Sea Venom FAW.21

cyber-hobby, 1/72 scale

Reviewed by Glen Porter

cyber-hobby's 1/72 scale Sea Venom is available online from Squadron.com

Dragon is marketing the new aircraft kits under the banner of Cyber-Hobby. I’m not sure why but if you are looking for them on the bigger internet sites such as Hannants or Hobby Link Japan, you must search under Cyber-hobby not Dragon.

Their recent 1/72 scale Meteor F.3 looked very good but with some minor faults, most of which surprisingly were fixed when they released the Meteor F.1. From there they appear to have gone downhill.

The night-fighter F6F, even with folding wings was considered not as good as Eduard’s excellent kit. Dragon’s Sea Vixen has been roundly bagged for an out of shape nose cone and dodgy cockpit and now this.

A good summary of the faults of this kit can be had from Dannielle Lang at:-

www.britmodeller.com/forums/inde ... =234914662

I would not dare to argue with anything Danni has said, she has forgotten more than I know on this particular aircraft but, I believe a good representation of a Sea Venom can still be built from this kit especially if you’re not too concerned about accuracy. If it looks like a duck, etc.

The Model

The first thing of note is the attractive box art on the top opening box. On opening, there are three sprues, “A” has just two parts, upper and lower fuselage and inner wings while “B” has outer wings, booms and tail plane, main wheels and 9 of the 14 piece jet engine plus other small bits. “C” has the remainder of the engine bits, cockpit tub, gear doors, rudders, flaps etc.

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Thumbnail panels:

One clear sprue has three parts, a one piece canopy and two formation light lenses.

There is a PE fret which contains the two wing fences but they look oversize to me and I’d replace them with plastic card.

The decals, nicely printed by Cartograf, have markings for two aircraft, 492/XG693 from 894 Sqd. FAA, HMS Albion, late 1950s in Extra Dark Sea Grey uppers and white below, shark mouth and red and black checked wing tanks plus 451/WW189 of 892 Sqd FAA, HMS Ark Royal, Suez 1956 in EDSG and Sky with black and yellow campaign stripes.

Just looking at the parts there are some obvious problems. The front wheel well is very shallow, I don’t know what Dragon was thinking when they did this. The ejection seats are very small and the right hand side of the instrument panel has no detail at all.

Then there are the instructions. Dragon really should take a lot more care here. There are two parts (C35 and 36) on one of the sprues which are not mentioned in the instructions at all. I have no idea what they are or where they go. They give you a gun camera (part C42) but don’t point out in the instructions that you have to drill a whole for it. In the painting instructions, the under side colour of one of the options is white but they tell you black. Doh!

Sure, far less than perfect, but there has been so much improvement in mould quality and detail over the old Frog kit and let’s face it, even with all of these faults, it is still going to look like a Sea Venom. So don’t be put off, especially if it’s one of the subjects you’ve been waiting for, it still should be an enjoyable build.

Kit purchased by reviewer.

Text Copyright © 2012 by Glen Porter
This Page Created on 11 April, 2012
Last updated 12 April, 2012

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