Eastern Express (Frog) 1/72 Gloster Whittle E.28/39 Pioneer

EASTERN EXPRESS (FROG/NOVO) 1:72 GLOSTER E.28/39 PIONEER

Reviewer: Brian Manning (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 13 March 2008

Kit Details:

Eastern Express 1:72 Jet aircraft Gloster E 28/39 Pioneer - reissue of old Frog/Novo kit

Aircraft History:

The Gloster E.28/39 first flew in May 1941 proving the turbojet concept devised by Frank Whittle in the mid 1930's, the first allied jet powered aircraft built. From this experimental type of aircraft the Gloster company went onto produce the Meteor which saw service at the end of WW2.

The Pioneer was a demonstration aircraft built for the purpose of speed testing and for a short time held fastest speed record in 1941/42. It was also the first jet aircraft built and flown in UK. There were two prototypes made with second surviving and is stored at the Science Museum, South Kensington (photo on the Net http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/on-line/flight/flight/gloster2.htm).

The Kit:

The small box houses around 20-30 parts in light grey injection molded. The parts feel like they have simply been taken out of a Frog box and put into an Eastern Express box, as such is their quality. There are ejector pin marks and flash to deal with, although the latter is not too bad overall and thus the only real sign the parts were actually manufactured over the past decade, rather than 40 years ago. A couple of parts had become detached from the sprue in the box, and the one piece canopy is thick, milky and was scratched. Surface detail is okay but nothing particularly worth mentioning about with raised lines and engraved control surfaces that are basic in depiction.

Original Frog boxings of this kit

Instructions:

This is supplied on a single A5 sheet which looked like it had either been photocopied too many times, or was photocopied on an old fax machine! The assembly drawings are easy enough to work out, barely any paint information is provided, a small dab of history and a single view of the decalling and marking guide - you will get more information off the boxart! In a phrase, inadequate information outside of assembly.

Construction:

It begins in the cockpit which is virtually non existent - just a crude seat and tub is all you are supplied with. I fabricated an instrument panel out of a small spare semi circle left over from another kit and then raided the decals spares for an old Hasegawa instrumentation decal that could fit on this panel and would do the job. I added in some seat belts from an aftermarket etched set and painted up a little bit of sidewall detail. As you will see later in the review, with all the inaccuracies of this kit, there is no point being accurate in the cockpit! It was going to simply be a bit of a fun build to get me enthused in the hobby again.

The fit of the tub is awful because it is smaller than the gap it is supposed to fit in the fuselage. The instructions are not very clear about exact placement, so in the end I aligned it where I thought it should go (closing the fuselage halves and putting the canopy over the top to test it out) and secured it on one fuselage side with superglue to ensure it doesn't come loose. Some small bearings and fishing weights were pushed in around the tub to prevent tail sitting.

I anticipated that there may be a see-through effect (although counteracted by the fishing weights) with the tailpipe and nose area, so rather than leaving to chance I smeared some putty in each fuselage half - enough to pile it up to close off any possible light. This was done very crudely but hey, who cares!

The fuselage halves were then closed and surprisingly was a snug fit, with the aid of rubber bands while it was left to dry. The upper and lower wing halves were put together in the mean time and then inserted onto the fuselage. These fit quite well also, but the obligatory small gap at the wing roots needed filling and sanding. Likewise the same for the tail planes.

The fuselage has the front part of the tail fin already molded so all that was left to add here was the rudder. This fit wasn't so good and after a few test runs and trims it was secured in place with a gap beneath rudder and top of rear fuselage that needed attention. The finlets on the tailplanes need to be scratchbuilt as they are not supplied and then of course butt joined, so out came the superglue again... just to be sure. I found it difficult to work out the exact placement of these, although I suspect if I didn't have failing eyesight (well call it old age then) there are probably minute little lines on the tailplanes to tell you because the instructions does include this information. The tailpipe was a poor fit (due to it being a bit undersized) but easily overcome again with some careful putty application and superglue.

The landing gear is very basic and everything about the parts, including the wheel bays, lacks any detail whatsoever. I used a combination of careful painting, stretched sprue and tiny bits of card to spruce these parts/wheel bays up a bit so it looked at least reasonable. The final part to add was the cockpit which fitted quite nicely.

Colour Schemes:

The choice of the two prototypes is all that you get in this kit, because that was all that was built. The aircraft both feature dark green/earth camouflage over yellow undersides. I used Humbrol enamels, and primed it first with light grey overall, but still found I needed 3-4 coats of yellow before the underside looked yellow enough. Of course history indicates that yellow undersides were applied to these aircraft to prevent British personnel from trying to shoot down what was at the time top secret aircraft - ie: mistaking them for Germans.

Decals:

Not much on the decal sheet other than the roundels, fin flash, P symbol and serials - not that there was anything more to this aircraft. The decal sheet took me back to the early days of Propagteam, they are ultra thin, matt in appearance but in nice register on the sheet. Once they hit water they proned to curling and disintegrating if left too long, so I simply dunked the decals once or twice in luke warm water then let them soak on their own outside of the water bowl say 30 seconds or so and then carefully slid them onto the model with plenty of water on my fingers (to prevent tearing). This was a bit of a task but the upside is that they look painted on once sealed in with a gloss coat afterward. The real issue, however, was the yellow of both the RAF roundel and Prototype symbol was not very good. Unfortunately the decals are so thin that the green underneath bled through the yellow parts of the decals. In hindsight an aftermarket set would have been better.

Accuracy:

Those of you who have built this kit in the past and consulted references will know that this kit suffers a great deal in the accuracy department. You wouldn't buy this kit to get an accurate depiction. The fuselage is way over length which means the nose is incorrect shaped and the tail fin starts too far back - let alone it is not quite shaped correct, the wings are slightly too wide and have incorrectly depicted rounded tips, the fuselage is extremely fat (noticeable to the naked eye even without thinking of comparing to references) and the cockpit/canopy and trailing fuselage spine is also incorrectly depicted. The nose is the wrong shape and looks like someone simply sawed off the end and the tailpipe is a long way from being anywhere near accurate. Should I continue? No. You get the picture and obviously there will be other issues with landing gear being so basic and the lack of provision of the small finlets on the tail planes etc.

Overall Recommendation:

If you are after an accurate or even a reasonable replica of the E.28/39 then this kit is NOT for you, look elsewhere (and I believe there are only resin options in this scale), it is way inaccurate and not worth building on that basis if accuracy is your requirement.

However, if you are after a fun project and something that just looks a bit like an E.28/39 that you want to put in your cupboard then I can certainly heartily recommend this kit on that basis only. These are clearly the projects that many of us greybeards (not that I have a beard!) used to tackle as kids when the plane just needed to look a little right and you enjoyed the project for what it was - a fun hobby. A great little weekend or afternoon project for fun that takes you back 40 years!

web hosting • domain names • video sharing
free online games • photo sharing
free blog • short URLs