1/48 Israeli Meteor NF.13 - Completed

[trickyrich]

Ok I had sort of forgotten about this GB as I had a few other projects on the go. But even though I have started two new big builds I have finished another GB project I was doing.

So as usual for me I wanted to do something a bit different, plus something that would fit into my collection, so a nightfighter it would be! In this case an Israeli Meteor NF.13.

The basis for this build will be a Classic Airframes NF. 11/13, which I must say was really hard to find at the time and took ages to get one until I ended up managing to get one from South Africa!

The decals have been really painful to find as well and I will have to patch together some from various different sources. I know Isradecal did a special one just on the NF’s, but the proverbial “rocking house $#@&” would be easier to get! So this part of the build will be extra fun!

The only extras at this moment will be some Barracuda Large Bore Intakes to replace the kit ones. Having checked out the kit one to the AM one it’s easy to see why you would replace them!!!

I am actually looking forward to this GB as this build will fill two areas I am interested in, Nightfighters and Israeli aircraft.

So let the fun begin!

Oh and if anyone has some 1/48^th Israeli NF.13 decals…….just PM me!

[MichaelSatin]

I'd like to Rich, but I hope to do this one myself some day. Looking forward to yours though!

Michael

[Arniec]

I think this will be a very nice build.

I have got the same model (and a F8 extra) so will be watching this one closely.

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

Ok my first update for this build, I have been a bit slack and should have done one earlier. Well have done quite a lot of work though from what I have to show to doesn’t look much!

First up the wing centre section was built up…should be a simple task but this being a limited run model………

Of cause there are no locating pins anywhere on the model, plus there is quite a bit of plastic “bleeding” around the mould edges to help make life more interesting. The wheel wells were first added to the lower wing…why couldn’t they have just moulded it into the wing. As the plastic throughout the model is very think, once the wheel wells were fitted there was no chance the top sections of the wing were going to fit. So after lots of sanding and grinding I manage to get them fitted. At least the plastic is really nice to work with, it carves and shapes really cleanly and easily.

The outer wing sections were glued together as well, I’ll be replacing the cannons and adding wing tip light to these as well.

Once the wing was dry (enough) it was time to see how the new intakes would fit. But first I had to remove the resin plugs, I did the rest of the ones with the model as well, about an hours work and a table full of dust! As suspected the new intakes didn’t fit…actually even the kits one didn’t either!

Quite a bit of plastic was needed to be removed to get the to fit, plus it turns out they are not round either. So after some sanding and more resin dust I now have an acceptable fit.

Next up was the cockpit. I was a little bit at a loss to the colour this should have been painted, but in the end went for the standard black. First off a base coat of aluminium,

then a coat of flat black before a coat of semi-gloss clear.

Once dry the detailing could begin there really isn’t too much required because everything is black and in the end most of it will be hidden from view. The end product looks really good, once the resin bunnies have been removed, I used a wash of brown to give it a dirty/dusty look, plus it helps tone down the aluminium chipping. There is a little bit it more to do but I’ll finish that off tomorrow.

According to the instructions you are meant to fit the assembled cockpits to one side of the fuselage then close it up. This is not going to work, firstly there are no locating guides and there is quite a bit of work required to clean up the fuselage and fitting the cockpit first is just asking for trouble!

So the plans is the join the fuselages first and clean the whole lot up, basically finish that whole lot off then fit the cockpits. To do this I need to do all the per-fitting work first, checking that they’ll actually fit…..and they didn’t!!! Then make up mounts for them so they’ll sit in the right spot.

As you can see I’ve started this process, the RO’s cockpit will slide in from the bottom and sit of these two rails. I’ll be doing the same sort of thing for the pilots cockpit. I know the wing assembly won’t fit already so I suspect more grinding will be required there.

I also started assembling the undercarriage…..but we don’t want to talk about them!!! I my have to do some serious work on them to get them to look …….normal!!

Well off to a good start, the two main areas of concern, wing/engines and Cockpits/fuselage fit seem to be sorted or at least I have a plane to sort them out. That aside it may end up being a fairly quick build….hopefully. Have the F-5 STGB coming up very shortly!

[Truro Model Builder]

Nice work on the cockpit.

I once bought the Classic Airframes Meteor T.7. I am rather glad I sold it rather than try to build it, looking at the issues you are having already.

[trickyrich]

Opps I forgot to update this, so this will be a fairly major update as I have made lots of progress with this build.

I’m sort of jumping all over the place with this build but is for a good reason.

So back to the wings and gluing the outer wings to the centre section, this required lots and lots of work to get a clean join! As mentioned the plastic is very thick and the locating tips on the wing have been moulded for something a lot thinner. So I spent lots of time getting this join right, both in correct dihedral of the outer wing section and wing position. The wing each needed a small bit of sprue as well to help widen them slightly as well.

The results were worth the effort, the upper joins are almost perfect, the lower ones will need work but I knew they would. So next up some sanding and polishing of these joins…

The top ones need no further work as they’re both great, the lower one looks much better.

Next up some wee bit of sprue and more sanding and polishing.

They are now almost perfect as well, just a tiny amount of filler or Mr Surface 500 should fix them.

Next up time to fit the new engine intakes. The engine fronts were painted up, not too much time was spent on them as in the end you can barely see them.

These were then fitted to the resin intakes. Prior to this the intakes were test fitted to death, so I knew they would fit pretty well.

Once fitted they were sanded and polished, they look pretty good and will require only minimal filling, even though they appear to be worse in the photos!

I had a cunning plan to glue the fuselage together then fit the cockpit as there is quite a bit of work required to get the fuselage cleaned up…..unfortunately this won’t work as I can’t get the cockpit to fit. If I did some major surgery I might be able to but it’s not worth the trouble. So the cockpit is finished off and joined together. Those two rails I fitted will still be put to good use, as there are no locating lugs inside the fuselage at all. So again lots and lots of test fitting and adjusting before gluing the whole thing together with thick/liquid/CA glue! To give it extra strength a couple of extra bit of plastic sheet….highly recommended!!!

The joins as suspected were pretty crap and needed lots of cleaning up, again sanding and polishing. Results are pretty good, they should finish off nicely.

The nose was next, after filling with ½ ton lead weight, this baby won’t be a tail sitter!

And again the join was pretty crap, even after spending plenty of time prepping! It shouldn’t take too much to fix though.

That's just dust and crap on the nose, I haven't started working on it yet.

Finally I started to have a look at the wing/fuselage join. This one will be fun! It’s gotten the wing so it pretty well sits correctly and looks fairly square, but as you can see there is quite a gap on the upper surfaces, the lower ones are pretty good.

So as you can see lots of progress, the cockpit looks really good now it's fitted but with the canopy fitted you won’t be able to see too much. Seats in instrument cowling will be fitted towards the end.

She’s starting to look really nice, once I get the wings on and those joins sorted it should be smooth sailing.

Off to work again tonight so this will now sit until next Saturday, when hopefully I can get some more done.

[FZ6]

I have one of these sitting on the shelf of doom. One day I'll get round to it. Yours is looking great by the way.

[Natter]

There's some serious modelling going on there, and the results of your hard work are looking really good.

[galgos]

It looks like a typical Classic Airframes kit - challenging but so rewarding once beaten into submission. It looks like you're winning!

Max

[exdraken]

wow!

you're a fast builder!

looks promising!

I will go for a standard CA two seater with either Israeli or Egyptian markings.... still have to start though, but if I look at your build rate, , that maybe not a problem!

[MichaelSatin]

I built their F.8 a long time ago and it required a fair amount of work, as I recall. This one looks like it's even better. Nice job so far!

Michael

[trickyrich]

thanks for the nice comments, the one thing I do like about this model (and most of Classic Airframes stuff for that matter) is the plastic they use. It's quite soft and very easy to work with, especially if you need to do any mod work, plus it polishes up very nicely as well.

Well Saturday came and went and nothing happened on this build, too many distractions, though I had a good look at what needed to be done...plus a wee fly around the work area with it!

Normal should resume this weekend.

[trickyrich]

Ok am finally back to this build after more or less being away for two weeks.

First up was tiding up the nose/fuselage join. Not a big job as again the plastic is so nice it was a simple process of sanding back and polishing up…looks nice a smooth now.

Next up was finishing off filling the gaps around the sides and back of the new resin intakes. This was done via two methods, plastic card for the large gaps and CA Gap Filler for the smaller ones. I don’t normally use CA Gap fillers as I have had issues with them before, but this time they worked a treat. Once sanded down and polished up the joins look a treat, am very happy with the results!

Ok now for the fun part fitting the wings to the fuselage, I already know there will be some rather large gaps to fill and the fit is not the best. Namely the rear wing/fuselage join the profiles don’t match at all, plus you can fly an X-wing down the wing/fuselage gap!!

So first up a rough and ready support for the rear wing section, this well have a spacer to set the rear to the right height.

After some final test fitting and adjusting the wing is glued on, I did this in two stages. Firstly gluing the front fuselage/wing centre section and the rear of the wing centre section at the new support. Once this was almost dried I then glued and clamped the rest of the wing to the fuselage (opps forgot photos!), this allowed me to get the trailing edge of the wing right. Basically the rear wing centre section is flat and it should have some profile to it, so it was either this way of filler!

As you can see there are some rather large gaps to fill, again a combination of plastic sheet and CA Gap fillers will be used.

After the initial filling it’s starting to look nice, the process ended up being nice a simple with some nice smooth joins. I left it overnight for everything to cure/settle down and just needs a couple of touch-ups to finish.

With using CA Gap filler it is very hard to see in the photos the joins, but they are actually nice and smooth with only a couple of small patches that need tiding up.

Again no normal filler has been used and most of the panel lines have been re-done since these photos were taken as well.

The gun barrels went missing very early in the build as they were just plain horrible, so some replacements were made up and fitted. Plus at this stage some of the other little bits and pieces were added to the model, fairing and such.

Finally the two under fuselage air scoops were fitted, these are a very prominent feather of the NF.13 and the main noticeable difference between it and the NF.11. You’d think that such a noticeable feather would be hard to get wrong….but they did. Looking at photo’s of the Israeli NF.13’s the scoop should be at least half the size and angular in shape and not fat rounded ones like these!

Hopefully I can find something suitable in the spares box else I I will have to make something up!

Well I’m very happy with the progress and how it’s all coming together, with luck I should start painting her next weekend…..all going right!

[Kallisti]

Excellent stuff, gives me some pointers when I progress my build further Great cockpit pics, wish I'd seen them before I struggled with my scratch builsding at least it confirms I got it pretty much right however...

[SLoB]

Hi. Nice build and very useful info.

I am presently building this one. I also have the Barracuda intakes and whilst they look good, the fit is awful with them not being round and in places nearly 1mm too wide. I am debating whether to use the Barracuda ones as an example and with milliput trying to build up the internal shape, etc., of the kit ones.

Did you sand the resin intakes by hand to a circular shape, or did you find some way of mounting it into a chuck and sanding it whilst spinning?

Not decided about what to do with the intakes and would appreciate some guidance as to whether it was taht difficult to beat them into submission.

Stephen

[trickyrich]

Hi. Nice build and very useful info.

I am presently building this one. I also have the Barracuda intakes and whilst they look good, the fit is awful with them not being round and in places nearly 1mm too wide. I am debating whether to use the Barracuda ones as an example and with milliput trying to build up the internal shape, etc., of the kit ones.

Did you sand the resin intakes by hand to a circular shape, or did you find some way of mounting it into a chuck and sanding it whilst spinning?

Not decided about what to do with the intakes and would appreciate some guidance as to whether it was taht difficult to beat them into submission.

Stephen

thanks.

The intakes weren't the best but they are much better in shape and look than the kit ones, those look a bit small and thin (?).

mine weren't round at all and I sanded them to shape. The way I did it was to find the centre of the intake, then with a compass, scribe a circle around the back end that just touches the narrowest point. This will give you an idea of how round each intake is. for me this ended up being almost exactly the same diameter as wing mounting point of the intakes. I did scribe the marks on the intakes a bit too deep which didn't help in the end.

You will find that the intakes are a bit larger in places, they seem to have shrunk around the two intake mouths.

So as I now knew where to glue the intake in I fixed them in place and attacked the whole lots with nail sanding sticks. The resin shape just nicely, but you need to make sure the mounting points on the wing are completely square.

There is a bit of work required, that goes for the whole model, but I think the results are more that worth it!

[FZ6]

Those tropical air intakes are a bit wrong aren't they?

Good luck in sourcing replacements.

[trickyrich]

Well another busy and successful day, I managed to get quite a bit done am just about read to paint. Just a couple of small items to finish and that’s it, painting time!

Ok first task of the day was the centre fuel tank, it didn’t fit! The area around the front join between the wing and fuselage just seem to bulge which caused huge gaps with the tank when fitted. This didn’t seem right but I couldn’t find really detailed photos that showed this area, so I figured that this shouldn’t be there. So out with the sanding sticks and this now looked better and the tank actually fitted. Some of the photos did allude to this area being smooth and flat. The tank still needed some sprue to fill the gaps, just a tidy up and it's done.

Ok next off the blocks is/was those horrible tropical A/C intakes! Well as expected I could find anything that was the right size so I figured it would be easiest to just make some. So out with the card and a little bit later……

….they may not be 100% accurate but they look so much better and when compared to the photos, they look just right.

Next up the tail, I drilled and pinned the elevators in place, they are a butt joint on the model and have no strength, so this way they’ll be square and not break off quite so easily!

Time then to finish off the cockpit and close it up. For the first time I used some of Eduard’s new fabric seat belts. They certainly look good, but not the easiest to fit. Plus the front instrument panel cowling was fitted as well.

With a final rounding up of the dust bunnies the canopies were fitted….and yes I managed to scratch the main one. The clear plastic is quite…unusual and started to do funny things when I tried to polish out the scratch. So I chickened out and will leave it. I’m half tempted to leave it with the canopy open, will decide at the very end.

I also glued on the drop tanks now as I just know they’ll be a pain to fit later

She does look the part now, I can’t wait to see her painted. She’ll be in the Blue/Brown camouflage with Dark Grey under surfaces. I do like the one in the more modern tri-colour upper surfaces, but I really don’t have too much info on this aircraft.

So just have the canopy to mask up, that’ll be a fun job, plus make up some wingtip lights then I can paint. Hopefully I can get this done next weekend.

[Truro Model Builder]

That is really coming together nicely.

With regard to the camouflage colours, according to IsraDecals' Middle East Meteor sheet instructions, Israeli NF.13s were painted in the UK with the nearest equivalents to the standard IDF/AF colours, seemingly Dark Earth and Oxford Blue with Extra Dark Sea Grey undersurfaces. They are the only ones who suggest that, but they do tend to know a lot more about the subject than many others.

[trickyrich]

yeah they were unusual colours for them. I've got the paint all sorted....just have to remember where I put it!!!

[trickyrich]

Well I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I had hoped for but progress has been made!

One thing I have noticed is that no one when reviewing this model or even when building it seems to have picked up on the fact that the Tropic A/C intakes are the wrong shape completely! All the photo’s I’ve managed to find when searching shows these intakes to be smallish and very square like the ones in the photo of the Israeli NF.13. The ones supplied looked like they may have been meant for the Vampire, but on looking they are even too big for it….so I don’t know where they got the shape/idea for them from!

Anyway…….

First off was to add and finish off the wing tip lights, this was done with a small scrap of clear sprue with a small hole drilled in it. Once fitted it was sanded back and polished to suit the wing profile.

Next up the canopy was masked up….what a horrible task that was. The framing isn’t that clearly defined plus the individual windows have rounded frames! So for my sanity I have angled cut the frames for the moment, will hand paint them to finish them off. And the other thing is that the front canopy section has different frame work on each side. The LHS panel is made up of two sections while the RHS is just one! It's not to easy to see on photos of a NF.11/13 and on some aircraft it's missing, though it appears the Israeli aircraft had split LHS windows.

Now to painting with the first task to even up base colour of the model, with the resin intakes being one colour and my mods being another I needed to paint these areas in a colour similar to the base plastic colour so as not to affect the shading of the top colours. For this a light sea grey was used.

Then my squiggly pre-shaded panels lines before the first colour in the colour scheme, Dark Earth.

Trying to make life easy for myself I would only paint the areas that were to be Dark Earth following a reference colour scheme from the Isradecal set for the Meteor. Arnold was kind enough to send me a copy when he sent me the numbers I was after.

Next was the masking for the Oxford Blue…….and this is where it all fell over! I wanted to do aircraft #51 which is on permanent display at the Israeli Air Force Museum and as I started to layout the masks I found this colour scheme is completely different to aircraft #52! There are lots of side shots of #51 but not top shots and no profile pics I could find. But I was luck to find an overhead shot of the aircraft display area and could see aircraft #51 when I zoomed right in. So I will have to redo the Dark Earth in a lot of places but I have a plan for that.

So the Blue is now on, it’s quite dark so I will give it a very watered down coat of 50% White and Oxford Blue to lighten/fade it a bit. I may get this done today…or next weekend, I’ll see how I go for time.

Plus one final bit was strengthening the nose gear. This is a bit of a problem with this model as the nose gear framework is resin and not very strong. So to strengthen the whole thing up I drilled out the nose gear pin and replaced it with a small nail. Then I drilled out the centre of the resin nose gear frame, the nail will go through the frame and rest against the top of the fuselage. This should give it all the strength it needs, especially with all the nose weight I added!

So hopefully next weekend I can get the painting done. Hopefully in the mean time I can work out what colour the undercarriage/wheel rims are meant to be? Paint guide says silver, photo's of #51 show white...though this could have been done later during a refurb??

[trickyrich]

Well after a wee break I’m back to this build.

Lots of progress has been made and not too many backward steps this time either!

I was trying a new masking solution and…… well I shouldn’t have let it sit for so long before removing it! What a task/hassle that was, eventually I got pretty much all of it off and this is how she looked…

..not too bad, but some fun masking to do to redo and add the brown!

This time I was forced to use a different masking fluid, which produced…..some interesting issues! For some reason it removed the blue in a couple of places and dulled the nice semi-gloss finish the blue had! Not to worry too much as this will all be matt in the end. So some more touching up required of the blue!

Next was the Extra Dark Sea Grey under surface. Being a hard demarcation line, this was a simple masking job. It may not be easy to see in the photos, but I lightened up the grey for the highlights, just to break up the solid grey finish, it’s very subtle but looks good in the flesh!

I’ll have to stop resting the model on its drop tank now else I damage the finish until it has had a clear coat.

It’s quite an unusual colour scheme but it does look really good!

The wheels and undercarriage have been painted aluminium then white, with a clear sealing coat. They just need to be detailed/weathered up to finish. I decided to go with the white rather than the silver due to the reference photos of the actual aircraft in the Israeli Air Force Museum. They may have been painted white early on or later in the aircrafts life, but I’m using these photos as reference.

Not an awful lot left to do, this is a really enjoyable build, nothing too hard but just enough work to keep it interesting.

[MichaelSatin]

Great work on a tricky kit!

Michael

[Truro Model Builder]

That is looking superb.

[Tom Cooper]

Beautiful work here (in construction and painting).

One question regarding painting: last year I drew artworks for a book on IDF/AF's ops during the Suez War, and thus drew the Meteor NF.Mk. 13 serial number '52' too, in same camo pattern as applied here - because that was the aircraft that fired the first shots of that war.

Now, contemporary reference photos were obviously taken from a significant distance, and anything but 'clear'. Yet, one thing that was quite obvious was that the border of the dark grey camo that's covering all the bottom surfaces was going quite high up the front fuselage. That is: even higher than on the artwork here:

...and rather in this direction (ignore the camo on the rear fuselage though, it's definitely wrong - and no red chevron was in place, yet):

Furthermore, photos in question made that border appear quite 'soft', and slightly 'inclined': i.e. it was starting at a lower point at the front, and going slightly upwards (as shown above).

That's what's making me curious, Rich: have you got any contemporary reference photos showing application as on your modell (i.e. quite low down the fuselage)?

(Note: hope you'll not mind my question, Rich; I don't want to spoil your build or hair-split; it's just so that I don't have that much clue about Meteors as about specific other types in service in the Middle East and I'm curious to learn.)