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When jets started to go fast thoughts turned to ways of helping the pilot to withstand the more extreme ‘g’ loads when manoeuvring. One suggestion was to have the pilot lying down in a prone position and to this end, in 1955, a Meteor F8 was converted to have a cockpit with a prone pilot section grafted on to the nose. Some 55 hours and 99 flights later the idea was abandoned after it was found that whilst the position was very effective in reducing the effects of ‘g’ on the pilot every other aspect of piloting was much worse. The main problem was the pilot’s inability to see behind and also forward when in a steep turn. Other problems concerned the cockpit ergonomics. Quite why it needed an actual aircraft to find this out is not clear. One feels that the same information could have been derived from a mock-up. Even my wife, a renowned technophobe, commented 'How could he see behind?' when first told about it. This was built for the Meteor GB. WIP here http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234993470-meteor-prone-pilot/ It seems to be MPM's F8 kit with added parts. The nose and tail sections have to be sawn off and replaced. The replacement sections don't quite fit, the nose being a trifle narrow and the tail cone a bit wide. The wings needed some thinning to fit the fuselage and could have done with a some more on the outer panels, Nose and tail parts of the nacelles are undersize and had to have filler to fair thenm in. The wing root fairings needed some sanding to fit neatly. I did this before glueing the wing in position, something I had not tried before, and found it much easier. Finish is Alclad aluminium for the main airframe, semi matt aluminium for the prone pilot section and dark aluminium for the nose. The decals separate from the backing sheet almost as soon as it is damp. Great care needs to be taken with them as they are very thin and are prone to wrapping themselves around the backing sheet as they are transferred to the model. A Meteor shower! A final thought. I was amazed to find recently that the Americans had an equivalent - a modified Shooting Star John
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