1/48 Dynavector Westland Wyvern S4  

by Karl W Branson

--------------------

 

Here is my 1/48 scale Westland Wyvern by Dynavector. The Wyvern was designed in the late 1940’s as a replacement for the Blackburn Firebrand as a carrier based strike/fighter. The Wyvern was initially fitted the powerful 24-cylinder, 46 litre, Rolls-Royce Eagle piston engine, but the original design specification had called for the aircraft to be ready to accept a turboprop engine when developed - this came in the shape of the Armstrong Siddeley Python. The Wyvern entered service in 1953 and saw action in the Suez , but was phased out of service by 1958.

My model represents a Wyvern S4 of 830 NAS, based on HMS Eagle and used during the Suez campaign in 1956.

The Dynavector Wyvern comes in a sturdy cardboard box. This contains 2 sheets of white vac form parts, a bag of very nicely cast white metal detail parts and a bag of resin parts for the prop spinners. You get a vac form canopy and small sheet of decals. A single A3 black & white instruction sheet is also included. The vac parts are very nicely done with finely engraved panel lines (although sometimes I found these to be a little to fine as I had to re-scribe some of them) also the canopies were very clean and clear.  

Click on images below to see larger images

The first step was to remove all of the vac parts from the plastic sheets. This took some time as there was the usual cleaning up and sanding to be done to make the parts fit correctly; but when done carefully the parts would eventually fit together perfectly, the fuselage halves went together better than any injection moulded model I have ever made. This model would also use the least amount of filler than any other kit I had built so far, very impressive. Construction started with the cockpit tub and ejection seat. The actual tub was a vac part and the instrument panels, stick and seat were made from white metal. There were no rudder pedals so these had to be made from scratch as did a few other missing controls and other details. The ejection seat was also a bit basic and required a little dressing up with the addition of some seatbelts made from metal foil and ejection handles from fuse wire. The front display panel was painted matt black; then I scribed the dial faces through the black to reveal the white metal underneath. The dial faces were then given several coats of Future making them look like glass covered dials. The rest of the cockpit was also painted matt black, with details being picked out in satin black and dark grey. The completed tub was then installed in to the fuselage. The main components of the fuselage, wings and tail went together very easily and, as previously mentioned, required hardly no filler except around the top of the wing root. There were quite a number of white metal detail parts that required installing on to the fuselage such as the exhausts, wing fences and finlets on the tail, these were all added using CA. The propeller was then built up from the resin spinners and white metal blades. The landing rear was assembled and painted, ready to be installed at the end of construction. I then detached the vac form canopy from it’s surrounding. I wanted to display my canopy in the open position, so I had to get out my trusty razor saw and carefully detach the front window from the sliding part of the canopy – not an easy job!

The main construction was now complete. The next step was to mask off the cockpit and then give all of the main components a coat of Halfords grey Auto primer. The Fleet Air Arm colour scheme for this aircraft was Extra Dark Sea Grey over Sky. I used Humbrol #90 Beige Green for the Sky, this was applied over nearly all of the aircraft except for the upper wing and tail surfaces, requiring several coats to cover the grey primer. Humbrol #123 Extra Dark Sea Grey was applied to the upper wing and tail and across the top of the fuselage.  The next step was to mask off the Musketeer stripes, these were painted using Humbrol #24 Trainer Yellow and #33 matt black. For the spinner and for the outside edge of the finlets I used Humbrol #20 Crimson, this was matted down (along with the rest of the fuselage) with Humbrol matt Clear Cote. Panel line were picked out using a 0.3mm pencil and blended in with a cotton bud.

Next stage was the decals. They are quite thick and a little translucent but they went on easily. I used Future underneath the decals that had lots of transparent carrier film; this stopped them from silvering when dry. When this was complete I gave everything another couple of coats of Humbrol Matt Cote to seal everything in.

The last stage was the final assembly of the undercarriage and the u/c doors, I added a couple of scratch built actuator struts to the landing gear that were not supplied with the kit. I also detailed the inside of the u/c doors with the cross drilled strengthening plate. The contra-rotating prop was assembled. I made a backing plate in the starter housing that stops the drive shaft from falling in to the model, then I attached the spinners to the shaft and fixed the outer spinner with a tiny blob of blue-tack; this will enable me to remove the props at a later date should I need to. The canopy was also added and the joint made good, a scratch built wiper was also added. My Wyvern was now complete.

I really enjoyed building this model as I love all of the Dynavector kits and like building vac form models; this one was an absolute dream to make. I would recommend this kit to anyone thinking of building a vac form model for the first time.

Enjoy!

Karl

Click on images below to see larger images

Photos and text © by Karl W Branson