HP models and MT miniatures 1/700 Victorious

[Pieter]

Last year I found myself owning the two kits of Victorious (1958) in 1/700 currently on the market.
HMS Victorious is probably the best documented postwar carrier and seems to have huge fanbase on the internet, so one has more than enough information available if one wants to build either of the kits. If you buy the AOTS book by Ross Watton you have an excellent starting point. There's also a large amount of aftermarket parts.
IMHO the only thing missing is small "Royal Navy" stencils, digits and possibly squadron markings as decals for the airgroup. As the Orange Hobby Hermes (1968 and 1982) will be avaiIable soon I hope some decal manufacturers will start producing these.
The two kits are about the same size and seem to be quite accurate for the 1959 version of Victorious though the MT kits flight deck may be slightly too high. Both kits are typical products of their respective manufacturers.
Both need a lot of work.
When my HP kit arrived I had already removed the catwalks around the flight deck of the MT kit as I always remove those when building a carrier. Otherwise the pictures represent what came out of the box. The yellow resin is HP, the grey and white metal is MT Miniatures. The MT kit is the only kit which includes PE parts.
Let's start with the hull.

[Pieter]

Some more pictures:
Decks compared (NB the MT kit is a one piece hull and deck casting).

HP and MT have a different approach to the island structure.
MT's is simply one casting which unfortunately was deformed at the bridge face. HP has made Island as a continous casting with part of the upper gallery deck, which should fit together with the middle part of the deck casting.

The gun mountings, MT's are white metal castings, HP's are resin.

[Pieter]

The kits really differ when looking at the airgroup. HP gives you accurate Sea Venoms, Scimitars, Gannets and Whirlwinds. MT includes Scimitars, Sea Vixens, Skyraiders and Wessex helicopters in white metal.

Likewise the two companies have a radically different approach to the vessels' mast, radars, the crane and deck edge antenna masts. MT includes PE for these while HP puts them on a casting wafer in resin.

MT includes one boat, a white metal motor cutter, while HP has a number of them in resin.

[Pieter]

The MT kit has a good set of decals which seem to be right for Victorious' deck markings in 1959.

HP give you the customary set of flags on normal paper and few roundels on decal paper.

HP's instructions. Most space is spent on the airgroup.

And MT includes a color picture as well as some very clear drawings.

[Pieter]

Subjective part:
You can just let my pictures speak for themselves. Feel free to ignore the following statements but if you are thinking about building a modern Victorious the following subjective notes from a reasonably experienced miniaturist like me may have some value.
As a disclaimer I must first say that the picture of the MT island shows a miscast, the bridge face is severely warped. I'm quite sure that Matthew would have sent a replacement part if I'd asked him but as I want to scratchbuild the island anyway I've decided not to do so.
The reason I did this comparative review is that they happened to be resin kits of about the same price (160 - 180 euros as delivered in the Netherlands last year). You may have noticed by now that the price and the subject matter are just about the only thing they have in common.
MT's kit is clearly aimed at modelers who want a reasonable representation of Victorious and do not want to spend hours on every little detail of the kit or mind soft edged resin. If you look at Matthew's website and the option being offered of pre-painted kits it is also clear that he has a firm eye on the nostalgia market. And with thousands of former crew members approaching retirement age he is probably right. As such it is a good kit, though for a second production run I would advise him to get a better airgroup. For another 10 pounds a few resin aircraft would make a lot of difference and former crew members would be much happier.
HP's kit is aimed at hardcore resin afficionado's like Christoph Mentzel who are willing to accept fit problems and hundreds of small parts in return for hard edged castings and shapes and small parts the reference library agrees with. HP deliberately leaves decals and PE to the after market companies and only gives you a small number of aircraft. These aircraft are very good: the Sea Venoms are the best resin aircraft I have seen. That said, the kit has severe problems even for experienced modelers. The one piece gallery deck / island structure does not fit at all (believe me, I tried) and the three piece resin deck comes in three different resin backing thicknesses. Unless one has mastered the technique of flat sanding resin at less than .1mm tolerances (you need that as a .1 mm little gap on a 30 cm deck leads to severe gaps on the other side) the deck is quite useless. The HP kit is a good base for a semi-scratchbuild and at the very least needs a new deck and new island. As HP essentially competes with scratchbuilding this is problematic.
So where does this leave me half a year after acquiring these kits? I'm no Mentzel or Baumann. I don't have the time and concentration to stay focused on a project like this for a long time and I'm below their skill level. I could afford buying those two kits at the time so I did so even though I had started a scratchbuild Vic some years ago. The kit is slowly progressing alongside my other builds and like my HP Courageous get out of its box every once in a while, gets a few hours of subassembly work done and goes back into the box again. It is becoming more and more a scratchbuild project though I'm keeping the HP basic hull and the MT PE set. I took the following picture this morning. That's 2mm styrene....

[Pieter]

...and some 20 months later....getting there....

[Pieter]

And so, 6 months after I finished my semi-scratch Vic Orange Hobby came out with an excellent 1958 Vic with (optional) an equally excellent 1966 airgroup. As updating from 1958 is much easier than backdating from 1966 this is probably the right decision. Notes on how to do this will follow later.
Anyway here are the pictures. The only thing I've done to the parts is remove the casting stubs on the hull an the island and remove the small sailing cutters for another project.
This is the hull. Needs cleaning (I used warm soapy water) but takes Tamiya primer well after that.

Island:

Boats and other small parts:

Photo-Etch:

Metal Barrels for the 3" guns:

Decals:

Note that the flight deck decals (the big landing stripe and the "V") are in white. I'm not sure Vic ever had those but all colored flight deck markings she ever had can be made by adding yellow, orange and red decals over the white stripes and V and cutting the stripe in sections where needed.

[Pieter]

The kit has an optional 1966 airgroup + decals. The decals look nice and in register, though I'm not convinced yet that the ID lettering in 1966 was dark blue instead of black.

Orange Hobby lets you work intensively with Photo Etch. Each Sea Vixen for example is built up from 6 resin parts and 8 PE parts, including the wing fold mechanism.

Note that each PE set serves two aircraft.
The Bucanneers are similar:

Strangely the folded nose is an option but the very visible open tail (airbrakes) is not.
The set includes the first early Wessex helicopters in '700:

And the most complex little kit in the set, The Gannet AEW3.
8 resin and 14 PE parts per aircraft.

If you want to include the Gannet COD 4 you will still need to find the old Fujimi set but otherwise it is a complete airgroup for 1966.

[Pieter]

As you can see I have already semi-scratchbuilt a 1966 Vic so for me personally a good 1959 Vic is most welcome. I'm adding some notes for people who want to upgrade any of the kits to later versions.
The kits are accurate up to the short refit in mid-1960.
In 1960 the sextuple bofors and its director were landed though the sponson stayed in place until 1963. Also in 1960 a bridle catcher was added for the port catapult which stayed in place until late 1961. This can easily be built from styrene strips.
At the end of 1961 the bridle catcher was removed again though a square plate remained at the bow. At the same time a balloon filling station was added aft and to the port side of the flight deck. This can be built by adding a strip of styrene to the port round down of the flight deck and bulding the station downwards from there. This will involve putting part of the quarter deck emergency walkways one deck lower in places and this can be somewhat difficult.
The next refit was in 1962/63 and and was the most radical change.
The mirror landing sights became projector sights. Remove the mirror lights to port and starboard aft and change the 'mirror' surface to some vertical styrene strips for the projector.
The island gained an extra duplicate power room just below the type 984 radar, lost the dinghy stowage there (I still don't understand why they originally put a dinghy some 30m above sea level but I digress) , Flyco became much bigger and the island gained crash landing floodlights. All of his is easily built in styrene and if you want to save yourself some work the floodlights can be found in various PE sets.
This is my take on it:

Islandrebuild1.JPG (27.66 KiB) Viewed 7448 times

Islandrebuild2.JPG (40.3 KiB) Viewed 7448 times

Also in 62/63 an 'alaskan highway' deck to starboard of the island was build and a small hangar for tractors and other equipment was build there. Again simple styrene structures but do remember to add the supports for the 'alaskan highway' in brass or styrene strip.
Below the flight deck in this refit two of the 3" mounts were landed and turned into extra accomodation with drop tank stowage on the roof. Again straight styrene structures. The port aft whaler stowage bay was welded shut and all liferaft stowage forward of the angled deck was removed.
Also the port hinged W/T masts were changed to whip antennas and an AGG antenna was placed in front of the island.
Some time after 1963 the space of the old 40mm bofors was turned into accomodation and oxygen tanks were placed on top of it. It is clear from pictures that they were in place by 1966. Also some time before 1966 a permanent camera unit was put on top of Flyco.

[Timmy C]

Good to see they've added a decent decal set for the airwing - sorely lacking for the Harriers and SeaKings in the Hermes kit!

[Dan K]

I'll never get around to building one, but I loved reading your review. Very informative.

[Pieter]

Note that this decal set can only be found in the version with the 1966 airgroup.
I hope they will sell this decal set seperately as apart from the individual aircraft numbers and obviously the "V's" the set can be used on all British carriers from 1957 to about 1977.

Good to see they've added a decent decal set for the airwing - sorely lacking for the Harriers and SeaKings in the Hermes kit!

[Pieter]

I've found some pictures I took of the (HP) island rebuild and added them to an earlier posting. The airgroup and deck equipment are also getting build now - will post notes on the Orange Hobby airgroup once its finished.

[Pieter]

Some notes on the Orange Hobby airgroup:
Bucanneers. Exellent little kits, practically build themselves, I did open the cockpits and split the airbrake tails using my WEM stash.

Sea Vixens. Difficult to work with as there's no clear way to get the seperate tailboom and PE tail parts to align with the hull. I 'lost' 6 out of 12 Vixens trying to get this right. If I'm doing Vixens again I'll be using WEM Vixens and OH photo-etch.

Wessex. Nice, I only used two out of 6 due to lack of deck space. Front wheels needs to be cut off and doubled instead of folded on as indicated in the instructions.

Gannets. Used all 14 PE parts per aircraft and scratched an entrance ladder, towbar and and open cockpits.

After building two examples I put the PE and outer wings to one of the old but still nice Fujimi Gannets in order to get a COD 4.

GannatCODa.JPG (38.59 KiB) Viewed 7267 times

And the rest...WEM does the towing tractors in its Invincible upgrade set (Vic had the new ones in 1966), some 70 figures were fattened using glue/baking powder and painted and I had lots of fun scratchbuilding the jumbo crane. The AOTS gives you the the wheel base lenght and after that it's mostly looking at pictures and adding IJN crane parts...

[Pieter]

So here you have it. Over the past three years I have shown that it is possible to get a decent 1966 Victorious using a HP lower hull and Island, MT decals, lots of styrene and a well stocked spares box. As well as the airgroup + barrier from Orange Hobby.... Fairly expensive and not a very logical course of action as I had already started the airgroup using WEM and Fujimi parts but I like the result anyway. Anyone who wants to do a 1966 Vic now should get the Orange Hobby kit and scratchbuild the small changes needed for a 1966/7 version. And with Orange Hobby's 1959 Vic as well as a partially started airgroup in the stash I may be doing an 1959-63 Vic at some point in the future. But don't hold your breath.

[DamienB]

Thanks for this thread Maarten - nabbed some useful details for a build of the Airfix 1/600 Victorious. I was on a tight schedule (building it for a xmas present for my dad) so avoided getting any PE add-ons, extra deck vehicles or aircraft but it came out fairly well I think. I had been tempted by the MTM kit but your photos showed that it was little more than a downscaled copy of the Airfix one in terms of detail so you saved me pointless expense there too.

[Gernot]

This is such an inspiring thread, marvelous workmanship, and a fine exposition and presentation.
Tongue in cheek: please work on a wartime version, that should bring us one from the manufacturers all the more speedily!

[Pieter]

Thanks for the remarks gentlemen.
->Gernot: yes I have a HP kit of the 1941 Vic which is much more buildable than its 1958 cousin, just needs better AA guns. I am sometimes working on it but very slowly.
Edit: Just saw Flyhawk's 'possible' Illustrious announcement. I'm happy to be 'responsible' for that kit -:)