1/72 Airfix Folland Gnat T.1
by Orlando Sucre Rosales
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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 Arrows 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.
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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 traslucent, 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.
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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
Photos and text © by Orlando Sucre Rosales