1/48 Trumpeter Sea Vixen

[jaw]

I was having a quick look at the look at the Trumpeter Sea Vixen at the Lancing model show earlier today, and thought that it looked pretty good. But given Trumpy's earlier kits of British types I wonder whether anybody has had a chance to look at the kit in detail and take a view on its accuracy, or otherwise.

 

Thanks,

 

John

[gingerbob]

Hope that helps- I didn't actually watch the review.

 

bob

[Seawinder]

I just watched a sprue comparison video on youtube between the Airfix and Trumpeter kits. Pretty much useless IMHO for any solid information on shape accuracy, but I was struck by the difference in length between the Airfix and Trumpeter booms when the guy laid one over the other: looked like close to 1 cm. difference in the location of the fin leading edges, with Trumpeter being the longer. plus significant differences in the contours of the fin upper leading edges and tops. I can't find any online discussion of these discrepancies. Has anyone checked this out and formed an opinion?

Edited May 13, 2018 by Seawinder

[Martian]

I too watched the comparison video; well, about five minutes of it before deciding to keep my money. The whole model is peppered in rivets which will need filling and there seem to be some large discrepancies between the Airfix and Trumpeter parts. Seeing as the Airfix kit is pretty accurate, I think that says it all. I hope their Firefly is better but, unsurprisingly, I'm not exactly holding my breath!

 

Disappointed, although not surprised of Mars 👽

[71chally]

Just my opinion from looking at sprue shots online,

 

The Trumpeter Sea Vixen does look very sharply molded, and some of the individual parts are very nicely detailed.

Having said that, the kit has gone well overboard on overall surface detail, some of which is fictional, and some of which is in the wrong places, other small features have been missed out.  The Sea Vixen isn't that rivety, using Redux bonding in quite a lot of the fuselage/boom skin construction.

The cockpit parts appear well detailed ones, however some are inaccurate, especially the cockpit consoles sizes and their positions relative to each other.

The booms issue is interesting, getting correct dimensions for these is difficult as it seems to depend where the measuring datum points are taken from, that's assuming the real article wasn't measured. 

The fin upper leading edges (where they go almost vertical) look too deep and the fin tops look too rounded or 'half-tear' dropped at the top, the real aircraft is much flatter.  I think these make the fins appear to tall, particularly towards the leading edge.

The kit doesn't seem to have any other glaring shape issues, unlike the smaller Cyberhobby/Dragon efforts, but some things you can't really tell until you have seen them built up.

 

Though it doesn't appear to have a folded wings option, this can be easily achieved as the outer wing breaks are where they are on the real aircraft, it will be a case of scratch building fold details.  Interestingly it looks like the outer wings only butt mount to the inner wings/fuselage, ie no spar support.

Wheels look ok, there seems to be a wing pylon in the kit, the likes of I've not seen on a Vixen.

 

Judging by some of the parts breakdown, especially the separate cockpit top section and the booms wing join, it looks to me that this kit could easily be reissued as an FAW.1. 

 

To my mind the weird decals and paint guide issues kind of speak volumes for overall kit research.

Standard colours for a Royal Navy Sea Vixen is Extra Dark Sea Grey over white.

 

I think for those that don't care, this will build in to something that looks like a Sea Vixen (not difficult that mind!), for those that do care then a bit of surface filling and smoothing, and some correcting of parts/shapes will be needed, for example it looks like the fin top issued could be remedied.

It will certainly pay to have good references handy for the build.

 

So, it looks to me like detail versus accuracy if comparing with the existing Airfix kit.

Personally I will stick with the Airfix rendition due to overall accuracy and more realistic surface detail rendition.

 

Edited May 13, 2018 by 71chally