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This was what I tried to post earlier, pic of the last Airfix kit I bought,
it still sits in a drawer just looked at it, wounder if the glue is still good.
Must be a rarity but no doubt there will be a few on Evil Bay

I most built model planes but I did build one rc boat, that I still have with all the old gear still in it..unfortunately these days its just gathering dust. I wanted to clear varnish it, but my planking skills were not up to that standard aaarggh

Nice boats, I used to make the EeZeBilt boats by Keil Kraft, then Airfix came out with their RAF rescue Launch and I motorised that, twin props and all.

I also started dabbling with RC sail boats but life (kids) got in the way, I could have really got into that.

I am a big Gerry Anderson fan but never got off on his later stuff when he started having human actors in his programmes, they were all so stiff and unrealistic.

Now a Fireball XL5 kit would be something, evidently Airfix did have Fireball moulds making the models as a a promotion for Lyons Maid but unfortunately they were never run for sale.

As a young lad, I worked on the flight deck of the Ark Royal in the mid seventies. We had gannets, phantoms, buccaneers, sea kings and wessex all launching and landing throughout the day and night.
I'd have to say that it was seriously impressive, especially when the weather was marginal. The stovies were particularly impressive when being fired off the catapults and more so when landing.
The gannets of 849 were always the first fixed-wing off the deck and the last on. Positioning the gannet onto the catapults was achieved by a couple of young lads 'leading' the gannet via a towing arm under the direction of the marshaller. Motive power was provided via the pilot . These two young lads were about 2.5 metres directly in front of the aircraft propeller disc during this activity. To say that the carrier flight deck was a dangerous place to work is an absolute understatement.

Interesting days!

LL

The Gannet was built just down the road from me, the factory is now a server farm, hotel and Asda superstore!

From a book called Phoenix Squadron by Rowland White.

"The story goes that during exercises with the Royal Navy, a US Navy fighter pilot, vectored to investigate an unidentified contact at 3000 feet, found himself flying alongside one of the Fleet Air Arm's Fairey Gannet AEW3s.
"What have you found up there?" his controller asked him. The American aviator paused to consider his answer, staring at the odd-looking machine as it ambled around the sky with one engined turned off. With a jet pipe sticking out of the side like the siphon of an octopus, bent wings, contra-rotating propellers and psychedelic swirling yellow and black spinner, and the swollen afterthrough of a radome, attached underneath like the cap of a giant mushroom, there was no doubting its strangeness. But it was the pilot who most caught his eye. In the cockpit, high on top of the the Gannet's tall fuselage, was a man who looked like Brian Blessed, wearing an old leather flying helmet, who, apparently engrossed in a book, didn't even look up. ' I, er, I think I've found God...' concluded the fighter pilot.""

Polchraine wrote:The Gannet was built just down the road from me, the factory is now a server farm, hotel and Asda superstore!

Gannets were also made at the Southport factory, as well as Hayes.

And I also agree, that Airfix never made a Gannet kit.

And its currently debatable whether XT752 in the USA is airworthy, as it seems it may not have flown since 2016.

dromia wrote:None of my mould listings show that airfix ever made a Gannet.

If they indeed did then I would be interested in knowing more as I suspect it would be as collectable as the old grey Fergy kit.

It's been a while since I assembled ready-made aircraft (so I could be wrong) but I don't recall Airfix ever making a Gannet.
Revell did. I think Classic Airframes did. Trumpeteer did, as did Frog. But no Airfix as far as I can recall.

I left the heady aroma of plastic glue and went on to the next best thing - flying R/C war birds made of balsa.

As the shop we used mostly stocked Airfix I assumed that is what it was, although they did stock some Revell as well. Bearing in mind this was in the 1960's I could be wildly wrong... As an aside, I remember my brother and I once walking to the shop to buy a couple of models and they had gone up from 2/3d to 2/6d however the let us have them at the old price. I wonder how many years ago that was.