box that came from the recent Airfix
P-51 Mustang, which fortunately
supplies a few alternative styles.
The kit does supply the choice
of modelling the wings extended
or folded, and thanks to some
clever engineering and substantial
wing spars, whichever option you
choose will assemble flawlessly.
I did make two changes to the
wings. The first was to replace the
kit’s solid gun barrels with the set
that Master Models have released,
which includes turned brass barrels
and a very nice (and stronger) pitot
tube for the end of the wing. These
are a marked improvement on the
kit parts, though I did wish I had
taken more time in centralising the
barrel in the gun port opening.
The second change was to drill
out the landing light and signal
lamp housing on the lower wing.
Airfix supply details for both light
assemblies on the decal sheet, but
these are designed to be applied
within an engraved circle on the
wing. It is a work of a few minutes
to drill this out and then install a
piece of card to make a deep recess
for the lamp. After painting was
completed I added the decal lamps
to the recess before glazing it withMicro Krystal Kleer – probably
the first time I have used it for its
intended purpose in over 10 years!
Until now assembly had been a
breeze, but that was about to change
with the cowling; to be honest, I
was a bit shocked when it all went
a bit pear shaped. The cowling is
made up from two halves and a nose
rim, to which you add the engine
(though this is mostly invisible) and
one of the best representations of
an exhaust system that I have ever
seen. Each of the individual exhaustpipes has a hollow end that can be
deepened slightly with a twist drill
or left as-is and painted dark to
give the illusion of greater depth.
One issue is that I could not get
a perfect join on any of the mating
services and ended up having to
carry out quite a bit of tidying up in
this area to get a reasonable result.
At first, I thought this was just mebut a friend has reported a similar
issue with his kit, so either we have
both missed something or this is
an area you do need to watch.
Moving on, the one thing Airfix
has not skimped on, is things to
hang under the wings and fuselage.
You can choose between two
different sizes of underwing fuel
tanks, a full rocket load, or 50032 • MAY 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
030-33-QB-SeaFury-0518.indd 32 13/04/2018 14:09