Borrowed from my good friends at Aeroscale, here is a shot of the forthcoming Special Hobby Firefly in 1/48th scale.
This is good news for lovers of the Fairey Firefly. Apparently, a whole family of Fireflies is coming soon from Special Hobby. This shot is of an early production Firefly I with unfaired long barrel cannons and the early low profile windscreen. While the Grand phoenix firefly is still a nice kit, the special hobby kit sports much finer panel lines, which were my only real complaint about the kit, other than the few parts I made resin replacements for, such as the prop and spinner, the mainwheels (two styles), the cannon barrels (both long and short) and the replacement vac canopy.
Here is a link to Aeroscale's sneak preview article: http://www.aeroscale.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=14377&mode=thread&order=0
The good new for modelers is that the BarracudaCast sets will also upgrade this new SH kit. The kit prop blades are a big improvement over the GP blades, but are still a little thick looking and lacking in outline accuracy. The mainwheels shown are the later 4 slot wheels as fitted postwar to all variants of the Firefly, but they have mixed up the wheel and tire, putting the balloon tire from the early 5 spoke wheel onto the 4 slot hub, which never happened. Finally, the vac canopy should be very useful to anyone who intends to display their model with the canopies open, or just for those who want thinner and distortion free clear parts.
Right now, the vac canopies are out of stock, but a fresh batch is coming shortly.
I can't wait to pick up one of these new kits. Its a great time to be a modeler of British and especially Fleet Air Arm subjects!
Here is a link to the 1/48th scale page from the Barracuda website. The first 5 products are for the Firefly.
Happy modelling! Roy
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