De Havilland Sea Venom
FAA models in 1/72 scale kit review & building report
Havilland Sea Venom , carrier based fighter-bomber ,
This kit is from Toko (similar, seems to be ex-Frog and re-boxed with new decals sheet)
Brief history
The Venom was developed by de Havilland Aircraft from their earlier Vampire, which had been the second type of jet fighter to enter service with the RAF. In need for a fighter of higher performance de Havilland's responded with the Venom. The Sea Venom was the naval version of the RAF's Venom fighter-bomber.
The Sea Venom
was developed for naval service as the FAW.20 & 21, being based on
the two seat NF.2. It had folding wings and a strengthened fuselage
with arrester gear. The Sea Venom was in service from 1954 to 1960 and
was the Navy's first all-weather jet fighter.
Large numbers
of Venom night fighters and Sea Venoms (about 400) were built at the de
Havilland factory in the mid 1950’s. Royal Navy Sea Venom's and RAF Venom
FB.4's took part in the Suez Operation of November 1956, attacking Egyptian
airfields and convoys. The box top of the TOKO kit shows this. The Sea
Venom remained in service with the Royal Navy until replaced by the de
Havilland Sea Vixen in the early 1960's.
Technical
Data Sea Venom:
Wing span
12.71 m
Service ceiling
48,000 ft
Length
10.10 m
Max speed
920 kmh
Engine DH
Ghost 48
More info here:
http://www.neam.co.uk/venom.html
The TOKO kit
The kit has about 50 parts, many of them needing clean up as the molds originate from Frog. The decals are very good with some colour schemes to be chosen.
The canopy of TOKO is very thick, so I got a vacuformed thin replacement canopy from AeroClub.
There is no real interior in this
kit but some card and rod will be sufficient here. I also cut off the tip
tank fins as they are much too thick.
Please note
that the root intakes needs special attention, see drawing of the root
intake above.
I inserted
air flow guiding vanes toward the engine front using thin plastic card.
please note that cockpit detailing will be at a later
stage.
Alignment of the tail booms requires
care, take slow drying glue and align. Let dry at least 24 hrs.
Some sanding and filling is needed
at their connection points. The nose needs some weight to prevent "tail
sitting". After major assembly, I re scribed some panel lines using an
OLFA P-cutter as these are not engraved and after that sanded the model
smooth. I also sawed in the flaps and ailerons to get a good look.
Also, I will replace the very thick
gear doors with some card plastic.
The kit got a light grey coat to check any flaws and after correction, the coats of Sky and Dark sea Grey were applied.
The lower details of the kit, with new gear doors from card. Aft of the cockpit seats, an avionics compartment was made with boxes as seen in many pictures. The seats came as in the kit , but with details made from some card and stretched sprue. Further cockpit finishing will be done after painting with straps etc. Instrument panels were made using home made decals.
The Air International Vol. 39 no 2 of August 1990 acted as a reference.
The landing gear, new wheels came from the spare box.
On the tip tanks, a small fin was added from card. A pitot was added on the left vertical tail leading edge. (Note: Only the prototypes to my knowledge had the balans masses on the stabilizer, so these were not added).
The canopy was also to be installed later on(from Aeroclub)
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