is quite hard, the Kitech is softer..

EDIT the Hobbycraft boxings with the side black stripe usually have decent useable decals, there's the Korean War and Bay of Pigs Boxings, and 'Prop Perfection' (Canadian Navy) and two other boxings.

There are plenty of aftermarket decals though.

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The HC kit was based, IIRC, on a racing Sea Fury so it is missing some operational aircraft bits, like the two "grilled" outlet forward of the main gear bays. Airwaves has this in their PE set and Aeromaster had them as decals.

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The earlier releases of the HC kit didnt have the intake grills

Later issues included them plus new and more accurate wheels.

Not a bad kit at all

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I built the Sea Fury. For me the canopy/cockpit area is the worst feature. I ended up simply filing the bottom of the canopy until it was "flatter" rather than curved - it would never fit closed this way but I wanted it open anyway. Also the wing fold, I can;t be certain that it wasn't my fault but I found it impossible to acheive the very much "toed in" effect of the real thing at the tips & mine were hard to install in any position except nearly vertical.

DSC00455_zpsd5c510a9.jpg

That said, I like it as a kit & a subject. I've got the HC kit with the Flightpath set that I'll have a bash at some time. I've also got the beautiful Fisher 1/32 kit that I take out & fondle regularly!

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@Graham T, nice work on the canopy; it looks much better than mine. What I neglected to mention is that the sill also needs filling in with some card or something so the edge is level rather than scalloped out. Not a biggie, but shouldn't be necessary anyway!

There are quite a few Hobbycraft examples on ARC:

http://www.arcair.com/Gal-Archives/prop/Sea-Fury/01.shtm

I have to admit, they look a lot more convincing than the HB item! I guess it hangs on what kind of 'modelling fun' you prefer: updating or 'accurising'...

(Nah, I still want a little AKI kit! :D )

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The earlier releases of the HC kit didnt have the intake grills

Later issues included them plus new and more accurate wheels.

Not a bad kit at all

Thanks for the update, Steve.

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