Best 1/144 Vanguard kit

[Mike Esposito]

Airfix or Welsh? 

 

Looking for accuracy mostly. Don't mind Vac.

 

Thanks

[skippiebg]

Airfix and Welsh are equally accurate. The vacform company appear to have simply taken the Airfix kit and moulded it as a vacform without changing any aspect of it. Back in the late 1980s this was common when there was a shortage of a certain kit or other. (I am very fond of the vacform company and have used its procducts for decades, but this is the plain truth in this case.)

 

Airfix has the added virtue of having plentiful surface detailing. What is more, this surface detailing is extraordinarily true to life, as shown by an excellent set of drawings done by a Mr Cooksley and published by Aeromodeller magazine over 60 years ago: the Vanguard is arguably Airfix's best-detailed airliner kit of that long-gone period. The detailing is raised, however, in contravention of current orthodoxy. You can't win 'em all...

 

Sadly, the shape is off: too bulbous and hook-nosed curvy at the front end (the real thing has a slab-like slanted Roman-nosed flatness to it), too droopy and curvy again at the tailcone (making it look frumpy as opposed to the elegant spindle of the real thing), and too thick at the extreme tailcone. Of these faults, the nose is by far the worse. These faults apply entirely equally to each kit, however.

 

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Edit: I had the vacform kit and sold it on untouched at a swapmeet many years ago. The above is based on my memories of comparing it with a repop of the Airfix kit some years later.

Edited October 8, 2021 by skippiebg