Meteor!

[Lord Riot]

Straight onto another 50's classic, the glorious Meteor. I'm tempted to do this one all silver, with the solid rear canopy area and small intakes, though it depends how things go and references I can find.

 

However, having found these decals which I'd forgotten about, I'm also tempted to do the 74 sqn jet. I think it'll be a toss up between that in camo or a silver 56 sqn jet. Let's see how it goes.

 

 

 

 

 

[Lord Riot]

So I've finally made a start on the Meteor. Office put together and painted the usual RAF coalpit black, with dry brushed silver.

 

 

Same colours for the bang seat, though I brightened it up with some yellowy-tan seat pads. I just cut them from sponge and painted them. They look smoother in real life! I'm going to add some masking tape belts and straps yet.

 

 

 

[Lord Riot]

Some progress on the Meteor today. If you make this kit remember to add enough nose weight.

 

 

I'm calling the seat pretty much done, unless anyone can think of anything glaringly missing? 

 

 

The fuselage halves and wings now stuck together too. The wings took quite some persuasion not to leave gaps, particularly towards the tips.

 

 

[jean]

Not bad at all!

the cockpit is going to look just right. I have never built a Meteor in my life, but I have been ogling an Xtrakit boxing of the Meteor NF.11 to NF.14 on my LMS website, Looking at your kit, this is getting more and more tempting!

 

Keep having fun!

JR

[Dennis_C]

Seems this is the MPM plastic. Very familiar to me. Make sure you dry test fuselage to wing joint thoroughly. I recall the fit was bad and I was doing some plastic inserts. 

[Mr T]

The Xtrakit Meteor was produced by MPM for Hannants. The fuselage to wing joint is not brilliant and the wings themselves have a very blunt leading edge section and the trailing edges on my example I built was quite thick. 

JR, the Xtrakit NF is the old Matchbox kit with new decals. The new SH kit looks a lot better. 

[Lord Riot]

I can see what @Mr T means about the wings. I gave the leading and trailing edges a file to thin them and shape them a bit. Not sure it really shows in the photo but they definitely look a bit thinner in real life now.

 

[Lord Riot]

I've decided on a silver one this time, with the old style small intakes and metal on the rear canopy. Still not decided between nos. 1, 56 or 74 sqn though, but she'll be completely clean under the wings, maybe just the belly tank.

 

The wings went on quite well, just needed a bit of squeezing and one area of filler at the front. 

 

 

 

[Lord Riot]

High speed silver sprayed on.

 

 

And dried ...

 

[bigbadbadge]

Looking very nice indeed, great work.  I have one of these which got promoted near the top of the stash earlier today.  

All the best

Chris

[Mikey-1980]

Looking great there!

[Lord Riot]

These silver Meteors seem to be quite clean from the few photos I've seen, so the only weathering I attempted was a bit of dirt wash around the gun ports.

 

[neil5208]

20 hours ago, Lord Riot said:

High speed silver sprayed on.

 

 

And dried ...

 

What high speed silver did you use please?

Looks good.

[Lord Riot]

Thanks @neil5208, I originally bought it for a Lightning nose ring, but it's not as miraculously shiny and metallic as it was purported to be!

 

However, it does seem a reasonable match for 50s/60s HSS, which is nice. I just found it online for home delivery ...

 

[Lord Riot]

I washed over it with dirt wash then rubbed most of it away, just left a few of the lines showing. Also had to use a thin bit of plastic for the smaller fuselage aerial, there isn't one included in the kit, though the instructions do say to scratchbuild it. Pretty much ready for decals now.