Cockpit, Seat and Propeller
for Trumpeter's Sea Fury

Pavla, 1/72 scale

If you walked outside your house when Trumpeter released their 1/72 scale Sea Fury kit, you would have heard cheering from all over the world. Well, perhaps not, but as good as the Special Hobby kit was, this was even better. It had some faults, some of which I pointed out when I reviewed the kit for Hyperscale and some have come to light since. Perfect kits don't exist and this was no exception. However, it was still very good, light years ahead of the old Pioneer kit for instance. So it comes as no surprise to see Pavla getting into the act with some timely correction sets.

Trumpeter's cockpit was not bad, much better than their Gannet, but the tub looked a little shallow, the side walls had a little detail but not really enough, the panel behind the seat was almost flat were it should have the same profile as the fuselage which it is a part of and the hood above the instrument panel was almost non-existent.

The Pavla set has a highly detailed tub which is a little deeper than Trumpeter's, a better shaped seat with belts moulded on, two highly detailed side-walls, a more detailed instrument panel, a correctly shaped “behind the seat” fuselage panel with the head rest moulded on, a finer control column and the correct shape instrument panel hood with a gun sight moulded on. The existing side-wall detail will need to be ground or sanded off and the tub mounts may need altering.

If cash is a bit tight, and you don't want the expense of this Pavla set, they also offer a seat by it's self. The advantage of this is that it has belts moulded on the seat in resin and is bound to be very cheap.

Last but by no means least, the prop. Trumpeter's blades are noticeably too narrow, and this is not fixable. To make matters worse, the blades are all offset to starboard just outside of the hub. For a detailed analysis and comparison with other Sea Fury kit propellers, follow this link to my article "Nit Picking the Trumpeter Sea Fury".

Pavla has supplied is a star shaped assembly jig, a spinner base plate and five greatly improved propeller blades. These replacement parts will fix the propeller blade problem, and make a big visual impact to the front of the model.

Pavla does not supply a spinner but I think they eventually will.

In my opinion, the 1/72 scale Trumpeter Sea Fury is an excellent kit already, and these corrections will improve it. The biggest remaining issue in the kit was the undercarriage legs which are way too short.

I think it may be a race between Pavla and Quickboost to see who can produce them first!

Highly Recommended.