James' Gnew Airfix 1/72 Gnat T1 **FINISHED**

[JamesPerrin]

I've seen some alarming hacking at the new Gnat so I thought I'd focus on the trouble spots first to see what could be done.

Intakes:

They are fiddly little so and sos to get hold of. Their fit off the sprue is not good, starboard is tight, port won't get in there at all. Looking at the parts there is small seam line on the inside of the upper lip, removing this allows the starboard part to fit snuggly. On the port side the splitter plate is fouling the cut out in which it sits. a couple of scrapes along these areas (1) as well as rounding off the lower corner (2) will allow the part to fit in place.





Of course the representation of the splitter plates is poor, a minute of sanding these as thin as you dare results in something much more realistic ( as well as completely removing the problems at (1) )



Conclusion: For a Skill level 1/Series 1 kit that is going to be offered as a starter kit this is going to frustrate Little Johnnys up and down the land. Older wiser heads need to apply a little modelling nouce and patience.


Wings:

My upper wing was warped but quickly solved with immersion in very hot water, straightening and then into cold water.



The underside panels fit as well as any other kit. Any gap at the tips can be reduced to less that a panel lines width at the simple expense of a slight gap at the wing root where it will be much less obvious.



The wing to fuselage join can be improved by removing a small seam line behind the top if the intakes, sanding back the shoulders also helps.

Conclusion: The engineering which nicely removes the usual, tedious wing root fuselage join lets itself down by again requiring some modelling skills to address the issue, the gap needs to be reduce so that the canopy will sit correctly later.


Other comments:

The plastic is quite soft which makes the required trimming easy but allows the fuselage to flex rather a lot. Nice details are let down by some 'soft' areas as well as some mistakes:

1.The main wheels have no wheel detail on the inside but some lovely looking brakes.
2.Similarly one of the nose wheels is missing a rim on the inside (OK no one will see)
3.The noses to the tanks have a slightly square cross section, needs sanding to round.

I found similar issues on the Sabre and there is a lack of care gone into the CAD/toolings even though evidently a wealth of detail has been researched and added.

[PaulBradley]

I also found the fit of the tanks to be quite poor. Lots of sanding required there.

[JamesPerrin]

The softness of the plastic and the number of little mould boggas make me think of an MPM/Special Hobby kit but with locating pins.

[JamesPerrin]

Two more reasons why the wing doesn't fit

1. The intake trunking/sidewalls need to be cleaned up of seam line before they will fit and then must be carefully positioned else they foul the wing.

2. Two raised tabs on the underside of the wing that are meant to butt the rear trunking encroach on the fuselage/wing join. If the were more pronounced they may work to spread the fuselage but as the are they just add to the gap.



Location of attachments points is poor eg right between the ejector seat horns that break the canopy on ejection. Despite taking care I managed to nick one. Other foul the mating surface of the wing tanks.

I'll take back my MPM/Special Hobby remark we're into Amodel territory here.

[MerlinJones]

After sanding down the two humps, I removed those raised tabs.
I believe that these are all artifacts of over-engineering the kit.

Regards,
Bruce

[JamesPerrin]

Some more grumbling fettling.

A nice idea is the plug for the ventral fuselage which is supplied with and without undercarriage doors. These part should be identical but the part without the doors is clearly softer in detail; the main panel line crossing it is not even straight



I decided to have a go at using the better part and cut the doors off. The plastic being soft this was relatively easy. OK so no one will notice but at least I'm satisfied.

Paul mentioned that the tanks don't fit well together. Well they don't due the very large tabs on the upper halves which cause the part to 'pinch' in when put in place.



Trimming these tabs off means 'less' sanding of the tanks later

[MerlinJones]

And the part with the doors is an indifferent fit!
The tanks are a good idea, but bad in execution and yet another example of over-engineering.
I'm sure that whosever 'baby' this is, they're very proud. However, it's clearly someone new to the art of making kits and someone who got carried away with access to lots of new tool-making toys.

Regards,
Bruce

[JamesPerrin]

I'm still plugging away. Not had a lot of bench time the last week or so so work has been fitful.

The centre fuselage plugs fit is a bit vague. I presume the raised ridges on the inside are meant to sit between the wheel wells. However there is nothing to stop it sitting to low (high?) other than the attached airscoop. I hadn't helped the situation by squaring up the hole earlier, looks like the access plastic I removed helped wedge it in place. I resorted to gluing a brace to the inside for it to rest on and then blended it in.


Despite my earlier efforts the gap at the wing root appeared again once the cockpit was in place. I shaved the rear bulkhead down to reduce it but eventually. just gave up and filled it. Filler was also used to blend the leading edge into the intakes.





My suspicions about the raised band at the rear of the upper wing piece were confirmed by the fair review in the latest SAMI and I sanded it away. Things have slightly stalled as my Hu96 that I use for the blue-grey RAF togs of this period had 'gone off' and I couldn't be bothered to start mixing colours. I'll probably will shortly but I wasn't in the mood for figure painting.

[MerlinJones]

H27 is a reasonable substitute.

Regards,
Bruce

[JamesPerrin]

Figures finally done. Not the sharpest mouldings Airfix have done. I cut the visor hinges off at the sides to represent the early silver helmet style. I had to trim their thighs to straddle the central consoles before they would fit into their seats properly.



Just need to add the single loop ejector handle to the seats and I can put the canopy on and get painting.

[Dazzled]

Nice build thread James and a much appreciated appraisal of the kits problems and how to fix them. I did sidestep some issues by posing mine in flight and leaving the tanks off. I seem to have had much more trouble than you with getting the figures in though. I only used one in each aircraft but I had to cut off their legs and saw a big lump off their backsides before they'd sit down properly.

This does seem to be a kit with a number of quirks.

[JamesPerrin]

Thanks Daz.

Despite evidence to the contrary I have been making progress on this though my enthusiasm has waned. Primer rubbed down with 4000 mciro mesh, though getting the finish even proved tricky. This became apparent when a coat of Alclad Al went on I got a lot of variance in the finish. anyway I decided this was too dark and re-coated with White Al.

Here it is masked off ready for the dayglo orange. I've used BareMetal Foil the mask the tailplane roots as it can conform to the awkward shape.

[JamesPerrin]

I intended to try out Humbrol's Hu209 Fluorescent Fire Orange for the Dayglo. Previously I've used Mr Aquacolor's Dayglo Orange over white. However this is rather pink until quite a thick coat, and resultant step at masked edges, has built up. I've also found that like the real thing this has faded quite rapidly in the sunlight - despite having my blinds down most of the time.

On opening the tin though I found the colour to be just too dayglo like those dayglo pieces of card small shops use to grab you attention to a sale item. Looking at pictures the real think is more orange. I decided to mix the daylgo with some Hu64 red in a 4:1 ratio which I felt better captured the real colour. I then starting spraying this over the silver and immediately remembering that red appears surprising dark over silver (it basically should be treated as med grey when over spraying). Over the yellow tape the colour looked great so I decided to stop and give the area a quick coat of yellow first. Restarting with the orange things finally looked close enough to what I wanted. The nose and underside of one wing are a tad darker as the got a coat of the orange mix before the yellow. When not under pressure to finish I'll do some tests of Hu209 over white and yellow bases the later should be better as the real thing faded to yellow rather than pink.

The antiglare panel was then masked. Note it is not a straight line from the windscreen but a gentle curve. Masking removed I was relieved to find little touching up required. The Baremetal Foil had done a grand job on the tail roots.

[splash]

That's looking good, I missed the fact there was a curve to the anti glare black

Regards
splash

[JamesPerrin]

It's not that apparent on the box diagram, I just happen to have the Gnat Warpaint to hand that has a nice colour picture of a similar a/c on the front cover.