Airfix Club kit 70155 Gloster Meteor FR.9

 

The eagle-eyed will see that I made a very stupid mistake here; I put the inner undercarriage walls in the wrong way round. I knew that I had a problem with the fit of the wings, but I didn't know why until I put the undercarriage legs in and the support strut holes were in the wrong place... Yet another lesson learned, I hope! 

 

 

You can clearly see the poor fit of the wings here, but that is totally my fault. 

I really like this blue, and I am pleased with the way the paint came out, so there are still things to be happy with, despite my mistake. 

 

This is about the time I realised what I had done wrong... 

Post-op, everything went in OK, so it could have been a lot worse... 

There are a huge number of decals for this model, many of which I have no idea what they say as they are so small, but I think I did OK. 

I read in the instructions that the plane would have been glossy but would have dulled quickly, I thought perhaps the underside would stay glossy for a long time since it wouldn't be in the sun, so I decided to leave the underside glossy, but the top matt. I did a bit of primitive pre-shading by running a graphite pencil along the panel lines before applying a thinned down final coat of prussian blue - it actually kind of worked. I also did a few splodges of MIG acrylic starship wash to add some grime, but not too much as I figured that the plane would have been more regularly cleaned than WWII plane - don't know if that's true or not... 

 

Obviously I broke the pitot sensor or whatever it is off, so I cut the rest off, drilled a little hole and glued in the cut down leg of a resistor in its place. Looks fine to me. 

I thought it would be fun to have the back of the plane more glossy, as perhaps the tailplanes and rudder would cast a shadow while it was in the air or sitting baking on the runway. Again, no idea how true that is, but fun to try... 

 

 

Overall I am pleased, I was nervous about doing this, as it's more complicated than most of the kits I have built so far, and although I messed up the wing fit with the undercarriage wall mistake, it actually looks good, plus I seem to have learned from my previous varnish mess ups too - this has two coats of gloss, before and after decals, plus a coat of matt on the upper surface and I didn't mess it up, so confidence was built...