De Havilland Sea Vixen FAW.1

[Paul A H]

De Havilland Sea Vixen FAW.1

1:72 Cyber Hobby Golden Wings Series/Dragon

The Sea Vixen was the ultimate incarnation of De Havilland’s successful series of distinctive twin-boom fighter aircraft. The original DH.110 prototype first flew in September 1951 and proved itself to be a highly capable aircraft. Less than twelve months later though, tragedy struck when one of the prototypes broke up in mid-air and crashed at the Farnborough Airshow, killing 31 including pilot John Derry and observer Tony Richards.

Despite this setback, the Fleet Air Arm chose the DH.110 to replace its Sea Venoms and it entered squadron service in 1959 as the Sea Vixen FAW.20, later amended to FAW.1. The production Sea Vixen featured an integrated weapon system comprised of GEC air interception radar, De Havilland Firestreak air-to-air missiles and Microcell 2 inch unguided rocket packs in place of cannons. It was also capable of carrying a range of air-to-ground ordnance. The Sea Vixen was eventually replaced in Fleet Air Arm service in the early 1970s by the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II.

Dragon’s new Sea Vixen arrives packed into a large and sturdy top opening box. Inside are four sprues of light grey plastic, one small clear sprue and two sheets of decals. As with their Meteor kits, the mouldings look absolutely suberb. The recessed panel lines are delicate but well-defined, there is plenty of detail in areas such as the cockpit and wheel wells and there is no sign of any flash or sink marks. In typical Dragon/Cyberhobby fashion, extensive use has been made of slide moulding. Thanks to this technique the tail booms are moulded as single pieces with hollow sockets moulded in the ends that join the trailing edge of the wings. Slide moulding has also been used to create hollow rocket exhausts for the Red Top missiles (more about these later) and drop tanks that are moulded in front and rear, rather than left and right, halves.

As mentioned above, the cockpit is nicely detailed and the consoles and the instrument panel feature nice raised detail. Unfortunately the Martin Baker Mk.4 ejector seats are seriously undersized and will have to be swapped with suitable aftermarket replacements. Happily Dragon get things back on track with the rest of the interior parts. The landing gear bays are nicely detailed and are convincingly deep. The engine intakes are full-length parts, as are the engine exhausts. The airbrake is moulded as a separate part, but mysteriously the airbrake bay opens straight into the hollow fuselage, so you won’t want to pose it in the open position without scratchbuilding the roof of the bay first.

A decent range of ordnance is provided, although unfortunately much of it is not appropriate for the FAW.1 variant. I can understand why Dragon included Red Top missiles and SNEB pods in case they choose to produce an FAW.2 in the future, but the absence of Firestreaks is puzzling to say the least. If you want to build your FAW.1 with these missiles, I’m afraid you’ll have to raid the spares box. If you can overlook this omission, the rest of the kit is pretty nice. The outer wings are moulded separately to the fuselage and parts for the wing fold hinges are included. This is a bonus for those who like to depict their models of naval aircraft with the wings folded.

Comments have been made on various web forums about shape issues with this kit, particularly around the forward fuselage and nose. It is clear from even a cursory examination of the parts that the shape of the kit radome is inaccurate. The real thing tapers to a sharp point whereas the kit part is quite blunt. I’m sure an aftermarket replacement will emerge before too long, although this is still disappointing. It also appears that the front of the fuselage behind the radome tapers a little too sharply, although it is difficult to tell how pronounced the issue is without having built the model and compared it to photographs.

The decals are a high point of the kit as no fewer than six options are included:

XN650 of 893 Squadron, HMS Centaur, 1963;

XN691 of 892 Squadron, 1963;

XJ482 of 766 Squadron, 1967;

XJ576 of 899 Squadron, 1962;

XJ525 of 890 Squadron, 1961; and

XJ526, also of 890 Squadron, 1964.

The decals look crisply printed and are nice and thin. Care will have to be taken with the red ‘keep off’ markings on the upper fuselage though as these only have carrier film under the red lines and not the spaces inbetween.

Conclusion

Fans of British types will no doubt be very happy indeed to have a state-of-the-art kit of the Sea Vixen in 1:72 scale. It is unfortunate that the kit has some issues, particularly given Dragon’s position in the market. Some of these will be relatively easy to fix, either with aftermarket parts or through good old fashioned filling and sanding. Nevertheless it is a well engineered and nicely detailed kit and it sports some nice features such as the folding wings and full-length engine intakes. I am very much looking forward to building mine.

Review sample courtesy of UK distributors for

[alex]

thanks for the review. So, much better than the xtrakit/MPM kit, I guess?

Alex

[heloman1]

Hi Paul, many thanks for the review, I see there is a chirp elsewhere re in box reviews but I think you have said all that needs to be said about the Vixen kit. I for sure will be trying my utmost to get my hands on one and then try and make the Frog kit look as good.

All thanks to Dragon for putting it into plastic for us FAA nuts.

Colin on the Africa Station