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Eastern Express 1/72 Miles Magister
Reviewer: Kevin Ronayne kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie
Date: November 4th, 2005
The Miles Magister was one of the first monoplane trainers to be used by the RAF, and was a development of the civilian Hawk trainer. It also bucked the official trend towards all-metal aircraft, as it was constructed of wood with plywood covering. Deliveries of the M.14 to the RAF began in May 1937, but problems were soon experienced with handling, several aircraft begin lost when pilots were unable to recover from a spin. To rectify this, extensive modifications were made to the tail planes and rudder, with lateral strakes also being added to the sides of the upper rear fuselage. These changes were successful, and the modified aircraft was designated the M.14A.
The Air Ministry ordered 1,229 Magisters which were to be built between 1937 and 1941. Some of these aircraft ended up going to overseas customers, along with aircraft built specially for export. Turkey also built 100 under license. The Magister saw widespread use during WW II with all RAF commands, and was also used by the Fleet Air Arm and even by the British Army. Many aircraft were used as squadron liaison aircraft - or 'hack', to use the British slang. In the summer of 1940 when a German invasion was considered to be imminent, some Magisters were fitted with racks to carry 8 25-pound bombs, although there is no record of these being used in practice.
After the end of WW II, the Magisters were gradually disposed of. Given its' role as a basic trainer, it is not surprising that a few Miles Magisters remain airworthy to this day.
This is, of course, an old Frog mold, and I have built only a handful of Frog kits over the last 25 years or so. Although I am partial to RAF trainers, I never had much interest in this kit until recently. I might not have even bought it at all except that one was sitting on the shelf of my local modelling shop when I dropped in to collect an order. I couldn't really resist it, especially since it cost me only about 7.50 Euro. I was not surprised to see that this kit has been reviewed before on SMAKR, but I was surprised to see that it been reviewed as recently as this year, by Belgian modeller Erwin Bovyn. Erwin's review includes shots of the package (bagged sprues - those were the days!), and of the sprues. There are only 30 parts in the kit, including the two useless pilot figures. The kit is even simpler than the 'piece count' suggests, as the count includes the separate parts for the control surfaces and two parts for each tail plane. Given that the kit is about 40 years old, the mold seems in good shape, at least to me.
Anyone with any experience of Eastern Express kits knows that 'What You See' is not necessarily 'What You Get' when it comes to subjects and decals. One of the subjects is indeed an RAF aircraft (R1918), but this is not the aircraft (V1075) shown on the box artwork. The second subject is supposed to be a Turkish aircraft, but in fact it is from the Irish Air Corps! There is no paint or decal guide of any description included in the instructions. Judging from the photo in Erwin's review, the construction guide in this kit looks to be a direct copy of the guide from the Novo boxing.
The Irish Air Corps wing decals (the longitudinal tricolour stripes) are poor in terms of colour reproduction, but I could have recreated those with a paintbrush and some masking tape. However, with absolutely no references to go on, I was not inclined to model this subject. At any rate, I was intent from the outset on modelling an RAF aircraft with wartime camouflage. In fact, the decals for the R1918 indicate that it would indeed have had a camouflage finish at the time. Magisters would have sported both the 'early war' Dark Green/Dark Earth upper camouflage, and the 'late war' Dark Green/Medium Sea Grey camouflage. In both cases the lower fuselage and undersides would have remained as 'trainer' yellow. Still lacking references, I have no idea which scheme this aircraft carried - it may have carried both if it was around long enough. I much prefer the Dark Green/Dark Earth scheme. The last time I used this scheme on a model was probably the Novo Airspeed Oxford, which coincidentally was also probably the last Frog kit that I built before building this one.
Unlike Erwin Bovyn - who built two Magisters for his review - I was not intent on making any major improvements to the basic kit. Erwin seriously upgraded the cockpit and scratchbuilt proper scissors links for the main undercarriage struts, which would certainly benefit the kit. However, there are times when I just want to built a simple kit such as this straight 'from the box', with the absolute minimum of alterations or improvements. The first alteration I made was to create a rudimentary cockpit floor using some plastic card. Actually, the real reason for this was to hide any trace of filler that would have to be applied to the lower fuselage seam once the halves were joined together, since dry-fitting showed the join to be quite poor. Apart from that, there is little else to say about the cockpit, except that I painted it with Humbrol 78, aka RAF Interior Grey-Green.
The wing subassemblies (upper and lower wing plus aileron) were good fits, but dry-fitting showed that the wing root to fuselage joins were poor. The obvious solution was to adjust the join faces by sanding and other means until a good join at the correct angle appeared for each wing. The wings are slightly too thick (i.e., deep) at the root. I 'hid' this as best I could by attaching the wings as low as I could manage relative to the fuselage, so that the mismatch is mostly on the underside of the aircraft. Once the wings, tail and rudder units were all attached and left to set hard, I applied the required amounts of filler to cover over any unsightly gaps. Actually, there were not as many of these as you might think, but then it is a very small, very simple kit! There is a gap between the fin and the base of the rudder (just above the fin flashes on an RAF aircraft). I thought about filling this in, but eventually I decided not to.
For some strange reason, the locating holes for the main undercarriage legs are drill-out holes in the lower wing, and the instructions do not bother to point this out. I did not get caught out by this, although I did have a problem with the under wing port pitot tube. If there was a locating hole for this to be drilled out, I missed it, and had to position it manually. I positioned it just inboard of the aileron inner edge, but it should probably be just outboard of it. As Erwin observed in his review, the main wheels are very poor. I had to carefully fill in the wheels until they would hold in between the forks of the main struts. Wheel fairings (spats) were fitted as standard to most Magisters, but they were usually removed in the field. I had no problems with the tail wheel, or with the propeller assembly. I waited until I had almost finished painting before attaching the windscreens.
I added a small piece of plastic rod for the angled, protruded part of the engine exhaust on the lower starboard side of the engine cowling. And, I do believe, that is that. Now on to painting ...
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
I relied mainly on one photograph to work out a suitable camouflage pattern. Actually, based on photographs of preserved aircraft (both static and flying), there may have been more than one pattern used during World War II. The kit includes heavy raised panel lines which indicate the demarcation between the camouflaged and yellow portions of the aircraft. This makes it very easy to paint the kit - no masking required. It also suggests that the original Frog kit was designed with the wartime camouflaged scheme in mind, as the real aircraft does not have panel lines in these positions. If I had been in a perfectionist mode, I would have removed these lines when I was building the kit. The Humbrol colours for the paint scheme are Hu 30/Hu 29 over Hu 24. I must repeat something which I observed on the last occasion I used Hu 29, which is that the Humbrol 'Dark Earth' colour appears to have lightened somewhat, and taken on a slightly red tint. On some camouflaged aircraft, the camouflage pattern extended over the rudder, but I painted it yellow.
Photographs of preserved aircraft appear to mostly show the main undercarriage legs to be unpainted - i.e., natural metal. However, at least some aircraft had the legs painted yellow except for the oleo struts and scissors links, and this is what I did. Incidentally, the kit appears to depict an aircraft in the air, since photos of the Magister on the ground show compressed scissors links and barely visible oleo struts, compared to what is included in the kit. I painted the tail wheel strut natural metal based on a plate that I have in one of my books, although photographs show that for subjects like mine, it should probably be painted yellow. The tip of the propeller spinner was painted red. At least one preserved (and still flying) aircraft has propeller blades with brown studded leading edge inserts, but all-black blades seem to have been standard issue for the Magister.
The blind flying hood (for that is what it is) behind the rear cockpit was painted with Hu 74 linen, based on Erwin Bovyn's review notes. Other reference indicate a somewhat darker colour, with the lower section being left bare, possibly natural metal. Some Magisters had a diamond-shaped panel behind the cockpit, either in bright yellow or cream edged with red. This apparently was a poison gas detection panel - I had seen one previously on my Brewster Buffalo kit, but did not know at back then what it was. An early-war subject such as mine is more likely than not to have had this panel fitted, and I could have easily painted it on, but I decided not to. A final note is that I painted the pitot tube yellow based on photos of a surviving aircraft, but Erwin notes that he painted it silver.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
The decals were better than I expected, which is to say that they did not fall apart on first contact with warm water! Each decal came with generous surround of carrier film that had to be removed before use. I have yet to work out where some of the smaller decals should have been placed (remember - no decal placement guide), and even close up photographs of preserved aircraft proved to be of little or no use in this respect. The large under wing serials were not a problem: they are located just inboard of the under wing roundels (which are roughly in line with the upper wing roundels), and standard RAF practice is for the starboard serial to face forwards, and the port serial to face backwards. One problem with the decals themselves was a lack of opacity - you can see in the photographs of my kit where the camouflage pattern shows through the red centre of the upper wing roundels, and this is after some touching up with a dab of red paint to try and correct the problem. Also, I had problems with the fin flashes and had to overpaint them. Even after lightening my RAF Insignia Blue (the discontinued Hu 189), I found that the resulting mixed paint was still noticeably darker than the blue in the roundels.
After applying the decals, the entire surface of the aircraft was given a coat of Xtracolor Matt Varnish. This was mainly done to seal in the decals, which actually had a matt finish anyway.
The shortcomings of this kit appear to be the same as for any kit of this vintage, which principally means a lack of detail. I could start nitpicking about some tiny details that should (or should not) be there, but this would be a fruitless exercise. For a kit a simple as this, it should be every modeller for himself, especially as the available photographic resources are of excellent quality.
This appears to be a fine kit for anyone who wants to model the Miles Magister. It is cheap and easy to build, but availability might be an issue if previous experience with Eastern Express is anything to go by. It is probably not out of the question that the likes of Special Hobby or Pavla would consider producing a new kit of this aircraft in the future, but that day is probably several years off at least.
Apart from my standard printed references for RAF/British WW II aircraft, I relied heavily on the web as a source of images:
I managed to locate a feature on the original Frog/Triang kit on a French aviation site, Cocardes.
