SCALE MODEL NEWS

David Jefferis reports Airfix continues its renaissance with this kit of a classic Cold War-era strike aircraft, the British Hawker-Siddeley Buccaneer. Airfix provides us with parts to make three versions of the low-level twin-jet attacker, the S2B, S2D, and the South African export model S50. The kit has plenty of detail, though thank goodness Airfix no longer features some of the non-working ‘working’ parts of the very first NA39 kit, back in the early days of the company. I well remember the ‘rotary bomb bay’ that was warped, ill-fitting, and that didn’t do the job as advertised! The present kit features 114 parts, with a wingspan of 185 mm (7.3 in) and length of 267 mm (10.5 in). The undercarriage can be assembled up or down. The Buccaneer comes packed in the now standard, and highly attractive, new-style Airfix box. The video shows the aircraft and crews of 12 Squadron, Royal Air Force, taking part in the 1978 Exercise Open Gate. This was a NATO exercise aimed at keeping the Strai...

Here’s a tasty preview from Airfix of the upcoming 1:48 Hawker Siddeley Sea Vixen carrier-based jet. Due out in September the Sea Vixen is shown here in prototype form, created by an interesting machine that many of us would like in our back room. It’s called a stereolithography apparatus (SLA) and is a cunning piece of kit that translates 2-D computer information - typically three-view plans - into a lifesize 3-D model. It’s created by squirting precisely-shaped layers of resin on top of each other, each one being hardened by a pass with an ultraviolet laser beam. SLA is only for prototyping though - as you can see from the pix here, there is no fine detail on the model yet. Small vents, panel lines, and other bits and pieces are added later, after the SLA prototype has been adjusted and approved. The Airfix Sea Vixen will be the FAW.2 version that saw service with the Royal Navy from 1964, a flying career brought to a halt in 1972 by that bane of the UK military, defence cuts. When a...