Martin Baker Ejection Seats

PJ Production, 1/48 scale

Reviewed by Ken Bowes

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PJ Production is a Belgium producer of limited run kits and conversions, primarily for aircraft modellers. The range includes full kits such as the recent Mirage III family, along with ejection seats and pilot figures. In the past I have found PJ production to be very useful as a source of some of my more obscure needs, such as 1950’s and 60’s RAF pilots with their safety equipment (read oxygen mask) actually on rather than hanging to one side as companies such as Airfix insist on depicting. Amongst their latest releases are three new 1/48 scale ejection seats depicting two variants of the Martin Baker Mark 4, a widely used seat that was designed during the early 1960’s to accommodate the new generation of light fighter aircraft such as the Mirage III, Macchi MB326 and BAC Lightning. The third release is a Martin Baker Mark 10 that again had extensive use across a range of types from the Sea Harrier to the Chengdu F-7 family. I will not go into detail on the history of these two types of seat but will recommend the excellent Martin Baker website which has extensive entries and photographs of their various products.

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Products 481211 and 481212 are not labelled as such but represent two subtypes of the Mark 4 seat family with 1211 representing the “light” seat with smaller parachute pack and narrow side rails and the 1212 represents the more conventional Mark 4 with the larger “horse collar” parachute pack as seen in mainstream types like the Mirage and French Jaguars. Compared to photos of the real thing, PJ Productions has produced a reasonably accurate replica of each type, with possibly the seat harness being slightly simplified to accommodate the limits of the master pattern maker. In 1/48 scale this is probably forgivable and as it stands is complete enough for use in this scale. 1213 covers the later Mark 10 seat, a more modern zero/zero design that was intended, according to Martin Baker, for multiple applications. With a much simpler harness, the Mark 10 as depicted by PJ Production is very complete and an accurate representation of the type.

The castings of these resin seats are flawless with no signs of damage or other problems such as air holes. Each seat is moulded on a resin plinth that must be separated and incudes a resin guide to shape the copper wire face blind ejection handles needed for the two Mark 4 seats. If I have one criticism it is the lack of instructions beyond a small colour image of the painted product. To get the best out of theses seats further research will be required. The resources available at the aforementioned Martin-Baker site are an excellent start, with sites such as the Ejection Site offering great walk-arounds and notes to get it spot on.

hese new products from PJ Production are well executed, if lacking only in the instructions offered. Each of the products seems well thought through and will add some nice detail to the cockpit of a model to which they are applied.

Thanks to P J Productions for the samples.

Review Text Copyright © 2012 by Ken Bowes
Page Created 31 July, 2012
Last updated 31 July, 2012

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