Trumpeter's 1/72 scale Sea Fury
Picking the Nits

by Glen Porter

Trumpeter's 1/72 scale Sea Fury is available online from Squadron.com

For a detailed examination of the contents of Trumpeter's 1/72 scale Sea Fury see the in-box review elsewhere on HyperScale.

Also, note that Pavla has now addressed some of the issues raised in Glen's analysis. Follow this link to check the review of Pavla's 1/72 scale Sea Fury propeller and cockpit sets.

When Neil Ashby recently showed his 1/72nd Trumpeter Sea Fury on HyperScale's Plastic Pix Forum, he mentioned what he considered to be several faults with the kit. The sit was wrong due to the undercarriage legs being too short and he thought the spinner was too pointed. When I wrote my in-box review of the kit I noticed none of this although, to be fair, it is not the sort of thing you would pick up on in that sort of review.

However, it got me thinking. I have Sea Furys by three manufacturers other than Trumpeter and I thought it may be interesting to compare the parts from all four kits to see how they shaped up. The other kits are from MPM, High Planes and the old Pioneer offering. When I did the Trumpeter review, I noted that the five bladed prop was the weakest part of the kit, the blades being too narrow and having what looked like bent blades. Therefore, I have compared the propellers from the kits here as well but I have omitted the High Planes prop as it is, um, not very good. The results were quite startling.

To start with, I took one gear leg from each kit and measured them with a vernier gauge. The white metal example from High Planes was the longest at 22.25mm followed by the Pioneer at 21.75mm. Next came the MPM with 21.25mm and the shortest was the Trumpeter at a diminutive 18.75mm.

There's only a millimetre between the first three which won't make much of a difference in this scale but the Trumpeter leg is 3.5mm shorter than the longest and that will be noticeable. So, what to do about it? I don't know if lengthening a gear leg is feasable, it's not some thing I would contemplate but I have no doubt some-one will find a way. However, if you happen to have a Pioneer kit kicking about that you've decided not to build because of the availability of better kits, you might consider swiping the legs from that to use in your Trumpeter Sea Fury. The Pioneer legs have next to no detail on them but the basics are there and as we've seen they're about the right length and the lack of detail will be mostly hidden by the wheel and doors. I don't think I would want to sacrifice an MPM or High Planes kit but Pioneer? No problem. If your a scratch builder, that may be the answer but not for me. The Trumpeter legs are not only too short but they look a bit under-nourished, as if someone got the scale wrong as the proportions look o-kay. They also appear to be moulded with no weight on them judging by the top link. Perhaps this is something for the Quickboost people to look at and who better?

Next, I looked at the props from three of the kits.

The High Planes kit of the Sea Fury is very accurate and quite well detailed but it's hard to build being short run technology and it's not helped by the prop and spinner being moulded as one, so it is not included in this comparison.

Once the Trumpeter prop is mounted inside the spinner, the fact that the blades are bent is not very noticeable but the bigger problem as far as I'm concerned is the width of the blades. They're very narrow and the sides are almost parallel for the full length.

As you can see from this photograph, of the three props, only the old Pioneer has any width and I believe that it alone can be filed to shape without much problem. I think the same fix could be used on the MPM kit as its blades are also very thin. Again, something for Quickboost.

I have asked our Editor to photograph the prop and spinner from his ARI resin Sea Fury as we believe that it is very accurate and show how they should look (see below).

We have also photographed the three spinners side by side to try and show the deference. There is a difference but it is not very great. In fact, I initially couldn’t see it. The Trumpeter spinner is slightly straighter toward the point than either the MPM or Pioneer. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it but if you feel that it's noticeable enough then the Pioneer spinner is the “Mr Fix It”.

However, and there always seems to be a “however”, the Pioneer spinner has straight cut-outs for the blades where-as the Trumpeter and MPM are angled. Now I think this could be fixed by simply cutting the right-hand side of the Pioneer slot at an angle and gluing the piece you have cut out on to the left-hand side and Hey Presto, with a bit of clean-up, an angled cut-out. Yet another suggestion for Quickboost.

 

This analysis should not be taken to imply that I don't think much of the Trumpeter kit.

Indeed, I think it's an excellent kit plus it's going to be a lot easier to build than either the MPM or High Planes offerings, and I think most modellers will be happy to just build it out of the box. For those a bit fussier about there builds, I have tried to offer some fixes to some of the problems and if Mr Quickboost reads this it may get even easier.

I still highly recommend the Trumpeter kit and the MPM kit and even, for those masochists, among us, the High Planes one.
 

Text Copyright © 2007 by Glen Porter
Images Copyright © 2007 by Brett Green
Page Created 23 November, 2007
Last Updated 24 December, 2007

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