Airfix Hawker Sea Fury FB.11, 1:48 – Richard A build

Full Review with Richard Allen

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Just before we get started, here’s a quick look at how it all turned out…

Opening Thoughts

With my Fleet Air Arm build project now up and running and already completed the Airfix 1:48 Seafire, which I have contributed as my first build review for SMN in this project. My attention turned to the immediate Post War Hawker Sea Fury, this aircraft has always been one of my favourites and can still be seen at numerous air shows across the country. The two options I had for this build were the Trumpeter 1:48 and Airfix 1:48 kits, with the latter being chosen, primarily as I have heard excellent reviews on the Airfix kit and ultimately availability. The Airfix Sea Fury is one of the company’s more recent releases, first released in 2018 and this particular offering in 2023, so therefore 10 years younger than the Trumpeter kit.

References

• Own Images taken at IWM Duxford and FAA Museum Yeovilton
• Scalemates website
• Airfix
• Scale Modelling Now
• Internet Images

The Plan

(Photos: Richard Allen Collection)

(Photo: Copyright militaryimages.net)

As usual, extensive internet scrolling provides a plethora of excellent images to use as reference for the build, I was also fortunate enough to have my own Sea Fury images taken at various Duxford Air Shows to get a really good ‘feel’ for the aircraft.

As per the norm with Airfix, the kit comes in a top opening box, revealing 6 sprues. The artwork on the box is again terrific, displaying a pair of Australian Sea Furys.

The Airfix decals provided in-box are good quality and very useable, however I wanted to show my version of the Sea Fury, with post war invasion stripes, therefore I chose Xtradecal X48175 WG629 807 NAS aboard HMS Theseus circa 1952.

The only extras I intend to use are eduard pre-painted photo etch seat belts, which hopefully will look as good as the set used on my recent Seafire, however, as the build progresses, I have read in several reviews that the nose cowling is not a great fit, and I may need to source a Barracuda resin nose set for the build, let’s see?

The detail on the kit is well defined with clearly marked panel lines and rivets, the plastic although on the soft side as per the norm with Airfix is excellent. There appears to be no injection pin marks that will be visible on the kit after the aircraft has been assembled.

The first thing I looked for when checking the sprues was the tail fin part, there have been many modellers who have found that the tail fin is poorly moulded and has segments of the leading edge of the fin missing. This thankfully was not the case with my kit and appears that Airfix have improved their QA since first releasing this kit.

The Build…