1:350 scale
Reviewed by Gareth Jordan
Our thanks to Airfix for supplying our review sample www.airfix.com
Part 1
Introduction
I first set my eyes on HMS Illustrious back in the early 80’s shortly after her return from the Falkland Islands at a Navy day held in Portsmouth Naval Base and my interest in Royal Navy aviation was born. As you can imagine on hearing that Airfix were going to release a model of this ship in the popular and manageable scale of 1:350th, I made a mental note to purchase one as soon as they became available. It was time for the 2009 Scale Model World at Telford and off I travelled with my box of 1:48 scale aircraft for display, unknown to me then I would be leaving the show with the assurance from Airfix that we would receive a test shot of the kit for review. Just a few days later it arrived.
First Impressions
On opening the box I found 5 soft grey sprues each virtually flash free and loaded with parts. (See the EIR on the Airfix HMS Illustrious – Ed) On initial inspection I thought that yes this is a good representation of the Illustrious and detailed. Then to my horror I looked at the flight deck and thought this is going to be a pain due to the angle it was attached to the sprue making it looked warped (this was to be proven wrong later on in the build). I looked at the sprue containing the aircraft and thought wow these look great and looked forward to assembling these. After delving deep into the bottom of the box I found the printed instruction sheet, obviously being a test shot this was not the final copy of the sheets and was in the form of a wedge of A4 paper The sheets containing 113 sections for the construction of the kit. The last few sections being missing as the decals were not provided with this test shot.
The Build: Superstructure.
The instruction sheet stated that the build should begin with the construction of the flight deck lifts; I chose to ignore this stage and move ahead to the superstructure in section 16 as I wanted more reference for the hangar deck before I chose what position to put them in. I started with the two superstructure halves, this went together with ease. Next came the two funnels and these went together well and the seams sanded to remove the join line. I noticed that the forward funnel had not moulded properly at the upper most front on one of the sides, this was sanded to make it nearly invisible. The rear funnel was assembled and it was found that one side was taller than the other; again this was rectified by sanding. These were then dry fitted to the superstructure and any fit issues sorted with a little sanding.
The Bridge follows and is made up of five pieces joined together to form the complex shape of this section. It again goes together without any fit issues and join lines sanded smooth. It was now time to assemble the sections built so far; firstly all join lines on the superstructure were made smooth using a touch of superglue along the joints and sanded flat after this became dry leaving me with a seam free join. The funnels and bridge were now to be fitted to the superstructure allowing the distinctive shape of the Invincible Class carrier to become apparent. A plastic card insert was placed at the front of the superstructure under the bridge to make this area flush as in the real ship.
I now raided my spares box for railings as Airfix don’t provide any. Finding a few left over from a Leander Class Frigate build some years ago, I set about attaching these to the superstructure to add some detail PIC 8. It was apparent that I would not have enough to complete this, so a quick call to White Ensign Models and a new set was sent out. I must add here though that the set I used is not correct for this ship and will be changed at a later date when White Ensign release their detail set.