Venom T5

[JayBee]

Well I started on this a couple of weeks ago, round about the same time as Kit (PR19) did with his, but I was going down a slightly different route.
I am using the Airfix T11 for the nose, and the Cyber Hobby NF 3/ NF 51 – J33 kit. This is their Sea Venom kit with extra parts to build the RAF or Swedish land based versions.
This kit has always had a bad reputation for accuracy, or lack off, which most probably explains why I got it at a knockdown price from a dealer at Telford a couple of years ago.
At that time my thoughts were to do an RAF trainer version, I just have not got around to it till now.

The first thing I checked was how would the fuselages of the two kits fit, and I was a bit concerned that the Cyber Hobby kit fuselage is somewhat narrower than the Airfix one, almost 2mm both in height and width. What the heck I am sure this can be made to work.
Here are the fuselage parts.
Note the Airfix fuselage is split vertically while the HB one is split horizontally, with a large part of the wing included.





The various bits cut away from the fuselages, with the "bone yard" of removed bits to the right.





Now the initial trial fit of the parts (after quite a bit of trimming).




Yes the HB kit is a bit of a nightmare. There is a lot of trimming required to get the Airfix parts to fit in.
The air intakes do not have the same sweep angle on the LE as the Airfix kit (which is known to be accurate).
The equivalent panel lines on the two kits, which were used as a guide as to where to cut the HB kit do not correspond with the Airfix kit. The result being that if you line up the parts to the cut line the intakes will be sitting too far back.

This is just not going to work. So I have decided to give up at this point and have ordered an ex-Frog (IOM-kit from the Ukraine) from Hannants.
It may well be a couple of weeks before I can post any more photos of this build.

[PR19_Kit]

Veeery interesting.

That CH kit seems to have a similar shaped cockpit to the FROG kit, being notably narrower at the front than the Airfix T11.

Does the CH kit have two different canopies to cater for the bulged pilot's canopy side on the FAA versions?

[JayBee]

It only has the one canopy with the bulged pilot's side, at least the kit I have is like that.
I do not know what you get in the pure Sea Venom kit.

[The Wooksta!]

Jim, bearing in mind you're going to use the Frog kit, why not do it as a Sea Venom trainer?

[JayBee]

Thanks for the thoughts Lee, and I had thought of that, however there are several reasons i am going down the RAF route.
It was what I originally thought about doing.
I like the idea of one in HSS with yellow stripes.
I hope to use the non-hooked tail pieces from the CH kit, as well as the rocket rails.
I have a cunning plan for an Airfix T11 with the hooked tail parts, if I can get them to fit. However that is well down the road, maybe an Admiral's Barge.

I do believe that it was you, Lee, who suggested that the CH kit was an abomination. I now think you were just being polite! 

Jim

[The Wooksta!]

I've never had it - but I do have their Sea Vampire which isn't that great - I was merely quoting some Australian woman who had worked with the real thing.  Now she was somewhat more blunt about it than me!