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1 Sqn Meteor F3


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Meteor F.3

No.1 Squadron RAF, Tangmere, 1946

This was built from the old 1/72 Airfix kit. All surfaces were rubbed down to remove the rivets, etc, then a minimal rescribe on significant panels. The Airfix kit had always looked a little long to me and when I compared it to the plans in the SAM Modellers' Datafile it looked about 1cm too long, which I removed from the rear fuselage just ahead of the fin.I had no sooner refitted, filled and finished the rear fuselage when I came across Mike Keep's drawings of the F.3 in an old SAM magazine. I knew Mike and had worked with him and I knew he was very fastidious in his drawing so I had every confidence in his plans. It was a tad frustrating then when I compared my shortened F.3 fuselage with his plans to find that it was now about 1cm too short! Ah well, it looks OK to me in it's shortened form anyway. I fitted an Aeroclub vac form canopy by the way.

 

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Looks more like the Tamiya or Dragon kits than the old Airfix kit- you have really brought that old kit to life. Colors look spot-on and the de-riveting and scribing really change the appearance of the finished model. Just curious, what sort of improvements did you make to the undercart, wheel bays, and cockpit? 👍

Mike

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That's a really beautiful Meteor!  I never had the Airfix kit, but I can imagine that your efforts  to re-work it were pretty intensive.  Shortening the fuselage by 1cm and getting the constant taper right is an impressive feat of skill, and the results look correct to me, regardless of what the drawings might suggest.

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6 hours ago, 72modeler said:

Looks more like the Tamiya or Dragon kits than the old Airfix kit- you have really brought that old kit to life. Colors look spot-on and the de-riveting and scribing really change the appearance of the finished model. Just curious, what sort of improvements did you make to the undercart, wheel bays, and cockpit? 👍

Mike

Hi Mike. The answer is ‘not a lot’! I put in seat belts and a few bits and pieces in the cockpit because I was using a vac form canopy but to be honest you can’t see much in this scale. I tend to concentrate on overall look and finish nowadays as In the past I’ve spent countless hours on undercarriage wells and the like which hardly ever get seen. This one was meant to be a ‘quick build’ - I don’t need to say anything else because we’ve all been there!

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