A natural follow on from their Typhoon kit (but sharing no common parts), Academy's Tempest is a state of the art kit of this meaty fighter. Three light grey sprues and one clear show good detail with clean, recessed panel lines and fastener detail. The cockpit has all the basic essentials and even some sidewall detail moulded inside the fuselage halves. The wheel wells are boxed in with rib detail - some modellers will no doubt complain that they are a little shallow, frankly I'll take this over no wheel; wells at all (or having to scratchbuilt them).

The breakdown parts is pretty conventional and doesn't deviate from any of the other previous Tempest kits (Revell, Matchbox and Heller). There is good detail for the radiator and on the undercarriage parts. The gear doors are commendably to scale, though it has to be remembered that those on the Tempest weren't exactly delicate. There is a choice of either bombs or drop tanks for the wings.

Decals cater for the rather obligatory Pierre Closterman machine from 3 squadron and Evan D Mackie's Tempest from 122 Wing, both in dark green/ocean grey/. medium sea grey camouflage. Academy's decals tend to be the weak spot in their kits, but time were of good quality.

Shape wise, modellers will no doubt argue over aspects of the fuselage here and there, ad infinitum - to my eye it looks convincing and captures the muscular lines of this heavyweight fighter. Hopefully we'll see some aftermarket decal sheet for this aircraft as it carried some colour schemes in its time. And given the may the kit market has been acting of late, maybe - maybe - we might see a decent 1/48 kit before too long, who knows...

I'm still playing with the idea of trying to graft the Centaurus engine from the Matchbox kit onto this kit...