History
In
1955 the RNZAF borrowed a squadron of Venom FB.1's from the RAF to assist in the
Malaya emergency. The planes were issued to 14 squadron at Tengah in Singapore
and I think stayed there until 1958 when 14 squadron went home and the Venoms
were returned to the RAF in exchange for Canberra's. I can find only 1 photo of
an operational Venom in RNZAF colours, in the book, “Kiwi combat Air forces”
by Paul Harrison. Trevor Bland, a former 14 SQN pilot
purchased a former Swiss Air Force Venom which he displayed as WE434 as operated
by 14SQN in the late 1980’s before it was written off.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The
Model
I
have often wondered if it is easier to build a poor injection moulded kit or a
good vacform? So when the
opportunity to get a Glencoe Venom with RNZAF markings came along I bought it
and crossed the Aeroclub vacform Venom off my list of kits to buy. Having built
the Aeroclub Sea Venom and having their Vampire in my stash, I would have a good
comparison.
I
tucked into the Venom for a quick build after moving to Thailand,
knowing the decal option would make it easy to finish. Staring with a the
interior, the kit offering of a half reasonable seat glued onto a flat floor was
replaced by my generic resin “‘50’s British jet interior” and an
Aeroclub Mk3 seat. A lot of work with Dremel was needed to reduce the thickness
of the plastic around the cockpit and nose gear bay for scale thickness. Gun
troughs were cut into the lower fuselage and the jet pipe removed. The solid
intake blanks were cut away and interior ducts added from Plastic card. I
inserted a compressor face left over from the Aeroclub Sea Venom (when I forgot
to put it in). The intake on the upper fuselage was cut away, wings, fins and
tail were thinned down and a new jet pipe made from brass tube. I put some spars
in the wing to make them look less hollow and reduced the size of the
undercarriage holes to make the doors the same size as the
wheels. The gobs of plastic moulded on the wing tip to represent slats
were replaced with plastic card, but not to the fine standard of the white metal
parts in the Aeroclub kits.
The
main undercarriage legs were moulded integrally with the doors. I cut away the
doors but the legs still looked awful so I finally reached for help from the
Aeroclub Vampire. This provided good undercarriage leg templates and a spare set
of wheels. I made new copies of the legs from brass rod and tube with detail
added from scrap and the spare wheels from Aeroclub. The kit nose wheel leg was
tided up and the integrally moulded wheel cut away to be replaced with one from
the spares box. New doors were made from 0.020” plastic card.
Once
the fuselage was together I realised the nose profile was totally wrong. Also
the canopy looked like a piece of broken beer bottle and since I had put so much
into the kit already I carried on. I added a triangular piece of 0.040”
plastic card to the nose from windscreen to Undercarriage bay, pint forwards,
and smoothed it in with Milliput and Mr Surfacer. I also robbed the canopy from
the Aeroclub Venom and used that. Not quite right but better than otherwise.
Finally
after a few cycles of paint / sand / paint I got a final coat of Xtracolour Dark
Sea Grey and Green on with Intermediate blue undersides. The prompt for the
exercise, an excellent set of superscale decals, went on easily but the fuselage
boom serial appears to be in a bold font, and there you have it in time for
ANZAC day.
In
conclusion I couldn’t have built this kit to a reasonable standard with the
parts in the kit and having the bit from Aeroclub to hand certainly helped. I
can therefore conclude the answer to the question is the good Vacform/Mixed
media would have been a lot easier than the poor injection in this case.
Colin
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