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British "Wyvern" S.4


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My next build is Trumpeter's 1:72 British Wyvern S.4. I'm quite excited about this build as it will be my first kit made by Trumpeter, and it looks fantastic. The box art is stunning, and entice you right in.

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The instruction booklet is large with clear and beautiful pictures, as is the colour scheme/ decal sheet.

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There are 5 grey sprues with a nice amount of detail and no flash.

IMG_20191123_193829 IMG_20191123_193949

There is a small clear sprue, and large decal sheet which contains a film piece for the instrument panel. I plan to build it straight from the box, using Vallejo acrylics, with the wings in folded position. I will use the colour scheme of 830Sqn HMS Eagle, 1956. Time now to give the sprues a wash and set to work 

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It's a cracking little kit, one I completed a few years ago- and still sits in the cabinet.

 

One piece of advice I found on the web somewhere, and which I followed- was to slot the two locating holes on each side of the engine pod together in one line, to enable the pod to be installed once the fuselage was assembled and painted-  not such an issue on the Sky painted 'Fluke' 387, but masking the Extra Dark Sea Grey on the Suez striped 378 might prove tricky.

 

Looking forward to seeing this one progress. 

 

Good luck, and happy modelling!

 

 

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One of Trumpy's 'good ones', the (very) few that they got right. I have both the 72 and 48 kits, and they're quite nice. If you're an accuracy fanatic, you may want to nitpick antenna fitments and ummm... some other small details that escape me right now, but basically they're sound kits of a quite fantastic looking aircraft. There's been a few builds on BM with lists of good references, but from memory the 4+ book on the Wyvern is a good start (from memory. I could be wrong there.)

 

Enjoy, and I'll follow along, this is another 'started-it-and-will-finish-it-one-day' kit.

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Nice subject I think I’d like a wyvern and a sea fury. To me that look rather like a developmental line that started with the fw190 ( although you probably should put the tempest between the fw and the Fury)

Edited by Marklo
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On 11/25/2019 at 2:02 AM, Troffa said:

It's a cracking little kit, one I completed a few years ago- and still sits in the cabinet.

 

One piece of advice I found on the web somewhere, and which I followed- was to slot the two locating holes on each side of the engine pod together in one line, to enable the pod to be installed once the fuselage was assembled and painted-  not such an issue on the Sky painted 'Fluke' 387, but masking the Extra Dark Sea Grey on the Suez striped 378 might prove tricky.

 

Looking forward to seeing this one progress. 

 

Good luck, and happy modelling!

 

 

Hi mate

 

Can you please explain it better. I didn't get it.

 

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A few things to watch for that I found while building mine earlier this year :

 

1. The props are the paddle style found on the prototypes. The tips were slightly tapered on the production aircraft.

2. If folding the wings, don't fold the tips down. This was only on aircraft up to VZ911, after that the tips were fixed.

3 The torpedo wasn't used operationally.

4. The horizontal stabilizers are mounted perpendicular to the vertical tail out of the kit. This was only found on the prototype and early aircraft. Post VW867 there was a 10o dihedral added. A little sanding fixes that.

5. I raised the flaps on mine. A little fiddling and deviation from the instructions got it done.

6. Remember to close the inboard main landing gear doors as they cycled closed once the gear was down.

7. I replaced the exhausts with resin pieces from Quickboost to get more depth.

8. I removed the LH cannon and installed the AS68/APG-5 radar probe.

9. I had to source roundels from the spares box as the red was off centre on my sheet.

10. If portraying it in the operational zone during Musketeer, don't apply the nose number. They were applied after Eagle withdrew and returned to Malta.

 

All in all, it goes together nicely. None of the fixes are that tough to do.

 

My effort that might inspire you.

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Enjoy your build.

Cheers,

Rich

 

 

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...they also didn't have the diagonal fin stripe applied during "Musketeer" and only carried bombs. I notice the decal sheet shows RATOs attached. While I can't speak about "387", definitely not on "378"

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Nice choice. It looks light years ahead of the FROG kit, which  I recently built in that GB.

 

I think the point about “slotting the location holes” is meant to allow you to build the kit without the bit that holds the propeller in place, so you don’t run the risk of breaking the propeller blades (there’s a lot of them!) while building the kit and sanding down seams etc. Then you can slide in the whole thing at the end after painting it separately.

 

On the FROG kit I did that by cutting off the mounting ring from the middle “pod” and sticking that in the fuselage, then sticking the pod back onto the ring at the end. Much easier! I expect the Trumpeter kit has a different mounting but that’s the idea.

 

Looking forward to seeing a state of the art Wyvern kit being built!

 

Regards,

Adrian

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Oh brilliant! Looking forward to watching this, I've got the very same kit in my stash and been wondering about building it for some time. I'll wait til yours is finished so I can pick up some tips!

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On 11/26/2019 at 6:11 PM, Rich B said:

3 The torpedo wasn't used operationally.

 

On 11/26/2019 at 6:32 PM, fubar57 said:

...and only carried bombs. 

Would they have flown with empty rocket rails? Or would those have been removed?

 

This website doesn't have a reference for its information, but states that the Wyverns flew with unguided rockets during Musketeer. About half way down the page.

 

http://www.letletlet-warplanes.com/2017/10/21/the-westland-wyvern-a-mighty-monster/nggallery/slideshow

 

Apologies for the thread highjack, @Shelliecool!

Edited by Magua87
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It’s in one of my books. I’m at work right now and I’ll look in the morning. There is also a photo of the aircraft lined up for takeoff, empty rocket racks and a bomb on the center line

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Here's a few screen grabs of Wyverns being prepped for Musketeer. Note the 1000lb bomb and empty rocket rails. On the fourth photo, the Wyvern is taxying to the catapult, but I can't see for sure whether the rails are loaded or not. I suspect not.

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Hopefully these will be useful. I've just arrived at the painting stage on my Wyvern, despite having started it years ago. Overall, I very much enjoyed building it.

 

Cheers,

Mark.

 

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Forgive the thread hijack Michelle. I built one of these a number of years ago when I returned to making aircraft. I had always wanted to build a Wyvern and never knew that Frog had done one. I think I bought it on, or pretty close to, release.  I was really impressed by the moulding quality of the Trumpeter offering and have been since. Although I now know that for many their kits the accuracy could be improved somewhat. Although AFAIK the Wyvern is almost spot on. Here's my effort, and like many of us, if I knew then what I know now I would have done some things differently. 

 

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One thing to be careful of, and I recall having lots of problems with, is that as the outer wings are separate it's quite difficult to get a nice transition between them and the inner wings if you're having them unfolded. Also, the mating surfaces are limited so there's a tendency for them to droop. You can see here my joint isn't perfect. Now I would probably stiffen the whole thing up with some wire and persevere with tidying up the join. The photo quality is a bit poor due to a lack of light. I'll see I for I can do a couple better later. 

 

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Good good luck with your build, it should build into a beautiful, belligerent looking beast. 

Edited by 825
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