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Good Day All Sorry to resurrect an old and much discussed topic - I missed out on the original fun back when the 1/48 Trumpeter Sea Hornet kit was released. Problem is that I really want one on my shelf. I have the Trumpeter kit in my stash - the Classic Airframes kit is pretty much 'Unobtanium' out this way (would be easier to mine Bitcoins at this late stage than finding CA kits of this subject). So.... knowing that it is considered by many to be only an approximation of a 1/48 Sea Hornet due to dimensional errors, I took the only set of drawings I have of it in order to try figure out for myself 'How Bad is it REALLY?'. The drawings are from the old Warpaint Series - De Havilland Hornet F.Mk.1 and Sea Hornet NF.Mk.21 and was done by Ian Huntley - not sure this means he did it PERSONALLY or he commissioned someone working for him. I scanned the drawings as well as I could and then started applying magnification factors until I hit what seemed to be 1/48th - could not apply the "magnify by 150% for 1/48" as the drawings suggested as my accursed scanner already seems to enlarge very slightly when you scan at a 1:1 ratio, hence I did not trust the scanner to properly follow the "official" adjust. My basic rule was that if the starboard fuselage half fits the scanned and printed starboard view 100% lengthwise I'll assume it's close enough. My purpose to all this was that I was more interested in relative positioning of cockpits (pilot and observer), wings relative to tailplane etc. I am now wondering if the Ian Huntley drawings are ALSO completely inaccurate - as it seems like the Trumpeter kit may have been based on these drawings?? Here are some observations + some suggestions for fuselage corrections (haven't looked at the wings yet): 1. The tailplane follows the Huntley plans for the NF.21 pretty closely without major deviation - I find this to be somewhat baffling as the general consensus is that the Trumpy kit has the shorter-span F.Mk.1 tailplanes, which my example definitely does not have. Perhaps the CA NF.21 tailplanes are too long, creating this impression when compared? In any case, the elevators need to be replaced with suitably-thin Evergreen plastic & scribed, OR alternatively the crazy Starving Cow fabric effect needs to be filled in somehow (seems easier to me to just scratch-build new ones, and ditto for the rudder) 2. The observer's cockpit's relative position is spot-on. The pilot's cockpit position is ALMOST correct. If if is moved forward by approx. 1.0 - 1.5 millimeter (at the most) it would be spot-on as well. Someone on Britmodeler suggested that it needs to be moved forward by a whopping 5 millimeters - that cannot possibly be done as it would place the forward edge of the windscreen almost right where the "Pinnochio's nose" radome starts, resulting in a pretty silly-looking model and not to mention turn it from a mildly-inaccurate into a wildly-inaccurate representation (Beaufighter + bird strike comes to mind). My initial feeling was that moving the cockpit + complete canopy forward by only say, 1.5 mm should be doable by applying some nifty sanding and needle-file work on the front edge & filling in on the back, however that probably will cause other issues in regards to the dimensions and curves of the forward canopy section not being able to meet / blend-in with the respective nose area without difficult-to-hide filling. 3. Somewhat baffled as well by the strange slope of the lower forward canopy section where it meets the fuselage - way too steep, seems to be caused by the pilot's cockpit coamings / edges been too deep... Or perhaps some dimensional error that I can't quite place my finger on. It would be challenging to fix and IMHO is a bigger issue than real or imagined fuselage dimensional errors ("real or imagined" - depends on what reference material was used) 4. A well-known model builder mentioned that the Observer's cockpit interior is mainly conjecture. I have to agree, no sign of the radar scope that is pretty prominent in all images of the the NF.21 observer station (Pinterest is a good source of reference images). 5. Using a plain ol' steel ruler and some simple arithmetic to figure what the fuselage length should be in 1/48 indicates that the kit's fuse length is fairly close to correct (amazing how difficult it is to find the correct length for the NF.Mk21). All in all I don't think this kit is quite the Train Wreck it is made out to be, but it's not a Shining Example of Model Kit Designer's Art either. I may be totally wrong of course, but then I would have to blame the Ian Huntley drawings for my poor judgment. I'll try to publish some pics (fuselage half superimposed over the Huntley drawings etc) over the weekend if I can manage to restrain myself from jumping in and just building the darn kit! The strangest part of it all to me is that the paint scheme drawings and box art seems to be closer to correct than the kit itself... They really need to get the different departments at Trumpy talking to one another. I also need to stop buying Truimpeter kits, there is always something wrong - my 1/32 A-7 Corsair II had to get the Zactomodels treatment, and I had to drop some $$$ a couple of weeks for a corrected 1/200 HMS Hood funnel from Model Monkey.