1/48 Aeroclub De Havilland Sea Venom FAW-21

Gallery Article by Darius Aibara

 

Aeroclub have produced an excellent series of 1:48 mixed media kits of the De Havilland Vampire and Venom aircraft family and this kit was one I had always wished to add to my collection of Royal Navy aircraft.  The kit comprises injection moulded front fuselage halves, tail booms and tailplane with vac-formed combined rear fuselage and wings split top and bottom.  White metal ejection seats, jet intakes & exhaust, cockpit details, wheel wells, tailhook, and undercarriage are provided along with two vac- formed canopies.  The decals provide markings for a Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy aircraft.

 

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After preparing the vac-formed and injection moulded parts in the traditional way (wet-n-dry paper on glass) the kit was assembled as per an injection moulded kit and then primed with grey auto spray acrylic primer. I wanted to model an FAW-21 that took part in Operation Musketeer in 1956 and so I spray applied Humbrol Trainer Yellow to make the wing and tailboom "invasion" stripes and then masked the whole stripe area.  Next I applied Halfords "Appliance White" gloss auto paint which sort of approximates to the white (as opposed to Sky) underfuselage colour that I wanted, and brush applied Humbrol extra dark sea grey to the upper wings and fuselage.  I removed the masks from the wing and tailboom stripes and then re-masked and brush painted the pairs of black stripes to complete the job.

The kit decals were used in conjunction with additional decals from the spares box to depict an FAW-21 of 893 Squadron FAA operating from HMS Eagle in 1956.  There has been some debate as to the colour of the fuselage flashes, but my references indicate that they were blue rather than yellow. 

Darius Aibara

      

Photos and text © by Darius Aibara