Aerocraft Models Miles M.52 Supersonic Test Airframe 1:72, 1:48 & 1:32

[Mike]

Miles M.52 Supersonic Test Airframe

1:72, 1:48 & 1:32 AeroCraft Models

 

 

Following WWII, the jet race had reached a position where resources could be assigned to it, and those of the remaining Great Powers were engaged in an undeclared competition to be the first to reach the speed of sound in level flight, retaining control of the airframe in the process, and maintaining that speed for an extended period.  British aviation company Miles had been issued with an Air Ministry Specification E.24/43 in 1943 for an aircraft that could exceed 1,000mph by utilising cutting-edge aerodynamics and design technology, on which work carried on until the end of WWII in absolute secrecy, but with the incoming peacetime Labour Government in 1946, budgets had to be trimmed viciously to bring the country back from the brink of bankruptcy.  Once the project had effectively been cut, its existence was revealed to the British public, at which point a lot of criticism was levelled at the government for cancelling a project that could have engendered National Pride at an important time.  This led to some additional trials of scale models that were air-launched from Mosquitoes, and a wind-tunnel model that achieved a scale speed of almost Mach 1.4, but its days were numbered.  Final cancellation after validating the project’s merits was painful, and the knock-on effect was a blow to Barnes Wallis’ Power Jets, resulting in the cancellation of the development of their afterburning engine, which led to them being swallowed up in Britain’s pell-mell run toward merging as many aviation companies as possible in the shortest time feasible. 

 

In America, Bell was suffering development problems with their similarly tasked X-1, and Miles were permitted to share their aerodynamics and engineering data with them, giving valuable resources with which to achieve that goal with Chuck Yeager at the controls, which was incredibly important to American national pride.  The M.52’s advanced aerodynamics eventually filtered through to production aviation once supersonic flight became a standard capability for fighters almost a decade later, so Miles’ efforts weren’t wasted.  Whether Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown would have been looking forward to performing the test-flights or not, we’ll never know.

 

 

The Kit

This is a range of brand-new 3D printed kits from AeroCraft that are designed and printed by the owner Ali in either 1:72, 1:48 or 1:32 scale to suit your preferred build scale, which broadens the market for this innovative jet that came so close to giving Britain the Supersonic crown.  The kit arrives in a white top-folding box with a digital painting of the subject flying high over fluffy cloud, plus the name and scale of the kit.  Inside the box are several Ziploc bags of parts, totalling twenty-eight grey resin parts, plus a single clear resin part, accompanied by a small decal sheet, a sheet of pre-cut vinyl masks, and a two-sheet instruction and painting guide to round off the package.  As is normal for 3D printed parts, they are attached to their print-bases by many fine fingers that taper at the top end to reduce clean-up once you have liberated the part(s) from the base.  A little light sanding is usually sufficient to make any marks disappear, after which you can start putting parts together.  This kit is no exception, which I know because I couldn’t resist removing all the parts once I’d finished (and in a few cases before I’d finished) taking the photos.  I think I have a problem.

 

Please Note: We reviewed the 1:48 kit from the range, but we understand that the others are different in size only for the most part, and should build in the same manner as the kit detailed here, just to a different size.

 

Detail is excellent, and thanks to the design and incessant march of printing technology, the quality of the parts is equal to the task, given that the M.52 was engineered to be as slippery as possibly by the design team.  The part-count is relatively low, which is in part due to the ability of 3D printed parts to have undercuts that would make even resin-casters jealous, and partly due to the slender, simple design of the M.52, which is an elegant pointed tube with a few wings and wheels, to render it to its simplest shapes.  The detailed cockpit is held within a teardrop-shaped nose-cone with conformal glazing, a simple engine of the centrifugal-flow type is slotted inside the fuselage along with the exhaust trunking, and single parts are used for each of the five flying surfaces.  The rest of the parts make up the three gear legs and their bay doors, plus a pitot probe in the tip of the nose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction is likely to begin with the cockpit, as modellers are creatures of habit, although you can start anywhere, as the two large instruction diagrams are provided in the form of exploded diagrams, the top an isometric 3D rendering, while the lower is a line-drawing from the opposing angle.  Over the page are detail steps for the more complex parts of the model, which will be of great use when building the cockpit and aligning the components inside the fuselage.  The lower nose takes the form of a teardrop-shape from above, inside which a single part that consists of the instrument panel, coaming and nose gear bay that are fitted, along with an L-shaped control column and the pilot’s seat.  You have two choices here, including a seat with and without belts, and an instrument panel that either has a representation of the dials, or hollow depressions for you to apply your own dial decals if you prefer.  A coaming over the rear of the cockpit assembly covers the back of the seat, and is completed by the addition of the resin cast clear canopy, which will doubtless benefit from a dip in Klear to enhance clarity of the casting, using the supplied vinyl masks to protect the individual panes of the screen until after final painting.  The cockpit assembly plugs into the annular intake ring around the front of the fuselage, and here it is critical to leave the four pairs of rods that will key into the depressions in the back of the cockpit surface, as they look uncannily similar to printing supports that are removed at the beginning of the build process, and the kit would be poorer for their accidental loss.

 

Before commencing work on the centre fuselage, it is worth noting a cylindrical part that is referred to as “weight”, to hold the nose of the model on the deck once it is completed.  A piece of brass or plastic tube could be fitted with end caps and filled with lead shot or something else suitably dense to give your model the necessary weight to stand on its wheels later.  The weight, and a tapered plug slide inside the centre fuselage part, which is formed by a hollow torus with two gear bays, wing root slots, and a keyed rear lip.  The aft fuselage is initially a hollow shell, which the exhaust trunk slides inside from the front, keying between two guides on the inside lip that prevents it from pushing too far inside, followed by sliding the engine into the trunk, which again self-seats, leaving the inner exhaust suspended inside.  Joining the two ends of the fuselage together and dealing with the circumferential seam in your preferred manner, installing the nose cone in the intake trunk once the two surfaces are painted an appropriate metallic or yellow shade.  The wings and rudder fin slot into recesses in the fuselage, using the large jig that has been provided to keep them at the correct angle while the glue cures, remembering to orientate the wings correctly before applying glue, ensuring that the flared wingtips face the correct direction.  The elevators are of the all-moving type later used by the X-1, and these fit on pegs in a similar manner to the real surfaces, giving you the opportunity to offset them as you wish.

 

 

The kit is designed to be built in the gear-down pose, and there are three gear legs and their wheels, plus bay doors supplied for this purpose.  During initial testing of the kit’s build it was found that the early gear legs were bending after completion, so Ali has designed a new set that have been printed in a more robust resin, and come with a set of four custom ‘props’ that can be placed under the model to add support long-term.  Your other option is to build the model in the air of course, either taking off with the gear still deployed, or airborne after a little adjustment of the bay doors to depict them closed.  The main gear legs have a supporting strip between the two tapering struts, which should be removed before building, adding a wheel to the lower of each one, and fitting a two-part wheel and hub to the nose gear leg.  Each bay has a single door, with locations called out on the diagrams to assist you.  The final kit part is the pitot probe that fixes to the tip of the nose, of which there are two in case one has been bent or damaged in transit, or you’re a clumsy modeller like me.

 

 

Markings

The M.52 never flew as a full-sized aircraft, so its scheme is moot, but can be estimated based upon other projects of the era, which often flew initially in bare metal straight out of the hangar, and were later painted trainer yellow from the habit of avoiding friendly anti-aircraft fire from overzealous gunners.  From the box you can choose either of the options below, or make one up of your own to riff on what might have happened.

 

 

 

 

The decals are well-printed with good registration and colour density that should simplify the decaling process.  Yellow and black Prototype P symbols are included in addition to the six peacetime roundels, fin flashes, and tail codes.

 

 

Conclusion

If you enjoy researching and modelling projects that almost made it, in this case because of politics and the parlous state of Britain’s finances following WWII, AeroCraft have created this high-quality model of the M.52 in all major aviation scales that will allow it to live on in our cabinets.  I really must finish reading the M.52 book I have on my shelf.

 

Very highly recommended.

 

Miles M.52 1:72

 

Miles M.52 1:48

 

Miles M.52 1:32

 

Review sample courtesy of