Gloster Meteor

[Mossie]

How about a very high altitude version with the long fuselage, extended nose for electronica and extra long wings and painted extra light PRU tangerine?   


OK...so the colour's a bit odd but why not?



Daryl J.

No more odd than PRU Pink or Mauve, you could do a striped version with all three graduated into each to other to simulate a sunset!

[Weaver]

How about a CAS Meteor-Hog: an F.8 with NF.14 outer wings, thus giving it 8 x 20mm Hispanos...... Paint it in a JAWS cammo pattern but using RAF colours.

Alternatively, get a trainer, offset the nosewheel to one side and fit a 40mm Bofors with the ammo in the rear cockpit.

Updated, thought-out version of the above, and do-able without wasting too many kits (I've no idea if anyone does the neccessary kits, BTW)

Gloster Ripper

F.8 with NF.14 wings as above.

Options:

1. Could leave the nose guns as is or fit a big gun option (see below).

2. Hog the undercarriage (see below) to allow A-10 style fuselage corner stations. Since this means removing the belly tank, square off the wingtips and fit tip tanks.


Gloster Reaper

Making the Ripper (above) leaves you with a gunless, short-span NF.14. Solution? Missiles. Since the original Reaper was a night fighter, this name should really be used for the night-fighter version here too. The real NF.14 wasn't exactly overpowered and these missiles will be plenty draggy, so fit two tubes to the back of the nacelles, thus making the engines re-heated Derwents (there was a real F.8 test ship with this setup).

Options:

1. Stick a couple of spare Firestreaks on the wingtips. Easy.

2. There was another F.8 test ship with Red Deans on the wingtips, which shows that such a thing was possible. Scratch-build a couple: they're all tubes, cones and rectangles, so shouldn't be too hard. Note that this is the original 600lb Red Dean we're talking about here, not the 1300lb monstrosity it grew into.

3. Scratch-build a couple of Fireflash if you're feeling brave......

4. With any of the above (but most credibly with the Firestreaks), add F-94-style rocket pods on the leading edges of the outer wing.


Big Gun Options:

1. Offset the nosewheel to one side, A-10-style.

2. fit a medium-big gun (40mm or 57mm) in the fuselage, with it's breech and ammo behind the cockpit. All this requires for modelling is a length of barrel sticking out of the nose, offset opposite to the nosewheel.

3. Alternatively, remember the ventral gun gondola on the Hs.129? Well a Meteor F.8 has a big, fat fuel tank in the same place: fit a 4.5" recoilless in that, with it's barrel and venturi some way below the fuselage. The problem with a recoilless is the venturi-blast: if it occurs next to aircraft skin it can buckle it very badly.

Hogged undercarriage:

To get that A-10 everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-warload look you need more pylons, but the belly tank and the undercarriage are in the way. Re-arrange matters so that the gear retracts backwards into a fairing (made from a spare drop tank or some such) alongside the jetpipe. You can now fit A-10 style fuselage corner pylons. The new inner wing could also hold some fuel, but it would still probably be best to fit tip-tanks.

[GTX]

Similar to the Me-262, what if Gloster first trialled the Meteor with piston engines:



Regards,

Greg

[GTX]

Or maybe later on the RAF wished to trial the Mistel concept with jets:



Regards,

Greg

[GTX]

Did someone say Big Gun Meteor - how about this:  The RAF decides to trial one of the captured Mauser Mk214 cannon in a crude under fuselage pod:



Regards,

Greg

[Daryl J.]

That P.203 gets my attention!   Using the Tamiya F.3 as a base, that should be a doable project albeit with different engines. 

And not only that, those old glass Testors paint bottles have an orange and a white...............




Daryl J., who's always glad for this What-If Site.

[tanktastic43]

hi, i'm new to the 'what if?' site.
i've recently been re-bitten, if such a word exists, by the aircraft modelling bug.just finding my way around and came across this thread, which is fortunate for me as i have an old airfix 1/72nd meteor kit that has been waiting to be built for a number of years.
thanks for the ideas fellas, nothing seems to be too far fetched.

[Maverick]

Did someone say Big Gun Meteor - how about this:  The RAF decides to trial one of the captured Mauser Mk214 cannon in a crude under fuselage pod:

Regards,

Greg

Errr, Greg... Nose Gear??

[GTX]

Did someone say Big Gun Meteor - how about this:  The RAF decides to trial one of the captured Mauser Mk214 cannon in a crude under fuselage pod:

Regards,

Greg

Errr, Greg... Nose Gear??

Adjusted to ensure clearance

Regards,

Greg

[GTX]

hi, i'm new to the 'what if?' site.
i've recently been re-bitten, if such a word exists, by the aircraft modelling bug.just finding my way around and came across this thread, which is fortunate for me as i have an old airfix 1/72nd meteor kit that has been waiting to be built for a number of years.
thanks for the ideas fellas, nothing seems to be too far fetched.

Well, welcome aboard - Hope to see more of your work!

Regards,

Greg

[kitbasher]

Similar to the Me-262, what if Gloster first trialled the Meteor with oisti=on engines:

Regards,
Greg

A bit like this....?
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,18865.msg265725.html#msg265725

[GTX]

Yep!

Regards,

Greg

[Weaver]

Bugger! - I was looking around for kits to do my wing-swap with, and noticed that Xtrakit do both an F.8 and a NF.11/14, great! Then, because I've never heard of Xtrakit, I went looking for a few reviews.....turns out the F.8 is their own, with a one-piece (tip-to-tip) wing and a "saddle" fuselage, but the NF. is the old Matchbox one, with a full fuselage and left and right wing halves... Still do-able of course, but no longer a simple wing-ectomy, and if you're going to the trouble of cutting and re-fitting differently-molded wings, it would almost be easier to scratch-build the guns onto the F.8 wing.....

On the up side, they look like good whiffing value for money. The F.8 has alternate all-clear and semi-solid canopies and big and small air intakes, and the NF. has "greenhouse" (NF.11) and clear (NF.14) canopies and THREE noses, one of which is allegedly too big for any real variant.



Another thought: the centreline big gun ideas would make perfect sense with a Trent conversion, because the props would prevent the use of rockets from the outer wing stations. You could do it with an old Airfix Mk.3 (the Trent used the short pods), and use one of the spare "late" model canopies from the Xtrakit F.8. to make it look like a later model.

Paint all three in company-demonstrator colour-schemes (G-REAP), mount them on a base with a rope barrier and some notices, and a guy in a suit trying to sell them.....

[Weaver]

AAAAAAGH!  Again, does no one ever f*cking THINK before grafting cowling from Aircraft A onto Aircraft B?  It may look right from a profile view but not in the other dimensions.  And just becauise you can do it, that doesn't mean that you should.

As for an F8/NF11/14, you'd need to take a chunk of fuselage out of the Matchbox/Xtrakit one and graft on an Airfix nose.  It's doable but with lots of filler, that Matchbox Meteor is a bugger to build.  Personally, I'd go for a ground attack optimised F3, with the long choord cowlings and the four wing guns plus the guns in the nose.  It'd be easier to graft the Matxhbox wings onto the Airfix fuselage.  Still a pain tho.

Hang on, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the F.8 have the longer forward fuselage of the trainer? In that case, on the assumption that any of these mods would be based on late production examples, then an F.8 kit with NF. wings (i.e. what I suggested) would be correct. An Airfix F.3 fuselage with NF. wings would still have the short nose and earlier tail.

And there's no alleged about the fact that the Matchbox Meteor has one incorrect nose.  The long one is wrong.  The 12 and 14 had the same length radome and the only real difference is the canopy.  Have a word with John Adams of Aeroclub - when he says something about airframes, listen!

I was reading from a review on Hyperscale, in which the builder stated that the longest nose is wrong, "contrary to what a lot of people say", so I assumed there was some debate about it. Based on everything I read, I think he's right!

Having said that, the other half of my original idea was to put the redundant, short-span, gunless wings of the F.8 kit onto the NF. with early AAMs on the wingtips, so presumably the long-&-wrong nose could be used to represent a hypothetical radar associated with them.

[kitbasher]

AAAAAAGH!  Again, does no one ever f*cking THINK before grafting cowling from Aircraft A onto Aircraft B?  It may look right from a profile view but not in the other dimensions.  And just becauise you can do it, that doesn't mean that you should.
As for an F8/NF11/14, you'd need to take a chunk of fuselage out of the Matchbox/Xtrakit one and graft on an Airfix nose.  It's doable but with lots of filler, that Matchbox Meteor is a bugger to build.  Personally, I'd go for a ground attack optimised F3, with the long choord cowlings and the four wing guns plus the guns in the nose.  It'd be easier to graft the Matxhbox wings onto the Airfix fuselage.  Still a pain tho.

Hang on, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the F.8 have the longer forward fuselage of the trainer? In that case, on the assumption that any of these mods would be based on late production examples, then an F.8 kit with NF. wings (i.e. what I suggested) would be correct. An Airfix F.3 fuselage with NF. wings would still have the short nose and earlier tail.

And there's no alleged about the fact that the Matchbox Meteor has one incorrect nose.  The long one is wrong.  The 12 and 14 had the same length radome and the only real difference is the canopy.  Have a word with John Adams of Aeroclub - when he says something about airframes, listen!

I was reading from a review on Hyperscale, in which the builder stated that the longest nose is wrong, "contrary to what a lot of people say", so I assumed there was some debate about it. Based on everything I read, I think he's right!
Having said that, the other half of my original idea was to put the redundant, short-span, gunless wings of the F.8 kit onto the NF. with early AAMs on the wingtips, so presumably the long-&-wrong nose could be used to represent a hypothetical radar associated with them.

From what I recall from an old IPMS magazine article the Airfix Meteor F3 has an inaccurate fuselage cross section which would make grafting it onto another Meatbox kit a pain - lots of filler as Wooksta suggests.  A wing swap probably will be the best way to go.  The Matchbox/Extrakit Meteor is admittedly a bit fiddly, but I wouldn'y say it's any worse than that, really, other than the misleading nose which is too long as discussed above.
Do stick with your NF14/F8 cross, though, sounds a good idea.  Wing tip Fireflash missiles (as per the Swift F7) could be draggy (as indeed could be anything else), so is a reheat option on the cards??
This is 'What If?' after all, so whatever floats your boat......and enjoy and post up pics of the finished item!