Gloster What-If, Baby!

[PR19_Kit]

Having worked next door to MI5's HQ in London for a good few years that's all I'm saying 

Hehehe, gotcha!

Mrs. PR19 is convinced I actually worked for them, because I was prone to vanishing off to foreign parts at very short notice and sometimes couldn't tell her where I'd been. She bought me a copy of Stella Rimington's auto-bio a while back and said 'It's your Bosses book, she can tell all now she's retired..........' 

[BlackOps]

Do you think once it's dry, a bit of light sanding would smooth it out? Doesn't look all that bad in the photos, but once you hit it with paint you don't want any nastiness.

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Going back to your question about the colours of the ordnance, Barry:-

Drop tanks in the time period could have been the underside colour - I'd go with PRU Blue or Aluminium, maybe you could do one of each - or as it's a late forties machine, maybe even Medium Sea Grey. On my bench just now is a RW Meteor FR9 in DSG/DG/PRU Blue, although the instructions specify blue drop tanks, I'm very tempted to do them 'painted' aluminium simply for contrast.

I KNOW it's a What If but rocket pods on RAF aircraft didn't really appear until the mid sixties (the first Matra pods)..... however if you want to add them, then I'd definitely go with either 'painted' aluminium or shiny NMF.

Unfortunately I'm at work atm so won't be able to see your pics until I get home tomorrow..... B*gg*r ! 

Best

Ian

[Sisko]

I am intrigued by this build!

Can't wait for more

[Weaver]

Fantastic build Sir! 

Question: There will be (cough!) an STS-amount of underwing ordnance on this beastie.  I will paint the pylons (which I truly screwed up) to match the undersides of the wings and bombs will be bomb-olive-drab; but should rocket pods and fueltanks exactly match the undersides of the wings or be slightly different?

I'm afraid I didn't see this question at the time you asked it... Since the subject's of general interest, I thought I'd start a thread about Matra pods (including colours) here:

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24530.0.html

[Mossie]

How'd this one slip under the radar?  I hadn't seen it until I spotted the finished thread.  Beautiful job Barry!

[John Howling Mouse]

Okay, now that she's completed, I can show you folks some of the build pics.

The open slot you see atop the aft fuselage would be carefully cut and shaped to accomodate the wing-stubs on which the engine nacelles would be mounted:






The mini-wing stubs were made from the inside cuts of the Meteor's "normal" wing as the curve would (theoretically) match the contour of the engine nacelles which had
been removed from the wing.







In the end, the fit was not too bad.  Nothing that a couple of week's worth of PSR wouldn't correct   



So, once the scratchbuilt-greeblied-up cockpit was done, the fuselage was buttoned up:


_____________________________________________________________________________
You can see the finished build at: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24526.0.html

[John Howling Mouse]

Where the normal, single tailfin had been, I ended up with a gap that needed to be filled:





What was built next?  Can't recall, exactly, but we'll move on to the wings.  Remember, I had hacked up the Meteor's normal wings something fierce.  Was very little left to work with.  So I scratch-bashed new ones using an innovative (for me, at least) patchwork method.  Here is a line drawing of the wing I hoped to ultimately produce:



Now, that's a lot of thick wing to end up with so I figured it would be easier to produce from bits and pieces of existing kit wings with some flat stock thrown in where the airfoil shape was less curved.





















_____________________________________________________________________________
You can see the finished build at: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24526.0.html

[John Howling Mouse]

So, the patchwork of wing pieces was finally laid in together, glued and clamped.


So, you have a pair of rather large, homemade wings...now, how do you attach them to a fuselage they were never intended to fit?  Here's where I first came up with my patented "wing-stitch" idea which I also used later on the Mossie Racer.  Essentially just a few slots lined up to accept some matching vertical wingspars.







You can also see the revolutionary fuselage fueltank halves in these pics.  They didn't know it back in 1957, but the United Kingdom Aerospace Industries Corporation had just invented what we now call "conformal fuel tanks."









_____________________________________________________________________________
You can see the finished build at: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24526.0.html

[John Howling Mouse]

I needed some sort of wing-mounted landing gear pods like the real Warthog so I modified some fuel tanks to have slots which would accept the landing gear that was designed to
rotate forward and up into the bottom of the wings.  Here is the fabrication of the lower halves:





The segmented underside fuel tank fairings had gaps which I filled with carefully cut and curved bits of sheet stock:





There had to be matching upper halves atop the wings, too, so I cut and shaped both fuel tank pieces as well as some plain old (thick) styrene sheet:

















Once all PSR'd, the top-mounting fairings looked okay but not perfect.  Hey, it was 1957!



_____________________________________________________________________________
You can see the finished build at: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24526.0.html

[John Howling Mouse]

The completed wing from both top and lower views:





Now, it was time to scratchbuild some tailfins from slabs of styrene which would look suitably "Meteoresque" yet still be my own design.
All starts with some .040" styrene sheet.  The odd, ear-shaped ends are purposely part of the initial cut-out as they give something for my big gronk-hands
to hold onto throughout all the sanding that is required to reshape a slab of flat plastic down to a nice airfoil.



Once cut out and shaped, it's time to scribe Matchbox-style trenches in the fins.  I tape the piece to cardboard for stability while engraving the lines with an Olfa cutter.



It's kind of difficult to show the nicely shaped fins when they're just white plastic but here are some angles:





I wanted to incorporate the AMT kit's original Meteor tailfin somehow so I affixed my scratchbuilt upper fins to the inverted tailfin parts from two kits.







I went stir-crazy trying to find a suitable source for a central stabilizer but I finally located what I needed from a 1:72 Matchbox Mossie kit:





_____________________________________________________________________________
You can see the finished build at: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24526.0.html

[John Howling Mouse]

The engine nacelles were actually some of the most difficult challenges as the gaps left as a result of removing them from the normal Meteor wing were voids which followed compound curves.  Not an easy thing to skin smoothly.







To sand the putty I applied to the inside lips of the intakes, I made a little tool.  Just a piece of bent sprue shaped at one end to hold a very small rectangle of fine-grit sandpaper which I CA-glued into place.  This little improvised tool allowed me to sand inside the lip of each nacelle to clean up the joints.



_____________________________________________________________________________
You can see the finished build at: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24526.0.html

[John Howling Mouse]

In addition to the other ten weapons pylons scavenged from other kits, I scratchbuilt a central hardpoint, complete with little shaped bulges.





Here is the collection of weapons pylons:





_____________________________________________________________________________
You can see the finished build at: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24526.0.html

[cthulhu77]

Nice build up !

[Zeke]

So how do you get to jam a GAU-8 30mm cannon in it?...This is going to be just awesome!...