Signal Sea Fury by Tim Kelly (Fisher Model and Pattern 1/32)

Fisher Model & Pattern's 1/32 scale
Signal Sea Fury

by Tim Keily

Signal Sea Fury
Unlimited Class Air Racer

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Introduction

"How did they do that?"

I found myself asking this question multiple times while fondling the resin from this Fisher kit. As a dork that has spent big dollars and lots of hours in his kitchen trying to make resin copies of wheels at 15 times the cost of just buying another set of wheels, I was stunned at the castings in this kit. A one piece wing with gear bays that have a good size undercut needs to be seen to appreciate how far casting has come.

Paul Fisher's work is not new to me as I have built several of his car kits over the years. He was one of the first folks that I ever encountered that seemed to take the effort to break down a kit to make it easy to paint. His wheels were separate from his tires and you could tell he laid awake at night thinking of ways to make his kits easy to build. This kit is no different.

The instruction sheet is well written and you will learn a lot about the aircraft and the man that flew her. A nice touch is a letter from the pilots niece telling what it was like to grow up with her larger than life uncle.

Construction

This is a quick build. I spent a day building the cockpit and it is the most detailed I have ever built, shame that very little of it is seen through the tiny racing bubble canopy, but I know it is there.You put the cockpit in the one piece fuselage and mate the one piece wing, throw on the tail planes and the flight surfaces, give it a few licks with the sandpaper and you are ready to prime, it is that easy. I knew I was going to be putting a few coats of paint and primer on this plane and I was worried that the fine panel lines would disappear. Now I have been known to carve up a lot of untouched plastic trying to re scribe panel lines using sewing needles in pin vises, the backs of xacto blades, etc. I have never had any luck with this. I'm going to let you plane guys in on a car guy tool that I found that is amazing for scribing. With this, even I can scribe and it looks factory!

I have recently read a letter to the editor in Tamiya magazine that went something like, I model only tanks and I think your magazine should only cover tanks. I have never understood this line of thinking. I once had a really nice car model but it had a small flaw in the paint right next to the cockpit. I remembered an armor modeler saying he liked armor because if he messed something up he could put a tarp over it. Ding! That car made the shows with a drivers helmet covering the flaw. You can learn a lot from the other genres.

Painting and Markings

Meanwhile, back at the kit.

After priming with Tamiya Fine White primer you can paint the airframe with Tamiya TS-47 Chrome Yellow. I used Tamiya Rattle cans for everything except the cowling where you blend the two blues and orange back to the flame decals with an airbrush.

Building the prop is aided by the use of a provided jig. Rest of the parts are a very easy clean up. I love the fact that there aren't any ejector pin marks to clean up. Gear doors just had a file run along the edges, painted yellow on one side and white on the other.

I added a wash to the inside of the gear doors just to add a little flavor but my guess is the real plane was kept very clean. I used TS-13 for the clear coat even though I have heard it is rough on decals. I shot very light coats and the decals held up just fine.

The kit supplies two vacuform canopies and a mold to aid in cutting them out. I am missing the pitot on the wing because it is resin and I know I can break that off before it's first show and the pilots name and a black chevron were supplied on a small ALPs decal sheet that I have misplaced and will find after I contact Fisher for a replacement.

Conclusion

This kit was a blast and I see another racing Fury is in the pipeline from Fisher. Sold!

I heard a rumor that someone might be working on a conversion for the Trumpeter Bearcat to do Rare Bear. I wonder if Paul Fisher could be talked into a conversion for Conquest 1 after all I have a lot of yellow paint left.