Kit Review: Tamiya 1:48 Gloster Meteor F.3 (Kit #61083)

The Gloster Meteor was Britain’s first service jet fighter and the Mk. 3, evolving beyond initial teething troubles, was deployed forward to Belgium before the cessation of hostilities in the west. The Meteors did not encounter the Me 262 in action, which may be a good thing as analysis generally comes down in favour of the Messerschmidt being the faster, more advanced design.

The type has not been all that well served by kit makers. Airfix produced it in the early days of the company in 1:72, Dragon tooled a new Meteor F.3 to the same scale in 2010, to a high standard and garnering excellent reviews, and there are limited-run and resin specialist kits of some of the later marques, but Tamiya’s F.1 and F.3 kits are pretty much alone to this day if we’re talking large scale and loads of detail.

Tamiya’s eighty-third release in its 1:48 aircraft series came out in 2002, and I can only describe it as a delight to build. The mouldings are high quality and fit is near-perfect, though the one-piece lower wing and separate top wing sections can bite you a little bit when dropping in the engines and fuselage. Take lots of time to study the sequence “dry” and only commit to glue when you are absolutely sure.



The cockpit could be accused of being spartan, with a decal seatbelt, but not much is visible through the canopy if closed, and Tamiya offer some great twists, such as a cast metal weight which is installed in the fuselage to bring the centre of gravity forward and avoid the model being a tail-sitter (much more precise than loading it up with lead sinkers or whatever and hoping you’ve glued in enough!) and landing gear which locks very solidly into place to be sure of carrying the necessarily greater weight of the previous item, as well as ensuring its own perfect alignment. The engines are nicely detailed and can be left visible either via detachable parts for the top of the nacelles or the supplied clear equivalents.

Decal options include one of the aircraft deployed to Belgium, which were painted gloss white for recognition purposes, as they were in essence only there to gather experience, they were not intended to fight; plus two camouflaged options from perhaps later in 1945. The kit will also build the F.4 model, as it includes the teardrop-shaped conformal fuel tank characteristic of early Meteors, and while some reviewers have finished their F.3s with this tank, it did in fact first appear on the following version.



Assembly was quite straight forward with the exception of that previously mentioned fiddle with lining up the wings and fuselage to close tolerances, and if I have a particular criticism it is that the gear bays, moulded in with the top wing halves, generate distinct and quite wide gaps in a place they are impossible to really do anything with. The side walls of the bays are also undetailed, and I would not be surprised if there was an etched metal set out there that plates the bay walls, hides the joint lines and beefs up the detail level in one go.

I used a number of finishing techniques on this one, starting with pre-shading all panel lines in black. I used Humbrol enamels for the Medium Sea Gray underside and Dark Sea Gray topside, but by then I had really had enough of the solvent fumes and the model lay fallow for a while. I soon discovered that Tamiya had already produced very close equivalents for these shades plus the topside RAF Green 2 as XF-81, 82 and 83, providing an acrylic option for late-war RAF subjects, and I decided at once to complete the model in acrylics.



Camouflage was masked with innumerable pieces of tape, the hard-edge wavy scheme being drawn onto de-tacked tape laid onto the demarcation zones. These pieces were then peeled off carefully and the wavy lines cut with scissors. They were reapplied, then the gray areas backfilled with more tape. The process took at least three days to complete, which is one reason I put it off for so long.

Next, I refreshed the preshading in the remaining areas, then overcoated with the green. When everything was comfortably dry, I unmasked everything but the canopy, nosed gear bay and engine intakes, touched up as needed, and coated the model with Microscale Satin. I had intended to use Promodeler Dark Dirt weathering wash, which was fine for the underside, but against the topside camouflage their Black was necessary to stand out as tonally different. More Satin sealed the accenting.



At this point I brought out the Eagle Strike Late War RAF Roundels (48136) set I bought, replacing the kit insignia as the fuselage roundels were slightly off register. I found the ES set included three sheets and decided to use the full suite as the colours were much truer than those on the kit sheet. They behaved very well and laid down into recessed detail tightly with Microscale chemistry.

Squadron codes and serials came from the kit sheet, along with the stencil data, which is exceptionally small and fine. In all there are eighty decals on the model, though the stencils largely disappear unless viewing from very close range. The model was carefully washed with soap and water in an effort to remove the invisible decal residues, even bathed with saturated tissues, which was mostly successful; a little more Satin was misted on over the decals to seal them. I had considered drawing the lustre down and experimented with Microscale Flat, but could distinguish zero difference between them (I have heard this on forums, their Flat is notorious for being semi-gloss) and having no other flat to hand I decided lustre was good!



A few jobs remained, painting, assembling and installing the landing gear and oil wash weathering the detail in the gear wells; removing my from-scratch masking of the canopy and hooking out the tissue protecting the intakes and nosegear well; fitting the jet exhausts; painting and adding the radio mast and pitot tube; and painting and glossing the formation lights. The clear parts for the three vertical lights on the underside will be added when the clear sprue shows up again on my chaos of a bench…

Tamiya brought their signature quality to this under-celebrated subject and I would recommend it to anyone wanting a larger, highly detailed replica of this subject in its immediate post-WWII configuration. One or two aspects are tricky but there is nothing even a moderately experienced builder should not be able to handle, and the seasoned modeller can turn out a really impressive piece incorporating aftermarket cockpit dress-up sets and decals, as a stand-alone display or diorama subject.

Now That’s What I Call Shelf-Life

 I have rarely had cause to need gold paint. I have always fancied doing that gold-painted F-16, Sioux City Special I believe she was called, I even have a kit and decals lined up for the day I have the time... The chance... Somewhere to put it... But the odd gold detail might call for having gold in stock. I have a tinlet of Humbrol #16, Gold. I recently needed to open it for a few dabs of gold to visually blend in some gold foil I was applying, and sure enough, there it was, in the box at the back of the drawer. I really don’t remember if it was ever opened to do a job, but I am sure it was bought to do the gold detail work (engine accents, IIRC) on a small kit of the Honda CB 1100R motorcycle, by a firm called Crown. I bought that kit around Christmas 1982, it may be the oldest single article in my stash (still unbuilt). And by default, that means the paint is now around 27 years old. (The pic above is a new tin, I can’t seem to lay my hands on the old classic…) It wasn’t even thick in the tin. I gave it a shake, opened it and stirred it for thirty seconds, and it was good to go. When that paint was manufactured, that expression wasn’t even in use, nor were in the pipeline, 24/7, on track or my bad. That’s what you call shelf-life! Maybe the pigments weren’t as finely ground in those days, and the available ranges were smaller, but the chemical balance of the paint in the tin makes for a virtual time-capsule: so long as the balance remains within certain margins the mixture should remain viable forever. Of course, there are other tins that go hard while you look at them, and I had a bottle of MM enamel whose contents turned into a strange, rubbery substance without ever being opened, or maybe only for a tinting dab, but this is where chemistry meets philosophy. The same thing happened recently to another bottle, much newer, something to do with failure of the foiled card seal in the cap, I think. Folks have been complaining on other forums about this and other shortcomings of the Model Master range, lately, which is a pity as it’s really good paint, just let down at times by packaging issues (and accuracy issues, like the identification numbers of the RLM 82 and RLM 83 shades somehow getting reversed when the labels were printed… Or their Dunkelgelb being a bit on the dark side…) For the moment, I’m very impressed with Humbrol. Of course, the delicate balance of chemistry in the tin has been disturbed now, and the next time I look at it, it may have congealed, disintegrating like a vampyre whose coffin was opened before dusk. I guess we’ll see when it comes time to build that F-16 (unless I’ve graduated to Talon Acrylics by then...)

Acrylics or Enamels?

 

 It has to be the biggest question in model painting today, beyond choice of brushes or airbrushes, beyond colour selection: which type of paint is best for your project? There are modellers who have switched entirely to water-based acrylics for all spray work, for the health benefits: nontoxic paints are a major factor and not to be taken lightly. When you’re used to the light, sweet smell of acrylics and their water cleanup, to start spraying solvent-based paints and their spirit cleanup is a rude reminder of just how frequently and casually we poison ourselves with the things we invite into our environment. Got a spray booth with a ducted exhaust fan? Good for you, but most of us make do with an open window and sometimes it’s just not enough.

Like many modellers, I have both types of paint in stock. I first bought acrylics when tackling vinyl subjects in the early 90s, and I must say the Tamiya paints I bought have been extraordinarily long-lived. They’re still good over 15 years later, all they need is a stir. They haven’t made the old, large bottles in many years, possibly because people discovered the paint lasted remarkably well, and for the rate of usage a smaller quantity was just fine. I have scores of Tamiya shades, plenty of useful colours, and my collection grows gradually. But I also have hundreds of enamels, the ubiquitous Humbrol range and Testor Model Master (which despite being superb quality, with an easy-stir jar and an enormous selection of specialty-matched shades, is getting hard to find in Australia, as Humbrol and Tamiya have grabbed the popularity).

I have not brush painted a model in 30 years, but today when I spray enamels I do so outside, which is a nuisance. Acrylics I can use indoors with simple ventilation, which makes them easy and convenient. But what about detail painting by brush? This is where the real applicability of the paints comes to the fore. Acrylics spray superbly but they don’t brush worth a damn--at least the Taniya variety. You can thin them a little and that helps, but the drying rate is like lightning and in one minute a brush is unusable -- clean it and start over. This seems a characteristic of the Tamiya range in particular, they are by far the most available here and I have sampled no others at this time (but I’ve heard others dry even faster…)

By comparison, dipping a fine brush in enamel paint provides familiar flow and control, and one can concentrate on the finesse of the task rather than fighting the characteristics of the medium. The same thing applies when airbrushing, though on a longer timescale. When used to the tip-drying characteristics of enamel, acrylics can bite you: you must keep the job moving when you’re working with the nontoxic paints, and when it’s done be sure you’re finished and clean the AB at once. This tends to lead to wasted paint, as when forgotten bits are noticed you need to mix more, and if using a syphon-bottle AB there is a minimum amount the airbrush will actually pick up from the jar. If working in enamels you have the extra working time to consider the job from all angles, turn the thing around again, look at it in different light, go 30 seconds or more and be sure the paint will still flow normally when you press the trigger.

My impression is that enamels and acrylics will continue to share the marketplace. Enamels flow on so smoothly they are a joy to use, they are a ‘friendlier’ medium than acrylics, you can polish their finish just like automotive paints (which ironically have all been acrylics for the last 25 years at least), and the range of precision-matched shades is enormous. The major manufacturers must have churned out over a billion bottles and tinlets in the last 40 years, in fact probably far more, Humbrol alone used to produce 25 million tinlets a year in the 1980s, if I remember correctly, and that’s an awful lot of paint in collections out there. I personally have tins that date from that era and the contents still slosh. But if acrylics were friendlier, dried slower, brushed better, and were available in hundreds more shades, precision-matched to historic sources, I would be using them more often. I have no wish to poison myself, and while the chemistry involved with acrylics is almost certainly not 100% harmless, it’s a significant improvement.