| 1/72 kit: De Havilland Sea Vampire T.22 Czech Master Resin (Model No.CMR-153) Model built & reviewed by: Mark J. Davies (IPMS New Zealand) |
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| Background | |
| The Sea Vampire T.22 was not a Carrier-capable aircraft, but it did provide the Royal Navy with a useful jet trainer, and the modeller with potentially some very attractive colour schemes to finish models of this pretty little aircraft in. A useful in-box review of this kit is provided by Internet Modeler. |
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| The Build | |
| This was my second resin kit, and generally I had few problems. The cockpit is highly detailed, and like the original it is cramped. This required making sure that enough from the base of each ejector seat was removed to be able to close the lid! However the cockpit really has so much very nice detail that modelling it with the canopy open would be a good option. I should point out that CMR give you two vac-form canopies, and I ended up super-gluing my practice one in place - instead of the intended copy! As a result the canopy is a little too high at the rear. I will fix it one day, but it's hard to create more work just when you finish a model and want to move onto the next project. |
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| The trickiest part is fitting the top and bottom fuselage halves together. If you choose to have the nose cover 'closed', like I did, it is a complex join line - however it wasn't that hard to do. I think it would be easier to build with the nose cover 'open' displaying the interior detail, but I generally like to have the lines of my planes unbroken, although in this case I was happy to have the flaps 'down' and the air brakes 'open'. There is plenty of nice detail in the wheel wells and the cannon ejection ports are nicely moulded too. The modeller is required to make the air-intake bars. I chose to use sharpened brass tube of two different radii to cut pieces of 10 though plasticard. I ended up with what can best be described as looking like toenail clippings in shape (sorry, I don't want to put you off your modelling!). I then made two small razor-saw cuts in the bottom of each intake, cut one end of each plastic "toenail" top, to match the top inside of the intake, and placed them in each saw cut and super-glued them in place. Then it was simple to slice off the excess on the bottom side of the intake and clean up the resulting area. |
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| CMR provide a great choice of five schemes, and all are very attractive in my opinion, but I just had to do the emerald green Admiral's barge. I went for a semi-gloss finish, but it still reflected the light a bit too much in the photos. The decals went down perfectly without the need of solvents. |
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| Conclusion | |
| I feel that given this was only my second experience of a resin kit, it should be well within the capabilities of a more practiced resin modeller. However it can be tackled by first-timers as well, although there are simpler options available for a first resin-build. I'm just glad that CMR has given us a range of really nice Vampire kits, and I will build some more in the future. | |
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