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Hi all, This build idea started after a trip to the Fleet Air Arm Museum. My fiance looked at the gangly Gannet (XA466) and asked, "Why don't you build that one?". So, I decided I would. At the time, Airfix had not released a Fairey Gannet, so I searched (and finally found) a Classic Airframes Gannet, and bid on it. I was the highest bidder (you don't want to know how much I spent!), and as soon as I received the kit I promptly cut the wings for the fold. Inevitably, only a few months later, Airfix released a Fairey Gannet.... The Classic Airframes Gannet went to a fellow Britmodleler member, and I started on the Airfix Gannet instead - another sacrifice to the modelling gods! On to the Airfix Gannet, I made the following modifications; Front cockpit instrument panel was converted by replacing the gunsight with a 3D printed ILS instrument panel, Rear cockpit had the radar instrumentation removed and a rear bulkhead added to represent the COD variant, Cockpit access ladder panel cut out and detailed with plasticard, brass rod and a 3D printed access ladder, Radome hole faired over, Wing fold detailing added, control rods made of brass tube and wiring added, Baggage pods 3D printed, White aerials 3D printed, added to outer wings on the upper and lower surfaces, Scratchbuilt aerial on the port bomb bay door made out of 3D printed parts and brass tube, Aerial wire added (with 3D printed and brass tube supports/mounts), Propeller hubs were 3D printed to allow the blades to be feathered. The following aftermarket was used; Eduard STEEL seatbelts, Quickboost exhausts and intakes, Armory wheels, Decals from Xtradecal, CtA and Kits-World. The build wasn't overly difficult, Airfix have done an excellent job with the design of this kit Painted with Tamiya XF-50 Field Blue (which seems to be a perfect match for RAF Blue Grey), weathered using MIG oilbrushes and MIG Panel Line Wash. I sealed the paint and weathering with GX100 before spraying with a final varnish of Winsor and Newton Galleria acrylic in a 1:1 mix of Gloss and Satin. I made a couple of mistakes here or there (mainly with paint colours), but I can overlook these... Here are the photos I'm very happy with this one, it's a quirky looking aircraft with an interesting colour scheme that holds a presence in my display shelves. Thanks for looking! Ben

Hello, I’ve just completed my journey with Airfix Fairey Gannet and I’d like to share its results with you. I rarely build models in 1/48 scale but I’ve heard so many praises about this kit that I had to give it a try. So here it goes: Fairey Gannet AS.1, serial XA331 in the Royal Australian Navy service. It is shown in the livery of 816 Squadron RAN in 1957 (301/Y). The aircraft was attached to HMAS Melbourne which at that moment was using the Y code letter. The weapons bay doors are wide open to facilitate the ordnance loading process. The kit is quite ok. I didn’t experience any major fitting problems and I also appreciate the idea of providing two sets of wings, it spared me lots of cutting and sanding. The manual is quite comprehensible although requires additional pair of glasses to decode the diagrams and read all the part numbers (they are really small). It’s wonderful that it reminds you about the front weight, pity that you really need to stretch your imagination to fit it properly (this bird is really nose heavy). There are also some annoying simplifications (e.g. air intakes) which should’ve been easily avoided in a kit of this scale. I used the famous Cartograf decals for stencils only and they did the job quite well. In general, the kit is not bad at all and I had a lot of fun building the model. And the Gannet itself turned out to be so superbly ugly that I really fell in love with it 😍. The model was built basically OOB with only a cockpit furnished with Eduard’s PE parts. The roundels and other RAN insignia were painted. The Melbourne’s aircraft elevator deck built from scratch. Please enjoy and comment at will. Cheers, Marcin And a few cockpit close-ups:

Some three years ago I came across the old Fujimi 1/700 HMS Eagle R05 kit. As most of us know, the Japanese have equipped this kit with two completely different air wings - one is made up of 4 Seafires and 4 Sea Furies and the other consists of 4 Gannets and 4 Wessex helos. Unfortunately, neither piston-engine fighters nor helicopters were on board the R05 at the time of her baptism of fire in 1956. After many months of searching, I was able to assemble the 1956 air wing of 1/700 Seahawks and Sea Venoms, which may be accompanied by Gannets provided by Fujimi. Obviously, the Gannets were not used in Suez emergency (there was no submarine threat there), but they were still on board in May 1956 when Eagle anchored in Malta. The Gannets then flew home from Malta, and the R05 took part in Operation Musketeer in late October. Later (in early 1957), another Gannet flight is again listed as operating from the Eagle deck. My questions (two years ago I asked them in the BM aviation section - with no answer to this day) are: does anyone know the dates when the first Gannet flight (812 NAS) left the Eagle deck and when another (814 NAS) Gannet flight landed on the same deck after the Suez campaign? when were the black & yellow identification stripes painted on the Eagle aircraft in 1956 and when were they removed? are there any photos of the R05 deck featuring "striped" planes (Seahawk, Sea Venom, a.s.o.) next to Gannet (with no stripes of course)? Of course there are many pre- or post-Muskeeter air wing photos aboard Eagle, but the jets don't have black+yellow stripes. Is there any chance to show "striped" jets next to Gannets? Why Gannets? Because I don't have 1/700 Wyverns to make the R05 into a full Suez crisis fit... Any help in this matter will be appreciated Cheers Michael

After the 1955 refit (angled deck introduction) HMS Eagle sailed in May 1956 to Malta with the air wing consisting of Seahawks, Sea Venoms, Wyverns, Gannets and Skyraider AEWs. Then the Gannets were flown home from Malta and R05 took part in Operation Musketeer in the end of October. Afterwards (somewhere in 1957) another Gannet flight is listed again as operating from the Eagle deck. My questions are: does anybody know the dates when the first Gannet flight (812 NAS) left the Eagle deck and when another (814 NAS) Gannet flight landed on the same deck after the Suez campaign? when were the black & yellow identification stripes painted on the Eagle aircraft in 1956 and when were they removed? are there any photos of the R05 deck featuring any "striped" planes (Seahawk, Sea Venom, a.s.o.) side by side with Gannet (with no stripes of course)? Thank you in advance for any help in this matter Cheers Michael

Here are my last kits completed in 2020. The first 2 from the Shelf of Doom and are the Revell (Zvezda) MiG-31 Foxhound and Sword Fairey Gannet AEW.3. The Gannet needs the aerial wires fitted but I am waiting on replacement decals. The last one is Airfix AV-8A Harrier with decals from Caracal of the first Marine AV-8A Harrier squadron to serve as part of a Carrier Air Wing (CVW-19) in 1976-77 Many thanks for looking. Regards Robert

This is an old build but freshly repaired! If deemed inappropriate here mods please remove. This is the Dynavector Fairey Gannet kit which is 20 years old now, being a massive Gannetphile and with only the Frog (and derivatives) Gannet in 72nd available at the time, I had to build this one as soon as it came out. I had never made a vacform before (and this is still the only one) so I was a bit worried at first, however the build of this kit was actually pretty straightforward and really enjoyable. I added very little to the kit, just various aerials and probes etc, panel scribing, and weathering was to a minimum. I used Milliput to better represent the Double Mamba intakes. There is so much white metal up f'wrd that it didn't need nose weight. Finish was good old brush applied Humbrol Sky and EDSG and Johnsons Kleer. XA361 was a Gannet AS.1 completed for the Royal Navy in November 1955 at Heaton Chapel. It was part of a great 'Flight' photoshoot as '551-GN' with 719 Sqn at RNAS Eglinton during 1956. It was put into storage in March 1958 before being sold back to Fairey's in 1960, becoming AS-06 for the Indonesian Navy. Anyway, this one has endured two house moves and has just been knocked out of the cabinet again, so I've just been round it with superglue to reinstate undercarriage legs and four prop blades, the model desk briefly became an RNAY! Dynavector Gannet AS.1 by James Thomas, on Flickr Gannet 9 (2400x1603) by James Thomas, on Flickr Gannet 6 (2400x1599) by James Thomas, on Flickr Gannet 4BW (2400x1598) by James Thomas, on Flickr Gannet (2400x1600) by James Thomas, on Flickr Dynavector Gannet AS.1 by James Thomas, on Flickr Gannet 10 (2400x1602) by James Thomas, on Flickr As you can see, I have another one to build at some stage. The kit is superb with very crisp moldings and engraved panel lines, excellent canopies (2 sets), and good decals, to my eyes captures the lines of the real thing slightly better than the Classic Airframes one does. If you haven't tried building a vacform before, I thoroughly recommend this as a good place to start.

Well, I've spent plenty of enjoyable hours reading and marveling at other members' WIP topics, so I thought it was about time that I put something back and did one of my own. I don't claim to be anything other than a mediocre modeller, and I don't have the literary skills of a Procopius, but I do have ... well, what do I have? A stash, some paint, some hairy sticks, and a love for building things out of plastic. Anyway, the title may just have included some spoilers, but I'm taking the plunge in partnership with Trumpeter's 1/72 Gannet. I've loved the Gannet for a long time, with its rather idiosyncratic shape, the contra-rotating prop, the Double Mamba and its diesel fuel (has there ever been an engine with a sexier name?), and I picked up this kit at Old Warden a few years back on a Father's Day trip. I've been on a bit of a FAA run recently, briefly interrupted by building an Airfix Tiffie to hang in my son's bedroom, but this is my first Trumpeter experience. It's going to be straight OOB, finished in one of the FAA schemes. Some quick checks suggest that this is a kit with few devils other than the challenge of getting enough weight into the nose, which suits me. First construction shot, this is as far as I have got while applying the finishing touches to the aforementioned Tiffie. Very conventional start to the build, and it's all fit very neatly thus far, just needs some touch-up work on the paint and maybe some masking tape harnesses. And my apologies for the quality of photos on this thread. I live in an old house with unconventional lighting conditions, and I model almost exclusively at night once the bairn is abed. To make things even worse, I don't own a proper camera, being the sort of odd chap that has no desire to take photos of anything much, so this is taken with the phone. Thanks for taking the time to read this far!