1/48 Fly BAC 167 Strikemaster Mk.88 - No. 14 Sqn Royal New Zealand Air Force

Depicted as NZ6273 from No. 14 Sqn Royal New Zealand Airforce as it was in the late 1980's when I worked on them.

I started this back and 2022 and then shelved it down for numerous reasons, the main ones being:

• numerous missing (or poorly depicted) details, 
• poorly defined panel lines combined with rock like plastic that is hard to scribe well, and
• the huge amount of flash or poorly defined parts.

However, in late 2025 I decided to finish it before Airfix finally release one.  

The Kit

1/48 Fly BAC 167 Strikemaster, Jet Provost T.5/T.5A (Powerpack) Kit No 48016

This was the “powerpack” and it comes with a resin set for various vents  / antennas etc along with a comprehensive PE Fret.  

The Kit also doesn’t come with decals for an RNZAF aircraft but I had aftermarket sheets from Oldmodeldecals to cover the bits like the Sqn crest /serials and Xtra decal for the roundels. The kit sheet is the best part of kit, being printed by Cartograph. I figured I’d use it of the majority of the stencils.  More on this later.

The Build

The problem with resuming a long-stalled build is you (I) often forget where I’m up to and what the kit actually contained.  

While it was obvious where I was at with respect to the construction, I forgot about the PE and resin bits in the kit.  This resulted in a large diversion down the 3D printing rabbit hole (more on this later).

I had started with re-scribing or deepening the detail on the kit as it’s all very shallow, the Fly plastic is rock hard which makes this sort of work much harder than I like it to be. 

 

The cockpit was assembled; detail is adequate although the sticks are pretty featureless.  When I first painted this area in 2022 and by 2025, I’d forgotten what colour I’d used. It may be Mr Color medium sea grey.  This made touch ups 3 years later problematic.

The instrument panel is PE and acetate. These were painted with a fine brush.  The centre pedestal and side consoles are resin and are quite nice. 

The resin seats are nice enough but the straps didn't look as I remembered them so after some Googling I added some extra straps (mainly those in blue) from Tamiya tape. An old re-heat handle was also used.  They're not accurate but look sufficiently busy.

The decals were from Airscale and Anyz. I should have painted black under the Anyz ones to make the white text stand out.  The decals aren't entirely accurate with respect to the text but they are reasonably close with respect to their positions.  Good enough for this job.

Anyz thin black decals wrapped around wire painted was used to make the ejection seat handles.  I'd lose the seat handles several times and my subsequent attempts at repeating the decal wrapping were not as good.

The kit resin intakes are too short so I positioned them in what I think is close to the correct place, filled the gap with a fair bit of evergreen and then flared it in with some Magic Sculpt epoxy putty.

The kit needs a fair bit of nose weight as the undercarriage is quite a way forward, probably because that the aircraft's design evolved from a tail dragger (Provost 1).

A bit of clamping was needed to ensure everything went together in as close to the correct place as possible.

Despite my best efforts a ton of filling and sanding was needed. Products of choice were CA Glue mixed talc, Black CA and Magic Sculpt epoxy putty. Mr Surfacer was used a spray putty to check my work and fill small surface scratches.

It was about now I ran out of interest and put the thing back in the box.  It wasn't just the ongoing body work but also looking at things like the pylons and gun link / case chutes and wondering if I could design better looking parts and get them 3D printed.

The 3D Parts Journey (don’t we all love a journey) 

Over Christmas 2022, as I was away from the bench, I spent some time designing the weapons pylons and gun link and cartridge chutes. I used Fusion 360 as it seems to be the most common software package used by hobbyists in our hobby and you get virtually the full program (with some restrictions) under a hobbyist licence.

After much frustration and a bit of help (abuse) from Craig at Aviation in Scale I ended up with something that looked better the kit parts.  Sadly I had no drawings so I used photographs and a fair bit of estimation for sizing etc.

After getting back from that holiday the 3D designing went on hold with the kit until late 2024 when I decided to purchase my own 3D printer.  Rather than jumping back into Fusion 360 I invested a number of hours watching tutorials aimed at the real beginner.  These helped me immensely to understand some of the basics of the software.

Eventually I ended making a heap of 3D enhancements for the kit including:

• Weapons Pylons – (Kit parts are poorly done).
• Gun link and cartridge chutes – (Kit parts are lumps of plastic with no holes etc.).
• Drop tanks (kit ones are small ones whereas the RNZAF used larger ones).
• Gunsights (replaced PE parts).
• Replacement nose vent on left side (Kit scribing was very shallow and I couldn’t restore it well enough).
• Centre pillar with the Compass, G meter and stopwatch - (replaced the PE part).
• Box on Cockpit Glareshield (not in kit).
• Ejection seat pull handle (replaced lost parts)
• Grill above the engine (not depicted on the kit).
• Vents above the engine bay cowls (replaced resin parts). 
• Another vent in the right side (replaced the resin part).
• Main undercarriage legs (the kit ones had massive mould seams and were oval).
• A single piece nose gear (Kit part is in 2 pieces and poorly defined).
• Main wheels (replaced the kit resin part as I stuffed them up ResKit do 2 types and I ordered the wrong type).
• Canopy mirrors (replaced PE parts).
• Replacement of tubing behind the seats (kit plastic was oval, had seam lines and was full of flash).
• Rear piece of the sliding canopy (replaced the poorly detailed kit part).
• Control sticks (replaced the ones I broke and lost).
• V/UHF antenna (replaced the resin part).
• UHF Antenna (replaced the resin part).
• Towel rail antenna stanchions (replaced the kit plastic (all flash) and PE parts).
• Flap hinges (replaced resin kit part).
• Elevator trim tab actuators (replaced PE part).
• Rudder trim tab actuators (replaced PE part).
• Pitot probe (replaced resin part).
• Pitot probe guards (replaced PE part).
• Anti-Col Light (replaced lost resin part).
• Valve behind the ejection seats (not in kit).
• Fuel Caps 
• Wing root vanes (replaced PE parts).

Many of the resin parts were replaced because I thought I could make a better 3D printed part, although there were a number that I didn’t notice were included in the resin parts.

I make no claims any of these replacement parts are more accurate than the bits the replace. But I do think they look better.  

I will be putting these up on Cults3D eventually.

Prior to decaling I attached the front windscreen and canopy. Even though I’d dry fitted it numerous times prior to painting, fit here wasn’t as good as I’d thought it was. Fixing this requires some repainting and touch ups. Getting the white and black transition symmetrical enough took a few goes.

Painting and Finishing

I went for a soft edged camouflage pattern on the aircraft. This was done using a combination of free hand, some masking putty and paper masks.  

The RNZAF Strikemaster had 2 paint schemes throughout its life.  The delivery scheme was British Standard colours approximating the South East Asia (SEA) scheme. Later in their life they were re-painted in the SEA scheme of  FS34079 Dark Green, FS34102 Medium Green and FS30219 Dark Tan, but with FS16440 Light Gull Grey for the light grey underside rather FS36622.  

I used Mr Color Lacquers and lightened the Tan and Dark Green to get shades I liked. The black was Gaianotes German Grey.  I elected to paint the wing walkways using Gaianotes German grey and SMS trainer yellow.

The kit comes with open and closed canopies I was doing mine open so the closed canopy was used as mask.

The metal part around the tailpipe is polished stainless steel, close to a chrome finish. I have yet to be able to get this finish on a model and this was no exception.  I think I used Mr Color Chrome but it's not Chrome enough. By now however I was over this thing.

Decals

I bought the Powerpack version of this kit for the resin and PE extras that weren’t available in the boxings with the RNZAF option.  And as I found out later, the RNZAF decals in those kits are far from complete, the largest omission being the 14 Sqn Crest, plus a lot of the stencil data is missing., and I love stencils.

Never mind I thought. I’ll use the stencils from the kit sheet, after all they’ll be the same on all aircraft, combined with roundels from an Xtradecal sheet, and the remainder will be from some Oldmodel decals 14 Sqn sheets. Having used an Oldmodel sheet on a past Andover build, I knew they weren’t anywhere near Cartograph quality but I’d only need a few so they’d have to do.

Decaling started with the Xtradecal national markings. These worked fine but trying to place them using photos of the real thing as reference revealed the amount of panels /panel lines that weren’t quite right. Oh well, I can’t do anything about that so I just cracked on.

Next was the kit stencils…. Hmmm the RNZAF stencils are different, especially for quite visible things like the ejection seat danger triangles. Plus; there was a heap missing like ones for the pylons, fire doors, rescue markings on the right-hand side etc. Oh well onto the Oldmodel decals.

I had been gifted 3 Oldmodel sheets, 2 for the late scheme, 1 for the early.  The sheets are similar with some stencil differences.  All these sheets were dated 2012 and the print quality was worse than I’d remembered. Furthermore, many of the stencils looked massively overscale, closer to 1/32 than 1/48.  At this stage I contemplated binning the whole project..

A day or so later, after some contemplation, I decided to take a punt and order another couple Oldmodel sheets hoping that decals printed more recently would be better.

While waiting for them to come form New Zealand I tried to simulate some of the stencils using pieces from the Spares bin.  The Airfix Hunter donated a number of the yellow stencil text, sure the text isn’t right but you can only see that in high resolution photos or with a magnifier.  I figured if I get Bruce's Scale Models to take the photos, that will guarantee they’d be soft and the incorrect text wouldn’t be visible.

The new Oldmodel sheets are definitely better but still not close a proper commercial decal. In the end I used a fair few of them, for the crest, the pylon markings and the ejection seat triangles and number of the stencils.  The crest had a bit extra white showing around it so this was carefully painted over some Vallejo acrylic. 

The yellow stencils on the sheet are sadly, IMHO, unusable over anything but the light gull grey. As such I only used them on the bottom and kept the kit / Airfix Hunter ones on the camouflage colours.

The aircraft serial number and other numbers were painted after making a mask using the Oldmodel sheet as reference.  The Oldmodel sheet provides serials in a light grey but I thought they were white.  That said a couple of mates pointed out that in many images they look light grey so they may actually be light gull grey. 

Final Steps

Weathering was limited to a wash. I just didn’t want to do any more than that.  The aircraft did get a few streaks on the bottom but I’d had enough by then.

Originally, I wanted to simulate all the holes in the upper wing for inspecting the main wing spars for cracks. On the RNZAF aircraft, from memory, we covered the holes with high-speed aluminium tape. I was going to use punched silver decal for this but I’d run out of interest.

I couldn’t get a decent mask / tape arrangement for the white bands at the tip of the tip tanks. White decal strip didn’t work either because of the all the compound curves.  In the end I gave up hand painted them. By now I was all out f&^5ks to give.

After receiving the Oldmodel sheets I noticed I’d not painted the wing walk markings anywhere near accurately, again I decided to move on.

A piece of steel wire was used for the towel rail antenna on the underside. This tool a bit patience to get the 3 stanchions aligned and then position the wire.

The anti cols were printed by workmate in clear resin after I’d tried to print and paint them using my grey resin. The clear ones look way better.

The MDC was designed by me and cut from Oramask 810 on my Silhouette Portrait before being painted a grey colour and stuck on the model. This looks better than I expected.

To seal the decals, I used VMS Satin. I like the VMS acrylics when I need to make carrier film disappear. The satin worked its magic again but it seemed to remain soft (like Bruce’s photos). This resulted in some fingerprints which I didn’t see until I’d started to photograph the model (should have got Bruce to do it). Perhaps this stuff has a shelf life? 

I did try to remove / paint over the finger prints with some success, finishing off with some Mr Color GX114 Flat over much of the model.

The final thing task I had was to glue on some practice multiple bomb racks (PMBR’s) on the inner pylons. These were a common fit when I was on 14 Sqn.  Aviation In Scale had designed and printed some lovely replicas along with MK-106 /BDU 33 practice bombs.

To my annoyance I found out the inner pylons were too close to the main gear, so the PMBR fouled the main gear door.  I am unsure whether I glued them in the wrong place or the kit is wrong. From memory I used the kit location for the pylons so I tend to think the kit is wrong. After all I’m not prone to making simple errors 😊.  Sadly the PMBR’s remain in the spares box awaiting the Airfix Kit (should it ever eventuate).

Conclusion

Currently this is only game in town for a 48 scale Strikemaster / Jet Provost 5 so IMHO you have to really want one in your collection to build it. Even from the box you have a lot of work as the kit plastic is typical limited run, i.e. lots of flash and mould seams to clean up before you can use the parts. 

On the plus side the kit decals are good (if you don’t want an RNZAF example) and the powerpack has useful resin/ PE in the box.

The kit suffers from inaccuracies, the intakes and pylon positions and location of lot of the panel lines/panels being the worst.  That said these are probably not deal breakers for most modellers, even me these days.  My 3D improvements were aimed at detail improvements than accuracy.

Would I build another of these, not a Fly one that’s for sure.  I could be tempted to build another if, as I expect, Airfix release one. 

The Photos

If you got this far, thanks for reading and looking.