Australia's Sabres represented a significant revision to the original North American design. The biggest difference was the installation of a Rolls Royce Avon engine. Considering the P-51D characterised a famous marriage of a Rolls Royce powerplant and a North American Aviation design, it is perhaps not surprising to see a post-war attempt to capture that magic once more.

The RAAF also wanted their Sabre to pack the punch of two 30mm Aden cannon in the nose.

These modifications meant considerable changes to the standard airframe. The nose was the most externally obvious change. The intake mouth was deeper to improve the airflow to the bigger Avon powerplant, and the cannon arrangement was revised on the forward fuselage sides. There were a myriad of additional dimensional and detail changes too, including new and relocated panels, vents, hatches and a different tailpipe arrangement.

Back in 2000, Red Roo Models offered a short-run injection moulded conversion for the Avon Sabre. High Planes actually produced the plastic parts. Now, High Planes is offering the short run conversion parts with the entire Academy F-86 Sabre kit (minus the fuselage sprue) and a new sheet of decals with six markings options.

The conversion element comprises just five short-run injection moulded parts in "Airfix blue" plastic (it reminds me of an old Airfix colour anyway!). The parts comprise two fuselage halves, the intake, a lower fuselage panel and part of the intake ducting. The plastic has some ragged sprue surrounding the parts, and the sprue connectors are quite thick. On the other hand, panel line detail is crisp, restrained and consistent, and the new fuselage really captures the overall appearance of the unique Australian Sabre.

The Academy kit has been available since the mid 1990s and is a very respectable offering, with decent detail and nicely engraved surface detail.

The decals are supplied on continuous decal film, so you will have to carefully cut out each marking before applying them to your model. I am concerned about the opacity of the markings. You can quite clearly see through the decals, even when they are still attached to the backing sheet. The supplied white backgrounds will be needed for full saturation and opacity.

The instructions supply detailed text, a few drawings, some poorly reproduced photos and the whole Academy instruction sheet. Experienced modellers with a little extra reference won't have any trouble working out what needs to be done. Please note, though, that some modification to Academy kit parts will be required, including surgery to the intake ducting and the lower wing, plus plenty of scraping, thinning and test fitting.

The effort does pay off though. We have an example on HyperScale of how nice this kit looks when complete. See Mick Evans' CA-27 Sabre article for more details (and the photo above). Peter Malone also shared his observations on the Red Roo conversion, most of which will be helpful to modellers building the High Planes kit too.

Recommended.

Thanks to High Planes Models for the review sample.