Airfix 1/72 Gloster Meteor III

AIRFIX 1:72 GLOSTER METEOR III

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: March 2003

Kit Details:

Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor III; kit #02038 - "Skill 1" Series 2

Aircraft History:

The Gloster Meteor is well known in aviation enthusiast circles and a bit of history has already been touched upon in Kevin Ronayne's excellent review. Suffice to say that the Meteor was the UK's first and only real operational jet fighter that entered late in World War II. Their initial roles in mid 1944 included the chasing down and destruction of V1 buzz bombs. The Meteor Mk.III or F.3 as it was also known, entered service in the last days of 1944/early 1945 and saw very limited service before the war ended, mainly in ground attack roles as a gun platform in Belgium. After the war the F.3 served as the frontline day fighter jet aircraft before being replaced by later types and newer jet aircraft types.

The Kit:

The kit dates back from the late 60's and still remains the only real game in town for a mainstream Meteor III kit in this scale. This is one of those types of kits that just about every post-war aircraft modeller with any sizeable collection would probably have in his display cabinet! It's been reissued on a number of occasions now, and the molds although showing a bit of age, are still relatively clean with virtually no flash on the parts. There are 37 light grey parts in total on two main sprues with the wings more or less floating loosely inside the plastic bag that contains them all. Two clear parts featuring canopy and port wing underside navigation light come on a small separate sprue. The parts have raised detail which is reasonable considering its age although basic by today's standards and of course plenty of raised rivets! Thankfully not as bad as I have seen on some kits! A few small ejector pin and sink marks can be found which is a common occurrence in these kits. Overall the parts aren't too bad and typically Airfix.

Instructions:

These come in the form of pretty much an 8 paged A4 sized booklet although my pages were separate from each other found floating around the box - plus there is the usual documentation in the kit for flash service, flying hours and those sort of things. The instructions are multi-lingual and are very straight forward to follow, with little room for misinterpretation when placing parts. Humbrol numbers [only] are quoted throughout the construction and external scheme phases. Four view diagrams are provided for decal placement and painting scheme as well as scrap drawings of wing tip sections, engine sides (that you can't see) and fin tips where slightly different markings can be used.

Construction:

Most people will want to get out the sandpaper and start removing most of the rivet detail. The main areas where they should be removed from are the control surfaces and these can be rescribed. The cockpit is extremely sparse, as often the case with these lower series Airfix kits, and of course a pilot figure is provided (which I generally use). A bucket seat is affixed against the rear bulkhead which itself is attached to the floor and fitted inside the cockpit, with black being called out as the interior colour. An instrument panel which resembles a semi-circular poor attempt at a dashboard is fitted, but like everything else there is no detail provided, although a decal is provided, and is thus better than nothing. I used a bit of stretched sprue to add in some structural detail on the side walls and a basic control column, although nothing can be seen when the cockpit is closed over. I also noted from Kevin's review that he placed a horizontal scrap piece of plastic behind the bulkhead, this is a must if you don't want to peer into an empty cavity behind the pilot! I measured up and trimmed off a matching size undercarriage gear door from the spares box which did the job nicely.

The fuselage halves could then be brought together and I noted Kevin's mention of a slight misalignment with his kit. The fuselage halves matched up almost perfectly on my kit, so I affixed them together and sanded the seam lines, so it is best to double check your fuselage halves just in case there is any warpage.

While this was drying I worked on the wings which are broken down into one underwing piece and two upper halves, removing a tiny bit of flash from the tips. A small navigation light is installed in the port wing underside and while the instructions say to install from underneath I am pretty confident that it should in fact be affixed from inside the wing. The lower wing piece was affixed to the belly of the fuselage which had small gaps at either end needing to be filled. These were just large enough to hamper the underwing piece from staying square-on, so I had to secure it in place with masking tape and leave it to dry.

The inside of the air intakes of the wing halves were painted silver while the splitter plates and interior intake face were painted according to the instructions. The plates need to be installed in the engines and carefully aligned before closing the upper wings halves, since you won't be able to fit them in afterward. Air brakes are fitted to both the upper and under wing surfaces, and you can have them in the open or closed position. I chose to close my air brakes and found the fit to be a bit so-so if affixed as labelled on the instructions. So I ended up test fitting, swapping them around and trying different spots, and trimmed accordingly until I was happy with the resulting fit. As the parts became separated from the sprue and swapped around, it is quite possible the labelled ones ended up in the spot they were intended to according to the instructions :)

The wings were then affixed to the fuselage and so were the tailplanes. A tiny amount of filler was needed at the joins to make me happy, but otherwise they fit quite well. The leading and trailing edges of the main wings could do with some thinning out and a pitot probe on the port wing needs to be added by the modeller with stretched sprue.

The only real concern was the fit of the canopy which was not particularly good, and I had to test fit and sand the mating areas to achieve a reasonable fit, which still required some filling on one side of the fuselage. The engine exhausts are little bits of plastic cylinders plugged into the back of the engine nacelles. I found they didn't sit flush and needed a bit of a rotation with the wrist (like one turns a small dial) until they were straight. Quite simplistic are these exhausts, and they also only represent the 616 Sqn version. If you didn't like these, you could leave them off and produce the No.74 Squadron.

Overall the fit of the kit was quite good with only the notes above really of any concern during construction.

Colour Schemes:

There are two aircraft examples provided for by the kit, but one can be depicted in a different paint scheme and with different markings depending where it was based. This a 616(F) Sqn example, in Dark Green (Hu163), Ocean Grey (Hu 106 + Hu 135) camouflage over medium sea grey (Hu 165) undersides based at RAF Manston, UK, December 1944 with red/blue upper wing roundels, or based at Lubek, Germany 1945 with red/white/blue upper wing roundels and a unit badge on the tail fin. The same aircraft can be finished in the all-white camouflage when the aircraft where sent over to Melsbroek Belgium in January 1945, or again with the change in upper wing roundels to depict it based in March 1945. The second aircraft example is a 74(F) Sqn example (with the tailpipes removed), in the same Dark Green, Ocean Grey over Medium Sea Grey undersides camouflage based at RAF Colerne, UK, 1945. This is a Derwent powered example and as covered in Kevin's Review is not stated by Airfix as being included in the kit, even though it quotes the Derwent version. When I saw the mixing of the two paint colours to make up the Ocean Grey portion, I was annoyed Airfix did not include a percentage of how much Hu106 to mix etc... but then realised that Hu135 is actually Satin Varnish. So the aircraft was finished in Hu 163 and Hu 106 (satin varnish) over Hu 165.

I also noted... after I painted the undersides of my aircraft according to Airfix's instructions!.... Kevin's note about the underside colours of the Meteor. This is one of those annoying times I went with the kit (as it was always intended to be a quick and easy project) rather than churning out research, so you may want to double check your references before doing this part.

I did also consider putting up a RAAF Meteor but found out that the RAAF mainly operated F.8 Meteors, with a bubble canopy and revised tail fin. However, the RAAF did operate one ex-RAF Meteor F.3 just after the war, in the standard upper Dark Greeen/Dark Sea Grey over light aircraft grey undersides, wearing EE427 serial which has pretty much been overpainted with a sky fuselage band. I considered doing this aircraft using decal spares, but in the end took the easy option and did the first kit example mentioned above.

Decals:

The decal sheet is split pretty much into three sections, one section for both of the aircraft examples and another that is common to both. The red dots for the roundels are separate - I remember my early modelling days when I used to hate seeing this on kits, but nowadays, I would much prefer to put the red dots in separately so I know they will be perfectly centre! The register was quite good, they were of medium thickness and had a matt appearance. I gave the model a gloss cote, which it probably didn't need since I am sure they would have gone straight onto the satin finish without any problems. I had no problems with the decals, they went on very nicely. However, the type B (red/blue) upper wing roundels needed to be replaced because there was a strip of white margin bleeding through on one side. I didn't use the upper wing type C (red/white/blue) roundels obviously, so not sure if there were any problems with those but the other decals were fine. So if you didn't want to get replacement decals or use the type B ones, you could simply depict the version based in Germany or March 1945 which used the C roundels.

Accuracy:

The measurements are pretty much spot on and the look of the aircraft stacks up well against the profiles and photographs that adorn my reference collection. The malcolm style canopy looks right also. But it is an aged kit with quite a few rivets and the usual mold limitations and simplicity in detail and some parts (like the tailpipes) so one needs to bear this in mind.

On the subject of whether the Derwent engined version is correctly depicted in this kit, it is hard to say. The kit suggests the only difference being the omission of the small tailpipes, however, some research turned up that many Derwent examples did indeed have lengthened engine nacelles. I haven't been able to confirm whether the example in this kit is one of them.

Overall Recommendation:

The Meteor is a great looking aircraft in my opinion, with the F.3/F.8 on a par which looks prettier from my point of view! I was always going to get this kit and it is still the only mainstream F.3 available today in this scale. Given it is an aged mold one cannot expect a truly great result, but for the beginner and anyone wanting to add a simple kit to their collection, go out and buy one, and relieve some of that AMS!

Related Reviews:-

Airfix 1/72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III (Kevin Ronayne)
Frog 1/72 Meteor F.4
Tamiya 1/48 Meteor F.1

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