Jump to content

Gnat T.1 PK-15, or recapturing the spirit of bygone days... - Completed


Giorgio N

Recommended Posts

As I had to stop working on the Phantom, I have decided to build a different kit for this GB. Clearly with only 1 month to go, I had to choose something quick and easy and among the various Matchbox kits in the stash the one that looked more promising was the Gnat.

 

resized_e91f9d87-6d3a-4a2e-a982-c19987b2

 

I'm not an expert or a collector so I don't know if this is one of the original kits or a "Chinese" one that was produced after the true glory days of Matchbox. In any case here we have all the standard ingredients of a Matchbox kit, like the very nice boxart and the two-colour sprues, in this case white and red. Missing from the box is the traditional clear window that allowed to peek inside the box.

 

8227c9a2-3ddf-43d7-a0e9-0a48553c7f33.JPG

 

As said above, sprues are in two colours, with one single clear part

 

5a0f3ad4-9392-4be1-9b13-a9f869a78c2d.JPG

 

The plastic is the standard Matchbox plastic, quite hard. I personally have always preferred this kind of plastic to the soft one used by Airfix. The level of detail is what we can expect from an early Matchbox kit, almost nothing ! Panel lines are of course taken care by the infamous trench digger. Not that there are that many, as most have not been reproduced at all.

Decals are included for a Red Arrows Gnat and one CFS aircraft in the final Gnat trainer scheme, red with white upper fuselage and bands on the upper wings. The decals look to be useable but are not really great, personally I'll replace them with something from the spares box

 

80b63fd8-c87b-4a2c-bd50-91fc243fd411.JPG

 

With this being a Matchbox kit my initial plan was to build it straight out of the box to try and recapture the spirit of my childhood, when a kit was built in a day or two and then used to play against some other model, but then I found this in my stash:

 

3b398e5a-5780-4d79-a019-0d631e411171.JPG

 

And suddenly I realised how very visible the cockpit is from the canopy and thought that maybe I could have built the kit how I used to build them sometime in the mid-late '80s, after I had discovered Aeroclub and plasticard, so to capture the spirit of my teenager days. So started the build of the Matchbox Gnat....

 

 

Edited by Giorgio N
  • Like 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good pick Giorgio.

If I recall correctly, I always found this Gnat way better than the Airfix offering at the time. She builds pretty well OOB, so hopefully we will see this one wrapped up quick smart. 

 

A nice addition to this ever growing GB! 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

 The decals look to be useable but are not really great, personally I'll replace them with something from the spares box

 

80b63fd8-c87b-4a2c-bd50-91fc243fd411.JPG

 

Sadly the font and ispacing of the serials is very "off" and the roundels proportions and register don't look too hot either.  Have you got a sheet from one of the new Airfix kits that you could rob?

 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Rabbit Leader said:

Good pick Giorgio.

If I recall correctly, I always found this Gnat way better than the Airfix offering at the time. She builds pretty well OOB, so hopefully we will see this one wrapped up quick smart. 

 

A nice addition to this ever growing GB! 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

 

It is by a mile ! And that tells a lot about how bad the Airfix kit was... :D

I bought this kit relatively recently, must have been around 7 years ago. My plan was to build the well known XP505 of RAE but never started. With the issue of the new Airfix kit a few years ago this one became surplus but never sold it

 

11 hours ago, John said:

I'm certain my Gnat was red and yellow.

 

John

 

May be John, this is not an early box, they may have changed the colours over time

 

 

11 hours ago, stevej60 said:

Glad to see this kit make an appearance Giorgio,I've a feeling this was the first MB kit I bought.

 

Steve, interestingly I never built one ! I built many MB kits in my early days as a modeller but never bought this.

 

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, stever219 said:

 

Sadly the font and ispacing of the serials is very "off" and the roundels proportions and register don't look too hot either.  Have you got a sheet from one of the new Airfix kits that you could rob?

 

Agree, decals are all wrong. Even the flag on the tail is useless so no chance of a Red Arrows aircraft either. I do have a sheet from the new Airfix kit and I may actually build this using Airfix' markings. I also have a couple of aftermarket roundel sheets so I should be covered.

I have yet to decide the markings, one option is to simply build the aircraft proposed by Airfix. My favourite scheme for the Gnat is the short lived red/white/light aircraft grey scheme but I'll apply this on an Airfix kit. On this one I may go for the LAG/dayglo scheme... or build one of the Hot Shots aircrafts :D

Interestingly, Airfix just announced the re-release of the Gnat with these "The Navy" markings

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's show some work !

The cockpit is really bare and as I had Aeroclub's seats I decided to add some representation of what's around the seats. Mind, this representation is not really accurate ! In particular the instrument panels have totally different shape in the real aircraft and the part between front and rear cockpit is different too. There should also be a glass between the seats that I've not reproduced. Rebuilding the cockpit accurately however would have meant a complete scratchubuild job, something that I'm not going to do with the superior Airfix mould around (and in the stash).

Here's what I got by adding some plasticard to the Matchbox part

 

295e9c41-b0ce-4049-b1c1-ede45d3dafd9.JPG

 

c819ec9d-1e4c-41f2-a7c9-dbb2ab35a905.JPG

 

And here's what the modified part and the seats look like in the fuselage. Not accurate but better than nothing

 

7321cbd0-ef29-4be6-a60f-689dcb778940.JPG

 

6cda4385-f7a0-497c-a0b6-2ad8dc46092f.JPG

 

  • Like 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, nimrod54 said:

Looks good enough to me Giorgio. :thumbsup:

 

22 hours ago, Arniec said:

That is a great start Georgio. :thumbsup2:

 

cheers,

 

Thanks guys !

Cockpit has now been completed and painted, with the exception of the seats and the control sticks (seats are being painted and sticks will follow)

As said before the instrument panels are not the right shape and there are other inaccuracies but at least the cockpit is full.

 

177445bf-ecd4-4dc4-8c0d-eb1cecea01bb.JPG

 

cb78641a-7bbe-4cb0-86f0-55a45df7c669.JPG

 

The paint used was Lifecolor's FS 36231, this is IMHO a bit too dark to properly represent this colour but works well enough for Dark Admiralty Grey in 1/72 scale (meaning it's a bit lighter than the proper colour but looks good enough in such a small cockpit

The instrument panels were homemade with my laser printer, nothing fancy but they do trick the eyes into thinking there are some instruments in the panels. Granted, I didn't use this technique when I was a teen, still today I have access to this so why not using it ?

The pictures also show that I added some ballast in the nose, using lead fishing weights, don't want this to be a tailsitter

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I almost forgot to mention one other small job I had to do before closing the fuselage, sort the intakes

The intakes as moulded by Matchbox are quite shallow but really this is nothing unusual in kits of this vintage (and even newer ones aren't always better). Of course 30 years ago I'd have not bothered making full length intakes so it was clearly I was not going this time either (trying to recapture the spirit etc etc...). There was however one problem...

 

ad6ac501-1841-492c-9862-08effffe9ecf.JPG

 

Can you see inside the intake? The rear wall here is painted black and would be far back enough for a quick build. At the top however part of the wing root protrudes well ahead of the rear wall and this really does not look good.

What to do ? One option is of course to chop this part and rebuild the top of the intake, however I decided to go for a simpler solution, carving the top of the intake to fair it smoothly into the rear wall.  This will result in a ramp at the top instead of the accurate straight wall, not accurate but at least better looking that a wall at the top of the intake. Here's what the modified intake looks like

 

377066cd-4ffd-48aa-a59a-06fa734513b3.JPG

 

Not too bad... it's the kind of modification I would have done back in the days so I'm still keeping the build more or less in line with the idea of recapturing the spirit... honestly though I'd have preferred not having to do this modification, what were they thinking at Matchbox ?

 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, looks like capturing the spirit of the good old days is not always that easy... I thought I had sorted the intakes then I realised that the Gnat has splitter plates in the intakes and I started working on these. Easy in theory, but then I struggled so much that I decided to break the upper wal and sand the whole top area. Plates were made from plasticard but in the end I attached then to the fuselage instead of leaving them slightly raised, it's inaccurate but I'll live with that. Maybe in the good old day I wouldn't have bothered but I do now. The inside of the intakes was painted in a very dull aluminum. I don't know if this is 100% correct, I've read references to both this a light aircraft grey, as a dull aluminum can look grey I deicded for this. The edge of the intakes is red... more on this later.

With the intakes sorted, I could also do one important bit, close the fuselage halves ! And here's the result. Fit was not too bad but some areas needed a bit of sanding. The wheel well panels were also glued in place but not before having the interior painted in silver. These panels needed quite a bit of filler and some more sanding.

 

5d92f850-5300-4da3-aaa3-f1507121573f.JPG

 

9d40e760-6c04-4cc6-a240-f1729d85fc21.JPG

 

The following step was to glue the wings in place. With the wings on it's clear how small the Gnat really is. At this point I once again lost track of how great modelling was in the good old days and I decided to do something that I would have not bothered with back in the days: add some panel lines. The wings are small but really I feel that having no panel line is a bit too much, so I searched for some references. Best reference is the Airfix kit but I decided that the panel lines on the kit are a bit hard to replicate on the Matchbox model. So I found some drawings and copied the lines from these drawings. And here again came to the rescue a technique that I couldn't even think of when I was younger: vynil templates cut with a computer controlled cutter. The process is not too hard, import the drawing in Corel Draw, draw the masks following the panel lines on the drawing, resize to the parts in the kit, export as DXF file, import in the cutter software, resize if needed and then cut... and after all this here's the model with some of the masks in place

 

3f0a99a0-8b6a-499f-b97e-f221dcc10368.JPG

 

Vinyl is not the best material for scribing templates as it's a bit soft on the edges, but with care can be used quite easily. I'll take some more pictures later, in the meantime let me say that I'm quite happy with the final result. The lower surfaces received only a couple of lines with the help of Dymo tape, the tanks will hide most of the lower surfaces anyway.

 

I mentioned above the red edges on the intakes. These were added as I'm now thinking of building a Red Arrows aircraft. I know, I said that the kit decals were useless and they are. However a couple of days ago I found a new tool Airfix starter set on a well known online auction site for a great price... with the "buy-it-now" option it costed me €8.50 delivered home, that for a good quality Red Arrows decal set is not bad considering that it comes with a modern kit of the Gnat attached...

The plan is to use the Reds decals on the Matchbox kit while building the Airfix kit in one of the trainer schemes. My original Airfix kit is already "allocated" to one of my favourite subjects, XP505 in Raspberry Ripple scheme as used by RAE

 

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'm guilty, I know ! I'm guilty of having not devoted the required time to the hobby. Actually I did devote some time but was not really used that well.

In any case there has been progress on the Gnat, in fact quite a lot of progress. Problem is that I didn't take all that many pictures.

There is one good reason: I've gone through that stage when primer is spraid, then joints are checked, filler is first applied then sanded, primer is spraid again and so on. I used to hate this process when I was a teen, I still hate this process some 30 years later.

And of course I'd have loved to show pictures of a nicely primed model ready for the final finish but no, all I can show are pictures of a half primed model still waiting for some work.

 

e885750d-6e74-4190-b8ca-ff7bf20d31fd.JPG

 

Most joints needed filler and the wings-fuselage joints gave me a lot of troubles. Part of this was due to my decision of scribing new panel lines, that unfortunately cross the joints. The filler got damaged by the scriber so I had to sort and rescribe quite a few times. There are still some problems in this area but I'll sort this differently after the primer coat.

During this work I had planned to attach the light at the front of the fuselage. Matchbox supply a part in white plastic for this, part that also include the pitot tube. The original plan was to use this part and simply paint the light in silver. This is what I'd have done when I was 18-19 ! Small problem: the part does not fit that well. Of course I could just sand everything but this would very likely mean breaking the pitot tube. And then come on, it's a light cover, it should be in clear plastic ! And here came another deviation from the original OOB plan...

To reproduce a part like this, a modeller can start from a large enough piece of clear sprue. Cut this to a size larger than the final part and glue it on the front fuselage tip

With the part properly glued, start sanding with progressively finer abrasive pads, until the shape is right. Then use a soft cloth on a power tool to polish the surface

 

3d2af718-22ff-4c1d-8e6f-97aeb9f701d2.JPG

 

Not too bad, the shape is maybe a bit pointed but will do. A coat of Klear should make it even clearer. I'e yet to glue the pitot tube, this may come from the original Matchbox part or I may replace it with brass tubes.

 

While I spent time priming and sanding, something good happened: the postman delivered a new tool Airfix starter set.

 

d8ca7281-9ca8-4ef9-a608-2b6d42560aaa.JPG

 

This is supposed to supply the decals, however I realised that the Matchbox kit is best built with the tanks in place, as the bottom of the wings have a flatter section where these are installed. Red Arrows aircrafts on the other hand rarely used the tanks and sure didn't use them during displays... I now have to find out if the team evr used the tanks while wearing the markings proposed by Airfix.

 

(Small unrelated note: the Airfix decals look great. The kit is much nicer than the Matchbox one of course. However when i tried to dry fit a few bits of the Airfix Gnat I realised that this isn't going to be an easy build either.... could Tamiya please do a new 1/72 Gnat ????)

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Finally the model is completely primed ! I've used Vallejo's white primer, as I prefer to have a white coat under a colour like red. For some reason though I've had a lot of problems with the primer, the finish is very coarse, something that I didn't have with this primer in the past. Before painting I'll have to cut the finish with some abrasive pad.

 

7db6e965-9ce8-434b-a9fa-03361644ecc0.JPG

 

One of the reason it took me a bit longer to prime the model is that I decided to get rid of the fuel tanks completely, so to use the Red Arrows decals without any doubt on the use or not of tanks. This meant sanding off the ridges on the lower wing surfaces.. and of course reinstating the panel lines I had scribed in this area.

Tomorrow morning it will be time to spray some red at last...

  • Like 11
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's looking very gNatty ( :D ) Giorgio!

 

The Airfix kit is a bit fiddly, but it looks pretty good when it's finished - even I managed a passable replica of one of my favourite jet trainers from it. (The stencil decals will drive you insane though.) I must finish it off one day-  I'm waiting for a day where I'm able to paint the tiny teeny weeny wittle wheels without splashing the wrong colour all over the place...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/2/2018 at 6:23 AM, stevej60 said:

Looks great under primer Giorgio.

 

Thanks Steve ! I hope that the she'll look even better with a coat of paint or two...

 

On 3/2/2018 at 11:48 AM, Rob G said:

That's looking very gNatty ( :D ) Giorgio!

 

The Airfix kit is a bit fiddly, but it looks pretty good when it's finished - even I managed a passable replica of one of my favourite jet trainers from it. (The stencil decals will drive you insane though.) I must finish it off one day-  I'm waiting for a day where I'm able to paint the tiny teeny weeny wittle wheels without splashing the wrong colour all over the place...

 

Thanks Rob. Good to know about the Airfix kit too, I hope I can build it decently.

Speaking of wheels, one solution is to make masks using a leather punch, one of those tools used to punch holes in leather belts and similar. It's perfect to cut circles of masking tapes, of course the possible sizes are limited but works pretty well for 1/72 aircrafts. And it can be bought for cheap at most DIY shops

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was Monday when I realised that the GB was coming to the end so I really had to keep moving to finish in time !

As said before, I've had some problem with the primer, in any case I managed to get a smooth enough surface and started spraying some paint.

The Airfix kit comes with some pots of Humbrol acrylics, including of course one of red. When I was younger I used only enamels, Humbrol and Molak (the latter a local brand) but these days I use almost exclusively acrylics. Yes, I'd like to recapture the spirit of the past and so on, but I couldn't see the point of getting back to enamels, so I thought that using the Humbrol 19 from the Airfix box would have been the closest thing to what I used to do. Well, big mistake...

This paint is pretty bad, I trying spraying but didn't really work that well. Guess what ? I binned the Humbrol paint and used my bottle of Vallejo red. I don't think it's the perfect red, but it will do on this build.

I should add that as I planned on using the Airfix decals, I had to check if these would fit properly, particularly on the fin. To avoid any problem here, I decided to paint the fin in the 3 colours. Masks were again cut on my Silhouette cutter.

And here's the result

 

611bdfb8-fa3b-4d2e-9565-a73423868a72.JPG

 

Not perfect really, as there has been some blue paint bleeding on the white area. Nothing to worry too much about though, I will likely cut the white part of the airfix fin decal so to hide any bleed.

 

P.S.: then this morning I read that the GB has been extended, very good, I should be able to finish this in time.

  • Like 12
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7.2.2018 at 11:17 AM, Giorgio N said:

Thanks Rob. Good to know about the Airfix kit too, I hope I can build it decently.

Hi all,

 

A bit off-topic for this threat the Airfix wing need some adjustment with the fuselage on rear. It stands too high without removing some stuff from the rear joint. Also main gear wells are easy to locate too high. For my taste engraving needed to be toned down with three applications of Mr. Surfacer 500.

 

Back to the Matchbox kit mine converted to a single seater when I was probably 14 was red and yellow plastic.

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, AaCee26 said:

Hi all,

 

A bit off-topic for this threat the Airfix wing need some adjustment with the fuselage on rear. It stands too high without removing some stuff from the rear joint. Also main gear wells are easy to locate too high. For my taste engraving needed to be toned down with three applications of Mr. Surfacer 500.

 

Back to the Matchbox kit mine converted to a single seater when I was probably 14 was red and yellow plastic.

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check that area carefully when building the model. The Gnat seems to have the same features of other Airfix kits of the same era, some very interesting ideas, clever assembly solutions but a fit that is not always stellar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/2/2018 at 11:05 AM, nimrod54 said:

Nearly there now Giorgio, I'm sure that you will finish it with time to spare now. :thumbsup:

 

 

Yes, and it would have been even easier to finish it without one small problem..

To recap the situation, aftet a good coat of gloss varnish I started applying decals. Most went on with no problem, as can be seen in the picture below:

 

a1fbd6ba-fcf8-4bff-b232-30cd1aa487a1.JPG

 

The Airfix decals are way better than the Matchbox ones and overall they look good on the model. I was also happy to see that the white stripe on the front fuselage was exactly the right size even if coming from a different kit.

Then I started applying the serial numbers on the lower surfaces... and here the problems started ! Airfix supply the XR and the 977 as separate decals. No problem I thought, just apply a couple of narrow tape strips to get the angle right, then apply the decals together. And it was working, until the XR decals fell off the model for some reason. And of course fell somewhere on the carpet, from where I couldn't find it at all. So I was left without part of the codes...

I had noticed that the adhesion was not the best in these decals, strange as generally Airfix decals behave very well in this respect. Wonder if the decals in the gift sets are of lower quality for some reason or maybe I just got a bad sheet.

In any case I had to find a solution. I tried printing the decals but the blue decals on the red background ended up looking black, so no good. At that point I decided to cut masks on my Silhoutte cutter. I'll airbrush some blue paint soon and hopefully I'll have this sorted before the end of the day

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I said I hoped to have this sorted by the end of the day and I did. Codes are now painted on, not great but not too bad either.

The main problem was that I used vinyl to cut the masks from and IMHO the one I have is too thick so it does not follow panel lines well and paint can creep below the mask. There's also another problem with this material and it's that sometime lines are not cut perfectly as they should be. I've been struggling for a long time to get these settings right on my cutter and I've yet to get them perfectly right. I'm experimenting with a different material at the moment but I used the same old vinyl for the codes. Some touching up with red paint was needed, here's what the model undersides look like

 

ee56ca6c-f990-416b-a1e6-594e931aac12.JPG

 

Light wasn't perfect when I took the picture, so part of the serial numbers is not well visible. In any case I'm happy enough, it's not perfect but will do the job.

You may notice that the roundels are slightly different from the ones used on the uppersurfaces and the reason is that they are not from the Airfix kit but from an old Almark roundels set. My original intention was to use these instead of the Airfix ones but after applying the two on the undersides I noticed that their white is not as bright as the tail insignia. Still, I didn't want to remove them so I left these on the undersides and used Airfix on the uppersurfaces... let's say that the undersides got dirtier... :D

  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...