Airfix Fairey Gannet AS.1/AS.4 1:48 – Stuart M. Build Review

A11007
Full Review with Stuart Mackay

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A note from Geoff C…
We are lucky to have two full builds in quick succession for this impressive kit from Airfix – this one from Stuart M and Dave C’s build here.

Also, if you haven’t seen my in-box browse of the box contents you can see my video here.

Before we get started, here’s a look at how Stuart’s project turned out…

Over to you Stuart…

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The Cold War warrior that is the quirky Fairey Gannet anti-submarine aircraft and the subject of Airfix’s major release of 2023 arrived on a dank and dismal winter Monday at the end of November, which certainly cheered me up! I had seen samples for the first time a couple weeks previously at the IPMS Nationals/ ScaleModelWorld at Telford.

Opening up the beautiful art work adorned box revealed seven beautifully moulded grey plastic and one clear sprue, a sheet of decals consisting of three versions of the aircraft and stencils including full colour 3 views of the subject aircraft and the comprehensive instructions. One sprue has all the weapons load included and two variants of load out are possible, one including the LuLu Nuclear depth charges! One can only wonder what might have happened to marine life if one of these was ever used in anger!?!

One thing that really impressed was the level of surface detail with panel lines, rivet detail and surface rendering that the designer had managed to achieve with manufacturing of the major components, they all look “just right”.

The kit is so new, that the aftermarket guys haven’t had a chance to release anything as yet (end 2023), so I was committed to an out of the box build on this one!

Thanks to the ‘orrible weather, polystyrene cement and paint were duly sniffed and the kit was started with good progress made on the cockpit and fuselage.

Read on…