History
by Tine Soetaert
At the beginning of the 1950's
several countries urgently needed a jet trainer. The only trainers available at
that time were 2-seat versions of existing jetfighters. A French company called
Fouga saw the need and started developing the Fouga CM-170 Magister. The first
prototype made its maiden flight on June 23, 1952. The Fouga is powered by 2
Marboré II engines (some Fouga's were altered with the Marboré VI engine) and
has a very distinctive appearance. The long wings clearly show the glider
heritage of the Fouga company and the aircraft also has a very recognizable
V-tail or butterfly tail. The aircraft can be armed with twin 7.62MM guns in the
nose and various bombs and missiles under the wings. The cockpits are in a
tandem configuration and to give the instructor a better view during landing, a
periscope is fitted. The Fouga also has no ejection seats. The crew has a
seat-type parachute in case of an emergency evacuation. Because it was the only
trainer widely available in those days (Fokker S-14 Machtrainer flew sooner, but
only 20 were made) a total of 929 were built and the Fouga flew almost
everywhere in Europe, South America and Africa. France had hundreds, as did
Germany who built them under license. Finland and Israel also built the Fouga
under license. Many countries used the Fouga for their aerobatics teams. One of
those was Austria. Austria bought 18 Fougas in November 1958 and used them until
1971 for training and for their aerobatics team. Sadly, very little info remains
today, as according to some sources the Austrian government destroyed all their
pictures and info. Today the only military Fougas in active service in Europe
are those of the Belgian Air Force.
The Heller kit
Although I always knew that the
Fouga Magister was not a big plane, I was nevertheless surprised when I saw for
the first time how small the aircraft looks in 1/72 scale. All parts are crisply
molded in gray plastic. Transparent parts are used for the closed canopy, nose
mounted landing light and the clearance lights which can be found in the wingtip
tanks. The kit is well detailed, particularly when you keep in mind that the
moulds are from old tooling, dating back to the late 1970's. Therefore all panel
lines are of the raised type.
The kit decals offer markings for
any plane of the Patrouille de France team, 1978 or for a completely metallic
German Air Force plane from 1966. While the French decals are printed quite
accurately, the German nationality insignias are misaligned and therefore
useless. If you want to do this version, you'll have to use some spare decals
instead.
However, that didn't trouble me,
as I wanted to do an Austrian bird with the IPMS-Austria decals still left from
a previous sheet, which covered several Austrian aircraft.
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Construction may start
…
And the Lord spoke: "Each
building guidance shall begin with the cockpit, because the building guidance is
the true way. And only with it and in it you'll find the perfect!"... Okay,
we don't want to exaggerate, but this dogma is kept here, too. Before any
construction started I had sanded off the raised lines and rescribed them, but
back to the beginning. The cockpit doesn't offer much. There's the tub, 2 not
bad seats, control sticks and a pair of roughly detailed instrument panels. At
least some seatbelts should be supplemented (blue). The completely black
painting will hide most of the meager details ... leaving the canopy in the
closed position you're already on the safe side. Well, a few white and red spots
(switches, etc.) will add some color and you'll almost forget that the flat
consoles lack any detail and structure. A scratch built throttle is also easy to
add. As far as I know there isn't a single add-on for the Heller kit, except a
few decal sheets.
After painting the cockpit with a
lightened black, I also used this color on the canopy, which had been masked
with Mr. Masking Sol. The canopy will be painted silver afterwards, but thus the
black represents the right color for the cockpit interior. And as I already had
my airbrush in operation, I painted the entire fuselage interior black, except
the nose gear well. This will later keep curious eyes from looking too deep
inside the (empty) fuselage when looking through the engine exhaust.
Now the landing gear bays and
doors were painted with Humbrol 81, as the nose gear has to be inserted when
joining the fuselage halves. That's why it won't be possible to paint the nose
gear well afterwards. Before painting the landing gear struts, the main gear
received some brake hoses made of sprue. The fit of the fuselage halves is quite
good and in most cases only a little sanding was necessary to get the seams
smooth. However, the engine exhausts looked a bit "hollow", so I added
some thinned round plastic tubes to simulate the exhaust pipes.
The hole on top of the fuselage
is actually an assembly point for a blade antenna (part # 44). This hole was
filled, as this antenna isn't visible on the (only) reference photo I had. Part
# 46: another antenna, found its way into the spares box, too. But, there is the
black whip antenna, which can be found in the photo but not in the kit.
Each wing consists of two halves
and their fit is very good. Only the wing to fuselage fit reveals that the
profile of the wings is somewhat thicker than that of the fuselage base fitting.
Therefore I had to do some more sanding here. Finally the V-tail and the canopy
were glued into place. I didn't attach the auxiliary tanks to the wings at this
time because the masking and painting of the orange contrast surfaces would be
much easier.
The Paint job
After the landing gear bays were
masked, the entire model received a coat of Humbrol 191. As soon as this
metallic color had dried, a coat of Erdal Glänzer (the German Future) followed
to prevent the base colors from being torn off when working with masking tape.
Finally the orange was the last color … a time consuming and nerve-racking
job, as it's always difficult with those layered colors. The black-metallic area
around the engine exhausts was brush-painted. When this color had dried, another
coat of Erdal Glänzer prepared the model for the decals.
Markings
The one and only reference
picture of an Austrian Fouga Magister that I had on hand showed the 4D-YU, a
plane of the aerobatics team "Silver Birds" from Zeltweg, 1967/ 68.
This one was chosen and I used the IPMS-Austria decals. As these are very thin,
they look extremely realistic without any silvering … just like being painted.
But be careful, the modeler can't indulge in many mistakes. If a decal is
applied and has dried it cannot be removed without damaging it. Finally all
decals were applied and another coat of Erdal Glänzer was sprayed to protect
the decals from the following washing with diluted black oil paint.
As my bird belonged to an
aerobatics team a very light weathering was sufficient. Finally Erdal Glänzer
was also used for the finish.
The last bits
Now the auxiliary tanks were
glued to the wingtips and the transparent parts such as clearance and landing
lights were set with white glue. Unfortunately these parts can't be removed from
the sprue without damage, so I had to re-polish some scratched areas.
The landing gear and doors were
installed without a problem. The last items glued to the model were the
periscope and the black whip antenna, which was made of sprue.
That's it!
Owing to the relatively new FM
1/48 kit, the Fouga Magister became a bit more popular in recent times. However,
you don't see many of them on exhibitions or in articles. And the lack of
aftermarket items and decals, which really cannot be blamed on the Fouga
Magister, just adds to the sheltered existence of this fine little jet.
References
- M. Riedesser, Fouga C.M. 170 R
Magister, a volume from the F-40 publications
- Replic # 117 (French magazine)
Special thanks to Tine
Soetaert,
who provided the history section of this article. Tim is currently working on a
new book about the Fouga Magister. For example this one will include a walk
around and some pilot's stories. It'll take some time till it's finished - but
watch out!
Special thanks to R L Donaldson
who helped me with this translation.
The original German article can
be seen at www.modellversium.de in the
jet-gallery.
Text is from myself. Photos by
Deun Yu and myself. Thank you again!
Bernd
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