Airfix 1/48 Sea Vixen FAW.2

[TeaWeasel]

Finally managed to get hold of one of the rarer things on my wish list, the 1/48 Sea Vixen by Airfix. Along with the Lightnings and TSR, it'll go nicely with my collection of "British jets that look like they shouldn't work but do". 

 

It's quite funny how I managed to get it; I bought a KP Su-25 and quickly realised that the kit was absolute (words I can't use on here), so managed to sell it on at a small loss. I then decided to see if there were any Sea Vixens available, but I could only find scalper prices so settled for Tamiya's excellent 1/48 Swordfish instead. Next day I'm getting ready for bed I see an ad for Hatton's second-hand clearance, I click it out of curiosity and there she is, practically unopened condition, for £45 thereabout.

 

It's certainly a considerable size, so much that I actually doubt it'll fit in my cabinet unless I go for the folded wings. With that in mind this may be a slow build but I can certainly get some done before that inevitable roadblock. But enough of that, let's have a look:

 

 

 

The sprues were still sealed which was a huge relief for me; with one of my Lightnings literally half of it was missing despite advertised as all there. Only 3 sprues plus a small clear one, but they're very busy. The left sprue is mainly the payload and control surfaces while the right is the twin booms, engines and some cockpit parts I believe.

 

 

Last sprue contains the pilots and fuselage/wings. As far as I'm aware there's no damage, very happy with what Hattons supplied.

 

 

Decals are all there, along with a few pages from the previous owner. Seems to be detailed shots of the cockpit and seats, which may come in handy later. Plan is for this to be OOB with one exception:

 

 

 

The Eduard set was an absolute bugger to find as it's been discontinued for years from what I can gather. I eventually found one at Oupsmodel, very handy shop in France who also supplied me with the Eduard set for my TSR. I wouldn't have been surprised if that was the only TSR upgrade left in Europe, it was that difficult to find. 

 

Cockpit will be the first step, as usual, until then thanks for looking. 

 

[franky boy]

This is one that’s also on my ‘must build one day’ list if I can get one for a similar price to you. 
 

Will pull up a chair and follow along. 
 

James 

[TeaWeasel]

8 hours ago, franky boy said:

This is one that’s also on my ‘must build one day’ list if I can get one for a similar price to you. 
 

Will pull up a chair and follow along. 
 

James 

 

Thanks, was rather a lucky find to be honest.

 

After getting all the sprues out for photos I decided to start on the cockpit and the Eduard upgrades. Unlike the previous Eduard photoetch I've bought in the past these one actually were self-adhesive, although I also used Ammo Ultra Glue just in case. 

 

 

The dials look nice but it bothers me a tiny bit that the horizontal indicator isn't level. Oh well. 

 

There's still a fair bit of photoetch to apply, mainly the tiny levers and handles which are a bit of a bugger at the best of times. 

 

Thanks for looking 

[Lord Riot]

Good to see one of these being built as I’m deliberating whether to get one or not. Prices are crazy but I’m keeping on my eye on eBay just in case I may get lucky. 
 

This is an excellent start, what a superb looking cockpit!

[TeaWeasel]

On 07/06/2022 at 21:27, Lord Riot said:

Good to see one of these being built as I’m deliberating whether to get one or not. Prices are crazy but I’m keeping on my eye on eBay just in case I may get lucky. 
 

This is an excellent start, what a superb looking cockpit!

 

Thanks, it's definitely a monster of a kit but it does show it's age somewhat in some areas, such as the sprue joints being rather chunky in places. Nevertheless from what I've heard it's the best Vixen kit by far in this scale.

 

Back from a nice holiday and spent a few hours on the rest of the cockpit details. The radar observer's panels and the dividing wall were next and it was a bit of an unusual fit.

 

 

The major PE panels are now in place, and while there's a heap of extra levers and buttons, I'm only going to attach the most obvious ones, for the sake of my own sanity. I do think this is a bit of a letdown in the Eduard PE sets I've used in the past in that the levers, etc simply have little in the way of strong connections and snap so easily it's almost not worth it. 

 

With that out of the way I attached the two bulkheads, the forward one still needs painting in black and did a dry fit of the fuselage. 

 

 

 

The first dry fit, before the forward bulkhead was attached, was overall rather poor and the fuselage looked rather warped. Quite relieved to see the problem sorts itself out once all the parts are there. 

 

I also had a look at the seats and several issues arose:

 

 

The most glaring one being the ejector handles simply snapped off the moment I even thought about removing them from the sprue, pretty poor part placement in my opinion. Will have to build some from scratch, and the couple I tried already just don't look 100% correct. 

 

Second is this weird fuzz you can see on the sides, the result of the rivet detail. Some light sanding should take that off no problem.

 

Last issue isn't obvious but is crucial, in that they don't actually fit in the cockpit! I've checked and there's no fouling of the PE parts, the pilot seat in particular is around 1mm too thick to get fully within the cockpit. Hopefully if I sand down the rivet detail a bit it might let me slide the seat in without any further modification needed.

 

Cheers all, thanks for any comments.

 

Joe

 

 

 

[Biggles87]

I plan to convert mine to a FAW 1, but I’ll follow if I may in the hope of picking up some tips.

 

John. 🇺🇦

[TeaWeasel]

2 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

I plan to convert mine to a FAW 1, but I’ll follow if I may in the hope of picking up some tips.

 

John. 🇺🇦

 

Please do follow, great if I can help anyone out on their build, although to me it looks very difficult to make an FAW1. There are large panels missing from the wings that'll have to be scratch built as well as the booms reshaped. Unless you can get aftermarket parts I wouldn't want to try it.

 

Joe

[Biggles87]

I have the very good Alley Cat FAW 1 conversion, my days of large scratch building projects are far behind me now.

 

John. 🇺🇦

[TeaWeasel]

31 minutes ago, Biggles87 said:

I have the very good Alley Cat FAW 1 conversion, my days of large scratch building projects are far behind me now.

 

John. 🇺🇦

 

Ah fair enough then, good luck with it

[Duncan B]

On 6/20/2022 at 10:52 AM, Biggles87 said:

I plan to convert mine to a FAW 1, but I’ll follow if I may in the hope of picking up some tips.

 

John. 🇺🇦

 

On 6/20/2022 at 3:09 PM, Biggles87 said:

I have the very good Alley Cat FAW 1 conversion, my days of large scratch building projects are far behind me now.

 

John. 🇺🇦

 

Same here, one day I'll get around to it!

 

Nice to see an Airfix 1/48 Vixen getting built so I'm going to tag along too.

 

Duncan B

[FalkeEins]

 

..its a great kit  and I was thrilled to actually finish mine. I found the plastic very hard though. Never did really work out how the flaps fit either - they kind of lay across the booms. Difficult to find images of this area as well. 

[ianwau]

Following with interest. I completed one of these last year as Target Tug XS587.  Main headache for me was the flaps (which I fitted retracted) - no idea what I was doing wrong but quite a bit of fettling required to get fit (maybe should have read instructions!).  Main memory was the contortions required to do the decalling after I'd fitted the folded wings!

 

Have a good walkaround of the airframe at Queensland Air Museum (Caloundra Australia) if useful .  https://qam.com.au/collection/de-havilland-sea-vixen-f-a-w-mk-2-txj490-c-n-110017/ 

[TeaWeasel]

I've decided to leave the rest of the cockpit in the meantime, for 2 reasons:

1. The last few levers are so minuscule it's not worth risking ruining the existing detail.
2. Once the cockpit is in place it's mostly hidden anyway.

One huge hiccup is the ejector seat handles. I have to question the mind of someone who put such a large sprue gate on such a delicate part but all 4 handles promptly snapped. I tried fashioning a replacement out of a paperclip but the scale is way off. Until I work out what to do the seats are on hold. 

 

With that out of the way I started adding the major components to the fuselage. The undercarriage bays and wing spars are firmly attached, the latter were a very snug, almost click-together fit. Very good quality from Airfix I must admit

 

 

 

There are 3 major parts to add before I progress any further; the engine intakes, exhausts, and arrestor hook. I decided to start on the intakes, which I painted with a light coat of Vallejo silver. The intake fans then had a coat of Nuln Oil to emphasise the detail. 

 

 

 

 

The intake halves were significantly warped however. Luckily the parts are thin enough to just hold together by hand, no heating or cutting required to correct it.  

 

 

 

 

 

Next steps will be to complete the exhausts and arrestor hook, then get the whole fuselage assembled!

 

 

Thanks all, comments welcome

Joe

Edited July 11, 2022 by TeaWeasel

[TallBlondJohn]

Lovely work so far.

 

Airfix - scale this kit down to 1/72 immediately. And the Javelin while you are at it. I'll have two.

Thank you.

[TeaWeasel]

52 minutes ago, TallBlondJohn said:

Lovely work so far.

 

Airfix - scale this kit down to 1/72 immediately. And the Javelin while you are at it. I'll have two.

Thank you.

 

Thanks, that does irk me a bit about Airfix; they released all these pretty stellar kits in the past like the Lightning, Vixen and TSR-2, but seem happy to just release yet another Spitfire every year. Why not bring them back? 

[Graham Boak]

Expected sales.

[Ngantek]

Great start, lovely work on the cockpit. I'm looking forward to seeing this one progress! Looks like it's fighting you a little, hopefully it will settle down.

 

Not having any space, and having the recent revell/CH kit in the stash, I thought I'd be able to avoid this one, but like you, I saw one for a price I couldn't say no to! If I build the wings up, maybe I can squeeze it in somewhere between the condiments or something. Anyway, good luck, I'm looking forward to shamelessly benefitting from all your hard work!

[Dr. Quack]

Good start on a kit I'd love to have in my stash. I wouldn't lose any sleep over the attitude indicator not being level. Most AI instruments don't show level until they are powered up.

Q

[Biggles87]

I use fuse wire to replace ejection seat pull handles. Take two lengths, paint one  yellow and one black and twist together to give the stripes effect, then shape around a cocktail stick or something similar.

HTH

 

John. 🇺🇦

[825]

1 hour ago, Biggles87 said:

I use fuse wire to replace ejection seat pull handles. Take two lengths, paint one  yellow and one black and twist together to give the stripes effect, then shape around a cocktail stick or something similar.

HTH

 

John. 🇺🇦

A sImilar solution is to use thread. Again twist yellow and black together then smear with a little superglue and quickly shape around a suitable former like a cocktail stick. Both this and @Biggles87's suggestion will give a better looking result than moulded plastic. 

 

Good work on the Vixen so far. 

[perdu]

13 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

Expected sales.

Sadly true Graham but we dream, don't we?

[Graham Boak]

We all dream.  But the manufacturers' reasons are generally blindingly obvious.  Three cheers for those willing to step outside the thinking box - or even their own limited ranges.  I think recently Airfix have done a pretty good job of looking a bit wider than just the safe bets.  I would suggest that Whitley, Beaufort, Shackleton, Sea Vixen and TSR.2 fall into that category.  In the end, however, Spitfires sell and even now there are variants not covered, or certainly not covered so well that a new quality offering would go amiss.  Yes, and this does apply to some variants of Bf.109/P-51s and other types too.

 

Airfix did release decent kits of the Lightning, Vixen and TSR.2, and there's little doubt they will reappear.  But there are still types of aircraft built in very large numbers that are less well represented.  It is the sale of Spitfires/109s etc that provide the healthy industry capable of imaginative ventures.  

[TeaWeasel]

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

We all dream.  But the manufacturers' reasons are generally blindingly obvious.  Three cheers for those willing to step outside the thinking box - or even their own limited ranges.  I think recently Airfix have done a pretty good job of looking a bit wider than just the safe bets.  I would suggest that Whitley, Beaufort, Shackleton, Sea Vixen and TSR.2 fall into that category.  In the end, however, Spitfires sell and even now there are variants not covered, or certainly not covered so well that a new quality offering would go amiss.  Yes, and this does apply to some variants of Bf.109/P-51s and other types too.

 

Airfix did release decent kits of the Lightning, Vixen and TSR.2, and there's little doubt they will reappear.  But there are still types of aircraft built in very large numbers that are less well represented.  It is the sale of Spitfires/109s etc that provide the healthy industry capable of imaginative ventures.  

 

Even if it sells well, it just seems like a saturated market. Every other company is producing Spitfires, Mustangs and Hurricanes, whereas it's a wide-open market for a 1/48 Lightning for example. 

 

Anyway, the last two of the subassemblies are finished. The tailhook was pretty fiddly and snapped in the same manner as the ejector handles. Luckily 3 are provided(!) and the break wouldn't be visible in the retracted position anyway. 

 

The exhausts were painted in the same manner as the intakes, just a coat of Vallejo silver with Nuln Oil around the fan blades. The fit was slightly more difficult this time with a bit of sanding needed around the rims of the exhaust cylinders.

 

 

 

Here's the completed assembly. For some reason the very tip of the rear exhaust is a separate part, no idea why.

 

 

 

And here's the lower fuselage assembly now with all 3 major subassemblies glued in. The tailhook is just underneath the exhaust system. Overall it feels pretty solid, gluing the fuselage halves will take a bit of time as there are plenty of contact points that'll need clamping, but before that I need to carve out the channels for the weapon pylons.

 

 

 

For some reason Airfix has gone with the pylon attached via a groove rather than a couple of pins as they usually do. You can see the grooves near the wing folds need neatening up a bit, the plastic's pretty thin in this area so carving out a groove rather than just drilling a couple of holes is a bit of a nuisance. 

 

 

Thanks all,

Joe

[MikeC]

Looks good so far.

On 6/7/2022 at 9:19 PM, TeaWeasel said:

The dials look nice but it bothers me a tiny bit that the horizontal indicator isn't level. Oh well. 

Not a problem, gyro instruments often topple after shutdown I believe.

[TeaWeasel]

1 hour ago, MikeC said:

Looks good so far.

Not a problem, gyro instruments often topple after shutdown I believe.

 

Seems obvious but I didn't realise that happened, same as this photo of a preserved example: