The late 1940s and 1950s were an exciting time for aviation.  The dawn of the jet age held the promise of amazing performance in aircraft, but the thirst of the early jet engines meant that early jet-powered fighters had very short range.  This led to a strange class of aircraft being developed just after the Second World War: the mixed-power fighter.  Aircraft such as the Ryan FR-1 Fireball, Convair XP-81 and Curtiss XF15C-1 were developed to combine the range of a propeller-driven fighter with the acceleration, speed and climbing ability of a jet-powered plane.  Of the various mixed-power fighters developed, only Ryan's FR-1 entered service, 66 being built for the US Navy and flying with VF-41 for less than two years.  The Ryan mixed-power fighter story doesn't end there, though.  A single prototype of a turboprop-powered version of the Fireball, the XF2R-1 Dark Shark, was also built.  While it offered better performance than the FR-1, pure jet fighters like the Grumman F9F Panther and McDonnell F2H Banshee were proving to be sufficiently reliable and long-legged that the mixed-power fighter was comfined to the dustbin of history. 

I've always liked the look of the Dark Shark - the longer nose and spinner that accommodated the GE XT-31 turboprop engine gave it a very sleek appearance.  To be honest, though, I never expected to see an injection-moulded kit of this plane, and the available 1/48 scale resin kit from Collect-Aire was way out of my price range.  Thus, I was delighted to see that Czech Model, a limited-run manufacturer from (surprise!) the Czech Republic and distributed by Squadron, followed up on their release of an injection-moulded FR-1 with the one-off Dark Shark.

The kit is very well-presented, with a painting by Don Greer on the front and colour profiles of the two sets of markings included in the kit on the back.  One set of markings is the non-descript overall Glossy Sea Blue scheme with a red spinner which the prototype wore throughout its brief life, while the other is a speculative scheme based on the markings which the FR-1s wore while in service with VF-41.  These rather more interesting markings have white tail and wing tips with yellow stripes and the squadron insignia under the windscreen.  The decals are excellent, by the way, in register and very clear printed on thin carrier film.  The propeller logos and VF-41's "firebird" insignia are especially noteworthy.  Incidentally, if you are going to build the prototype, you will have to fill in the gun ports on the wing leading edges and the trough in the rear fuselage for the arrester hook.

The plastic components are very nicely done for a model of this sort.  The main components (fuselage, wings) fit together well, and only a minimum of filler should be needed.  The wing trailing edges are quite thin for a model of this type.  While there are no locating pins for most of the parts, the tailplanes do feature alignment tabs.  The main parts feature slightly soft recessed panel lines that should look good under a coat of primer.  While the interior surfaces of the parts are somewhat pebbly in texture, the outer surfaces are smooth.  Take note that the plastic is quite soft, however: one of the upper wings in my kit had separated from the sprue during transit, and a little chunk was removed from the wing leading edge.  The smaller plastic parts are well-moulde, particularly the propeller blades and landing gear.  The instrument panel is rather lacklustre, with blank circles for instruments; use your favourite instrument decals to dress this up.

The resin parts are separately bagged in the kit, which helps to protect them.  Among the resin parts are nose and main wheel wells, the rear of the large propeller spinner, and cockpit parts (including the floor, seat, gunsight, and side consoles).  The wing root intakes, turboprop and jet exhausts, wheels and tiny flap actuators round out the resin parts.  My only criticism of the kit components would be the main wheels, which have strange sidewalls on them that make the wheels look like pulleys.  From what I can tell based on photos, this is not representative of the real aircraft, so I am going to have to either reshape these wheels or source some from elsewhere.  Finally, the kit includes two very clear, quite thick vacuformed canopies that should be fairly easy to cut out.

Overall, I think this looks like a great kit, and I am looking forward to building it.  My biggest challenge might be to decide on what markings I am going to use.  While the VF-41 markings are certainly the most plausible "what-if" markings for this plane, I think I'd like to try something a little more interesting, such as a USN or USMC Korean war aircraft armed with rockets and bombs or a French Navy example wearing Suez stripes.  Hmmm ...

Highly recommended for modellers interested in US Navy subjects, prototypes, or something a little out of the ordinary.