Firstly let's say this is a brand new tool kit. And the fit is generally excellent. Excellent to the point that all progress in this first post took only one and a quarter hours to accomplish.
But it's not perfect. Let's take a walk through the cockpit.
Star Trek fans may recognize this control panel from the original series. A little mixup there...
There is no RAF blind flying panel here. No control yoke, only stick. The stick is off centre like an F16. It's easier to just show what it should look like:
There is simply no resemblance. This is not up to snuff for a modern kit. The seat and rear bulkhead fare no better.
I did paint this pit super quick, but there really isn't much room to improve it without scratching seatbelts, a new IP, new or heavily adjusted seat, control yoke, rudder pedals, fuel stop lever and gunsight. So there it stands. That is the pit you get.
Things improve drastically from here though. For the purposes of review all the following photos feature no post-assembly sanding, the joints and seams are exactly as they are once you glue it. I shaved and cut the sprue attachment points, and the (very subdued) mould lines on the parts before assembly. But left all seams untouched, glue overflow and all.
Here we see Mr. Sulu's workstation.
The intakes are wrong. But no company has ever done them right to date. When you see a Vampire in 1:1, and I am fortunate to have one live not far from me. The vanes in the inlets are just one and a bit inches deep. To prevent smallish personnel being inhaled it seems. They do not go all the way back into the inlet like this, and all other kits indicate.
Aside from that they are very well engineered. The whole inlet is one solid piece that installs onto the lower wing half. Totally painless and idiot-proof, which is a big help for me.
The fit is nothing short of great in nearly every spot. The point where the excellent slide-moulded booms meet the wing is not one of these spots. Most everything else snaps neatly and firmly into place, the booms fit very loosely. This is irritating because it leaves alignment totally up to you, it makes for the only truly fiddly part of the assembly and unfortunately if you muck it up it will show.
The trailing edges of the wings are another issue. Generally kits like this have the fine trailing edge moulded onto one half of the wing assembly, the other ending where the flaps and aelerons begin. This kit has both halves going all the way back and as a result the trailing edge is at least three 64ths of an inch thick. Which would scale to 3 3/8" in 1:1. I know the Vampire had a fat wing but that's ridiculous. The horizontal stabilizer is nice and sharp though.
The flaps are totally positionable, they're a bit tricky to install but really it isn't an issue. Plus if they go wrong it should be easy to remove and start over. You can see the panel line detail, it's overstated, but only so much as is probably necessary in 1/72.
So so far the fit is really very good. The cockpit sucks frankly. And the trailing edges will need some very careful sanding. I will post what it looks like with the joints sanded and filled next.
