Follow Up Sea Vixen Question - Xtrakit or Cyberhobby?

[Adam Poultney]

So I just saw this thread on the Rumourmongerer area which I initially am very happy about. I'm looking for a Sea Vixen FAW.1 kit, my initial thoughts were modifying the Cyberhobby FAW.2 (1s are harder to find), the only modification would be changing the bulged hatch for flat one. That is unless I can find the FAW.1 boxing... But anyway, the Xtrakit/MPM Sea Vixen looks to be being reissued as an FAW.1 and FAW.2 by Special Hobby, however I also heard these aren't very accurate?
Can someone who is a bot more in the know about Sea Vixens than myself point out the main inaccuracies in the latter kit, and which one would you consider to be more accurate (I'm not bothered by the relative difficulty of the builds as far as I'm concerned a challenging build means better value for time spent on a kit, an important metric for a student).

[Space Ranger]

I’m told by others more knowledgeable that the High Planes kit is probably the most accurate of the 1/72 examples (other than that currently being 3D printed by The Baron), but I think I may have purchased the very last one a while back.

[Adam Poultney]

Hmmm I did see High Planes did one but on account of not being able to find any pictures of completed ones I figured it had a very short production run and would be even harder to find than a Cyberhobby FAW.1

[David Womby]

29 minutes ago, Adam Poultney said:

Hmmm I did see High Planes did one but on account of not being able to find any pictures of completed ones I figured it had a very short production run and would be even harder to find than a Cyberhobby FAW.1

https://www.hpmhobbies.com/high-planes-de-havilland-sea-vixen-faw-1-faw-2-bare-bones-no-decals-kit-1-72/

 

David

[Adam Poultney]

oohhh so they're available, I can't find any info on it though still

[Admiral Puff]

I've built one. It's certainly a lot of hard work, due to it being a very limited-run kit, but streets ahead of anything else in the game as far as accuracy is concerned. Sorry, no photos - the model is buried somewhere out in the shed at the moment, and the photos I took at the time all went south when my computer suffered a monumental crash about eighteen months ago. There may be some shots on the net - if I find them I'll edit this to add a link.

 

Edit: Found a couple, on my club's web site. However, Google's not playing nicely and won't let me add links. Go to apma.org.au, Members Models, March 2019 - they are towards the top of the page. Even then the model wasn't complete - I'd just finished the decals that morning, and it was yet to receive a satin coat to blend everything in.

[David Womby]

1 hour ago, Adam Poultney said:

oohhh so they're available, I can't find any info on it though still

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/27764-high-planes-sea-vixen/

[71chally]

High Planes definitely the best of a poor bunch, but it requires hard work to build, good way of honing the skills I guess!

[BushBrit66]

I am looking at 72nd kits currently and have all but the High Planes which I foolishly sold on. Using the Warpaint as a base set of drawings and the  excellent Barracuda Studios book, I think generally most flaws in the 72nd are either overstated, disguisable or correctable and relatively decent and accurate models are possible. The exception is the difference from kit to kit of the deck/bulge area to the rear of the cockpit. Of the readily available kits, the best kit in terms of quality is Dragon with the overall most accurate the Frog. The Xtrakit is the easiest way to an FAW1. The best kit in any scale is the superb 48th Airfix model 

[Space Ranger]

7 hours ago, Adam Poultney said:

oohhh so they're available, I can't find any info on it though still

Oh, that’s good news. Perhaps I assumed that the lack of decals meant the kit was totally out of production and no longer available. Apologies for any confusion caused.

 

On another discouraging note, I recall seeing an announcement in the last couple of days that all foreign mail from Hong Kong had been temporarily  suspended due to personnel shortages caused by the new COVID strain, but I’ll be happy to be corrected on that score as well!

[John R]

Paul Bradley did a review of the Xtrakit version

https://ipmsusa.org/reviews/Kits/Aircraft/xtrakits_72_sea-vixen/xtrakits_72_sea-vixen.htm

Somewhere else he did a 'WIP' and showed a finished build.

My own experience with it was an unhappy one. Instead of ending on the shelf of doom it ended up in the dustbin.

John

[Duncan B]

7 hours ago, BushBrit66 said:

I am looking at 72nd kits currently and have all but the High Planes which I foolishly sold on. Using the Warpaint as a base set of drawings and the  excellent Barracuda Studios book, I think generally most flaws in the 72nd are either overstated, disguisable or correctable and relatively decent and accurate models are possible. The exception is the difference from kit to kit of the deck/bulge area to the rear of the cockpit. Of the readily available kits, the best kit in terms of quality is Dragon with the overall most accurate the Frog. The Xtrakit is the easiest way to an FAW1. The best kit in any scale is the superb 48th Airfix model 

I haven't seen a High Planes kit so can't comment on that one but I do have the Cyber Hobby FAW1 and FAW2 kits and had the MPM/Xtrakit kit but got rid of it. Of those 2 manufacturers I'd say the Cyber Hobby kit is the better of the 2. It does have faults that would stand out to anyone, the most obvious being the reversed NACA ducts on the booms and the over simplified undercarriage scissor links, the nose is apparently the wrong shape but I would suggest that most folk wouldn't know. I haven't put them against any plans but someone did tell me that they thought the wingspan was a bit out, that would need confirming from someone with accurate plans. The MPM one looked (to me) to be too fat in the fuselage and I thought it looked generally more short run than the Cyber Hobby kit.

What we need is Airfix to scale down their 1/48 kit and then that would be the end of the debate (for the FAW2 at least).

 

Duncan B

[71chally]

7 hours ago, BushBrit66 said:

Using the Warpaint as a base set of drawings and the  excellent Barracuda Studios book, I think generally most flaws in the 72nd are either overstated, disguisable or correctable and relatively decent and accurate models are possible.

The Warpaint, and indeed any of the published non DH drawings, of the Sea Vixens are inaccurate, so are not good starting points.

I really urge anyone that seriously wants to build an accurate Sea Vixen to read the early stages of this thread by @TheBaron. You will see that Tony had realised how bad available references (and indeed 1:72 kits) are and it's worth reading how he established that.

Also some useful info here,

 

 

People have mixed the various available kits together to get excellent results, and you can find references to these in Googleland.

 

What is a shame is that these 1:72 kits seems to get reissued enough that you would think that there's a market for an accurate new tool kit.  Where most of the kits fall down is around the forward fuselage area, especially the Cyberhobby/Dragon and MPM Xtrakit ones, which are almost cartoons of the type. 

The Frog kit captures the look very well, but needs an extension in the forward nose/radome area and other details need modifying and cleaning up. In a similar vein HighPlanes needs a lot of effort, but looks good when finished properly.

The 1:48 Airfix Sea Vixen (and the plans in the kit) are truly excellent.

 

Of course any Sea Vixen kit is going to look like a Sea Vixen, so it depends what you want, but manufacturers seem to be happy with the 'near enough is good enough' approach with this type.

 

 

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by 71chally

[Giorgio N]

I considered the Cyberhobby kit for a while and recently I was offered to buy one at a very good price. I had read a number of complaints here but since all 1/72 kits have one problem or the other, I was willing to give this kit a chance so started to compare pictures of the assembled model with pictures of the real thing. Some of the issues mentioned in the threads here were clearly visible but overall I was still positive about the kit... then I noticed the shape of vertical tailplanes and how these differ from the real aircraft. At that point I decided to pass, it may be a nice kit to build, I was willing to forget certain problems in the front fuselage but this was something I could immediately notice, and when I notice such errors I struggle to forget them.

Mind, I do have the HP kit in the stash (and a Frog clone) but I've yet to find the courage to start building it.

[TallBlondJohn]

8 hours ago, Duncan B said:

What we need is Airfix to scale down their 1/48 kit and then that would be the end of the debate (for the FAW2 at least).

 

This. And Airfix, do same with the Javelin while you are at it. Yes there are other 1/72 kits out there, see above, but I'm sick of that excuse!

[Duncan B]

23 hours ago, TallBlondJohn said:

 

This. And Airfix, do same with the Javelin while you are at it. Yes there are other 1/72 kits out there, see above, but I'm sick of that excuse!

A new 1/72 Javelin from Airfix would be right at the top of my list. I ask them for it every chance I get, eventually they will get sick of me and just do it lol.

 

Duncan B

[Adam Poultney]

35 minutes ago, Duncan B said:

A new 1/72 Javelin from Airfix would be right at the top of my list. I ask them for it every chance I get, eventually they will get sick of me and just do it lol.

 

Duncan B

In the list of cold war subjects Airfix might realistically cover in 1/72, the Javelin is only behind the Sea Vixen for me. Also up there are a Scimitar and Sea Venom

 

In the list of things they probably won't cover, my top of my wish list would unsurprisingly be an early Vulcan..... maybe from Zvezda or Revell or someone......