Hello fellow
modelers!
This is the second
of my series of articles related to old Airfix series 1 kits. The Folland (later
Hawker Siddeley) Gnat was one of the smallest military jets ever produced, it
was widely known because the Red Arro ws
British aerobatic team used
it from 1965
to 1979.
I bought my Gnat kit
more than 30 years ago, it came in a plastic bag with a folded written
instructions sheet attached with staples. My Gnat differs from the later
Red Arrows version (also produced by Airfix) in that the former included
underwing tanks and dual three-rocket launchers under each wing. I'm almost sure
that both Airfix Gnats have been the only plastic
kits of this
aircraft, at least in 1:72 scale.
This Gnat was one of
several old Airfix kits in which the two fuselage halves had slightly different
heights and had the slot at the bottom for the clear stand already opened.
The wheel wells were shallow, a common characteristic of old Airfix kits,
because the wells directly received the undercarriage doors if one decided to
build an in-flight model. This feature also made the doors very thick, because
their thickness must be equal to the wells' depth.
The cockpit canopy was very
thick, and was wider at its base than the fuselage. The instructions didn't tell
how to paint the pilot figures and the wheel wells, among other details. The
decals yellowed with age, and the decals for the national insignias were
slightly out of register.
I began building
this kit some thirteen years ago, OOB from the start. I painted the seats and
the cockpit interior flat black, later I painted the pilot figures and glued
them to the seats, which in turn were glued to the starboard fuselage half. I
glued some lead shot inside the nose and it was time to close the fuselage. The
difference in height between the fuselage halves produced a little step running
along the fuselage. I didn't know how to correct this, so I decided to hide the
step by locating it on the bottom, where it in turn made it hard to cover the
slot for the stand.
The underwing tanks
were split between the upper and lower wing halves. The joint of the tanks'
halves required putty and a lot of sanding. The same can be said of the joint
between the completed wings and the fuselage. By that time I bought Humbrol
putty, I used it on this model and discovered that it dissolves the plastic a
bit, so a mess was produced when I tried to flatten the putty. More sanding than
usual was required to smooth the joint, so part of the upper wings' raised lines
were destroyed.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The model had to be painted
Aluminum with gloss red areas on the wings, nose and tail, and with a flat black
antiglare panel above the nose. It was going to be my first airbrushed metallic
finish. Before painting I polished the model with liquid metal polish, then I
washed the model, masked the canopy and the aluminum areas carefully and painted
the red and the black areas (including the canopy frames) together with the
wheel wells and the interior of the undercarriage doors (these were painted in
HU78 British interior grey-green, but now I'm almost sure that this color is
incorrect.)
Later I masked all the previously
painted areas (except the canopy frames) and painted the aluminum using Humbrol
Metalcote Polished Aluminum. I polished the aluminum after it was dry, but
I couldn't achieve a brighter finish. After
that I noticed that the red was somewhat dull, so I airbrushed another coat.
Fortunately, the aluminum paint withstood the masking, so the only resulting
glitch was a little ridge over the color separation lines. A long time later I
learned that I should have painted white under the red in order to make the red
look brighter!
The application of
the decals had its own problems. First, I taped the decal sheet inside a glass
window to let the sun bleach the yellowish carrier film. Nevertheless the yellow
tint persisted, therefore I trimmed the decal film around the decals, it
together with the sun bleach made the decals fragile, and the decals for the
tanks cracked when I applied them. Fortunately I could place the pieces
together, and these decals look as if nothing happened. Another problem was that
the decals were a bit translucent, so the red shows through the white of the
national insignias, making it look somewhat pink. I brushed a coat of acrylic
gloss varnish over the decals to match the overall glossy finish of the model, I
also accented the control surfaces' separation lines with black china ink.
The last step was
painting and assembling the undercarriage and the already painted rocket packs.
I painted the wheel hubs and the undercarriage legs Humbrol Metalcote Flat
Aluminum, and Chrome Silver on the oleo sections. After all the undercarriage
parts were painted, they were glued at their places. It was difficult to glue
the main undercarriage legs into their slots in the wheel wells because the tabs
on the legs were much smaller than the slots. It was also difficult to glue the
main undercarriage doors to the legs due to the curved surface of the doors. The
rocket packs were then glued to their pylons and the whole assemblies to the
underside of the wings and the model was finished.
I don't recall how
long my model was finished. Although it has its faults, it's still an
interesting subject and looks very nice. By
the way, shortly after I began writing this article I read the article "Airfix
kits a living legacy" at the Hawkeye's Squawkbox page in the Internet.
Although it wasn't my original intention, I'm offering a modest tribute to
Airfix through my series of articles. The next will be about... a Zero!
Thanks for watching
and reading. Greetings from Caracas, Venezuela.
Orlando Sucre Rosales
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