White Ensign PE set for HMS Invincible/Illustrious

If class British manufacturer Airfix issues a new warship kit after a decades-long hiatus, a kit which is easily the most ambitious warship kit they ever produced, and if this kit depicts the current RN flagship, it must have been as much of an honour as a duty for WEM to provide a photo-etch detail set for it as comprehensive as the ones they produced for the classic 1:600 Airfix kits.

 Peter Hall has devoted a lot of thought and dedication into these three PE frets, and the result shows it was worth it. The PE is available in separate sets for the ship and the airwing, or – slightly cheaper – as the „ultimate“ set for both.

 Ship PE

 This is obviously the larger part and consists of two brass sheets, one about A4 paper size, the other about half that size. They contain a plethora of parts. As always, reading the complete instructions is essential to making the most of it.

The Invincibles differed from the outset and received numerous and different refits over their service lives. The Airfix kit depicts the second ship of the class, HMS Illustrious, after her most recent 2004 refit. This PE set contains more than what is needed for this project. In the introduction to the instructions, Peter Hall describes what he did to provide parts for those modelers that intend to build other ships of the class in different timeframes, and he refers to sources for the necessary plans.

 As usual, overviews of the PE frets with the part numbers follow (WEM frets have no descriptions or numbers etched into them like GMM does); there are 184 different parts all told, which is quite a bit of work.

 The actual instructions show how to use the parts for the various subassemblies both in drawings and in a description, with a focus on what to change to the kit parts to implement the PE.

 The sheets contain the entire radar antennas, various other antennas, the numerous platforms and sponsons, different versions of the  catwalks surrounding the flight deck, but also air vents, name plates, ship´s crests, cable reels, life raft canister supports, CCTV cameras and a large number of other details to improve the kit. The numerous railings are tailor-made, luckily there is spme spare material should disaster strike. Everything is crisply designed and relief-etched; the sheet is designed with a view to ease of removing the parts from the fret. Some parts, like the anchor chains, will appear too flat, but can be substituted easily. Basically anyone working with this PE will be free to chose how completely they will use it.

 As I mentioned before, reading the complete instructions including the paragraphs on the last page is essential – they tend to contain very helpful information.

 Aircraft PE

 This smaller fret contains parts for the Harriers and helicopters, and also for the deck vehicles. The kit´s Sea Kings belong to the current variant AsaC7 used for AEW purposes; to further detail them, the fret contains folded and deployed rotors, access and cargo doors, sponson supports and the older FOD covers. The latter have been provided for those modelers wanting to build the older AEW.2 variant. I would also recommend WEM´s resin parts PRO 3526 with improved sponsons and the radomes missing in the kit.For the Merlins, a rather complex main rotor is provided. The use of doublers will render a more three-dimensional look. There is also a PE part adding stability to the folded tail of the helicopter.

 The Harriers should benefit a lot from this PE, as they receive air brakes, auxiliary landing gear, an in-flight-refueling probe and a full set of underwing pylons to replace the oversize molded-on items. There are even fins for the Sidewinder AAM.

 The vehicles: The crane can be detailed with PE supports. Three forklifts can be built from this set, around a core of styrene one has to carve to shape. Moreover, there is a missile trolley and a flatbed trolley. As further items, towbars and aircraft lifting jakcs are provided.

 The instruction is clear and concise, the parts are crisply designed and etched; most of them should be fairly straightforward to work with.

 Conclusions

 This is a demanding PE set with loads of potential to improve the kit-supplied aircraft to the same high standard as the ship PE does for the vessel herself. Both are highly recommended to all those with some familiarity with PE!

Frank Spahr

September 2010

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