A single bag holds four light gray sprues and the clear parts are in their own bag within the primary bag. I’m fortunate that, in my example, two bags of clear parts are include. I was on the other side of that issue with Airfix’s Gnat kit with a missing sprue. I called the North American distributer and asked for a copy of the missing sprue. At that time, I lived less than 10 miles from their warehouse and could have picked it up. Instead, they mailed another kit to me. If you are the unlucky one that is missing a clear sprue, I can mail the extra one to you.

The parts are well molded with crisp detail, no flash, and seams almost nonexistent. Wheel well detail is molded into the upper wing. The only flaw that I could detect is a sink mark in fillet at the trailing edge of the right wing and fuselage. There is just enough texture on the surface to soften the sheen of the plastic.

The engineering of this kit is fantastic! Included are two spars. The front spar incorporates the first compressor face of the engine and the aft face of the main landing gear wells with the aft spar having the engine turbine and hinge plates for the flaps. The intakes are single pieces and have the vanes molded in. Three come with the kit, the oddball for another version (the FB.9. Ed). After looking at how the booms are keyed into place, their attachment is foolproof. (Although, this fool has defeated other manufacturer’s efforts.)

Total parts count, including the clear parts is 124. Options are included for a seat for a pilot figure, or one without that has a harness molded in, two instrument panels, external underwing fuel tanks, and flaps posed completely down or up.

Decals for three options are found in the folds of the instructions. All three options are for aircraft in museum collections. Depicted on cover is the first option, VT812 found at the RAF Museum, Hendon, United Kingdom. Option two is 442 “City of Vancouver” at the Comox Airforce Museum, Comox, British Columbia, Canada and sports a bat head motif on the nose. The third is P42408/AE-B found at the Gardermoen Museum, Oslo, Norway. All have the primary color in High-Speed Silver.

The instructions are in a 16-page booklet. The first two pages cover a brief history in five languages and the usual cautions and symbol explanations. The next 10 pages illustrate assembly sequence starting at the lower wing/fuselage and continues over 87 steps. If the flaps are to modeled up, steps 39 through 52 can be skipped. Most of the steps show only one or two pieces added.

In the first step, attention is called out to a hole that should be drilled for part D19, that is installed in step 32, before the upper and lower wing/fuselage sections are mated. I think that part is an antenna and it sits off-center of the underwing roundel, so it would be far easier to install it after decaling. The other underwing roundel decal obscures a landing light, so one can either mask the lens, and cut the decal after it dries, or trim the decal before application.

Color call-outs for interior paints just list the Humbrol number, not the name of the color, while the names are given for the exterior colors.

The engineering of this kit is very well thought-out. Other than installing part D19 at the end of build, one should end up with a great model by following the instructions and should be a straight forward build out of the box. Look forward to other variants from Airfix in the coming years.