The Strikemaster is an icon of British aviation. A development of the Jet Provost (itself a development of the Provost) the aircraft was a light strike aircraft that retained the useful side-by-side cockpit layout. Due to it’s unique design in the training world, the plane was still used by many air arms as a trainer first and foremost – such as with todays subject, New Zealand.

The model we’re looking at has it’s roots back in the 1970s, but is definitely one of the better tooling’s of the era. I had no significant flashing issues, and I had no real issue with fit either. To be honest the worst parts for me were removing the clear marks from the sprue posts! They are so thick on these older models. To be honest though, the aircraft doesn’t look that bad when next to it’s much more modern Jet Provost sibling from Airfix.

The main issue with the non-plastic parts has to be the decals though. They separated, split, dissolved, and disappeared in any other way possible. I was so delicate with them, and yet I still ended up having to re-paint the kiwi bird on the underneath roundel. Thank god I had a steady hand that day because god knows what I would have ended up with otherwise!

Construction did not take me long, however. This more than makes up for the time spent on the more dated techniques needed. There’s definitely more sanding of seamlines and joins, and there’s a bit of a lack of detail for sure. The mains issue I have, however, is the cost.

This kit costs almost double that of the Jet Provost…and if you get the Jet Provost in the Lidl or Aldi sales then it’s nearly 4 times the cost (for those not using Jet Provosts as a common scale, they’re about £5 each in the sales, so £20 total).

You can definitely make a lovely Strikemaster out of the Jet Provost set. Yeah, you’ll need to do a little work to get there, and it’s not as accessible to a newbie, but you can if you can use your imagination or aren’t fussed on super accuracy. The Strikemaster is more akin to later Jet Provosts anyway, hence the later boxings of the Strikemaster in the 90s.

Overall I probably would not recommend this kit, as it’s very expensive for what it is. There’s such a gap that I’m hoping Airfix fill with a Strikemaster-forward release in the future. This kit will never be a vintage classic for that reason – so please Airfix, make a girl happy and re-release this with the new tooling!