Airfix 1/48 Gnat T.1

[RichB]

Started this as a Christmas project. Out of the box it provides a nicely detailed cockpit, full length intake trunks, optional open or closed canopies and nose avionics bay, raised or lowered flaps and landing gear and moveable ailerons and rudder

Work begins with the cockpit and is fairly straight forward. Airfix plastic is a bit soft so be careful when taking parts off the sprue to avoid any divots. The only problem encountered was with right side of the head box of one seat (on the left) that was a short shot, missing the canopy breaker "bat ears" and repaired with some styrene sheet.

The 4GT/1 seats consist of 7 parts with the option of belt free or moulded on belts. There is also a single pilot provided. (If using the figure, solo flying was always done from the front seat.) Wolfpack, Pavla and CMK all make resin replacement seats for some added detail.


The one piece cockpit tub is pretty good out of the box. Under some paint, washes and drybrushing looks good. Eduard has a PE set to enhance the cockpit.

The instrument panels have raised details and look good with the kit decals applied with liberal amounts of setting solution.

The cockpit sidewalls also have raised details that come up nicely with washes and dry brushing. The ejector marks are hidden by the cockpit tub assembly.

The tub sitting in place.

I press fit (no glue) the rear engine face and tail pipe together to position it in the aft fuselage. the engine face was then glued in place and when set the tail pipe gently wiggled free.

It will be much easier to fill the tail pipe hole that mask the little bit of tail pipe that extends beyond the fuselage. The tail pipe can then be placed after final painting.

Cheers,
Rich :snoopy

 

[Swordsman]

Nice job Rich ... I like what you've done so far ...

 

[helios]

I've been hearing on BM that quite a bit of the newer tooling Airfix are decent kits, and that they are actively trying to revamp the company/image. Hell, those seats are better than the Kinetic Mirage seats. I'll be interested in following this. Airfix has been voodoo for me based on history (the kits I had seen 25 years ago weren't pretty)...and I haven't been able to get past my bias yet. One of these days I'll give one a crack (eyeballing the forthcoming Victor bomber).

 

[Hippy Ed]

Nice pit!!

 

[phantom II]

Good looking cockpit

Cheers, Christian B)

 

[jknaus]

James

 

[RichB]

Got the fuselage halves together this afternoon. The intake trunks run back to an engine face (which can't be seen when looking down the intakes) between the main gear wells. Let this set up as see if there are any seams to fix.

There were many internet discussions and bun fights over the colour of Gnat intakes. Airfix instruction recommend aluminum paint and the internet gurus agree for the early aluminum/day-glo scheme. For the later red/white scheme the gurus split between a light grey and white. I went with white because that's what it looks like to me in photos.

A shot with the rear instrument panel coaming and wing assembly sitting in place. The upper wing is one piece which makes getting the downward camber much easier to set. Remember to drill the flashed over holes for the EFT's. The training aircraft were usually configured with tanks, the aerobatic teams (Yellow Jackets & Red Arrows) without. The ailerons can be left moveable, I haven't fixed mine in the neutral position yet.

Gnat is an appropriate name when talking size. It is about the same length as a Spitfire with two-thirds the wing span.

Cheers,
Rich :snoopy

 

[moon puppy]

Very nice...