A Pair Of Pioneers

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BWP
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A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by BWP »

High-time to get cracking with something new after the horrors of the last kit.

I've decided to go for a two-fer: the Gloster Pioneer (aka the Whittle), Britain's first jet aircraft. Two machines were built and I have two kits so one for each!

First-up is the High Planes short-run kit. The parts need a fair bit of clean-up and a bit of effort will need to go into the cockpit I think. Otherwise should be straight-forward he says hopefully?

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You'll notice that there's a spare canopy. If all goes well I may be able to use that on the second kit (although it's doubtful whether it will fit).

The other kit is the venerable FROG, fresh from its baggy packaging. Quite a bit more work will be required here for a variety of reasons.

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I will need to source alternate decals but that's straight-forward, I have suitable generic serials, roundels and even "P" prototype symbols in the stash.
Bruce Probst
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by BWP »

The major issue with the FROG kit is that the kit was prepared from very bad drawings (supplied by Gloster I believe!) and thus the fuselage is quite badly dimensioned. You can see the problem quite clearly when the kits are put side-by-side:

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Whereas the wings are near-enough the same:

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Trying to "fix" the fuselage would take an extraordinary amount of effort, even if I had a plan on how to do it, which I don't. I rather suspect I shall have to grin and bear it.

Aside from that the cockpit will again need work, and the undercarriage will need replacing as they appear to bear no resemblance to the real thing. Perhaps not very surprisingly they seem quite similar to the corresponding parts on the Gloster Meteor and so a "donation" from one of those kits (or third-party replacements, if such exist) is in the offing. I have several Meteor kits in the stash so I don't anticipate problems there.
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by BWP »

For research purposes I have collected several books and even a DVD. From bits and pieces I've already read there was some confusion about the colour schemes that both aircraft wore at the time of their first flights but between these I should be able to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by BWP »

Finally I'll note that there is a third 1/72 kit from Pavla. I've never seen it, don't know anything about it and I spent some time looking for one to buy with no success. I would presume that it's a typical Pavla kit in that everything will look nice and crisp but may not actually go together very well (but it's such a simple aircraft that it's hard to imagine there could be many problems in that respect).
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by Eric Mc »

I built the FROG kit (in Novo form) last year. It actually went together reasonably well but, as you say, the proportions aren't correct.
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

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Alright. A bit of digging around the books (mostly Kershaw, which is pretty comprehensive) got me the info I needed and allowed me to formulate a plan.

W4041/G (it appears, incidentally, that the "G" designation meant "must be guarded day and night"!) first flew (officially) in May 1941. (It actually had had a very short flight previous to that.) At that time it was in the standard British prototype scheme of matt Dark Earth/Dark Green uppers and Yellow underside. It had 30" Type B roundels (upper wings), 30" Type A roundels (under wings) and 35" A1 roundels on the fuselage. Serial number in 8" letters and 30" Type A fin flash. It did not have the Yellow "P" symbol though. There is apparently only a single photograph of this historic event (i.e., showing the aircraft in flight), reproduced in Kershaw.

Later the aircraft was repainted in the then-current scheme of Dark Earth/Ocean Grey upper and Yellow beneath, and by the look of the various photos in this scheme it appears to have been a glossy finish. The upper wing roundels were still 30" Type B, but the under wing roundels became 17" Type C, and 18" Type C1 on the fuselage. Fin flash was changed to Type C (?) with the very narrow white bar. The Prototype "P" was added (17" in a 27" diameter circle).

The second aircraft, W4046/G, appears to have been in an identical scheme to this. There are very few extant photos of this aircraft, Kershaw has a couple of it post-crash (including an excellent view of the open undercarriage bay in the wing), but Buttler has a couple of good views of it when it was still intact.

The cockpit was standard interior green with the IP in tan. The inside of the air intake was bare metal (I presume) except for a 1" wrap of the exterior colours around the intake lip.

Note that the tail fins seen on many photos of W4041/G were added in 1944 and removed immediately post-war in 1945. Thus they were never fitted to W4046/G which crashed in 1943.

The decals included in the HPM kit appear to be perfectly correct for the late-war W4041/G scheme, but the instructions incorrectly advise the DE/DG/Y colours. The FROG decals are a (poor) approximation of these same markings and similarly incorrectly advise the use of the DE/DG/Y colours. Probably in both cases this has been influenced by the post-war appearance of W4041/G in its preserved museum appearance. Never trust museum paint jobs!

Since it would be a bit dull to paint both aircraft identically and have only the serial number different, my plan is:

1) Build the HPM kit as W4041/G in the "first flight" DE/DG/Y scheme. For this I can use the Type B roundels from the FROG kit (the only accurate decals on that sheet!), Type A and A1 roundels from Modeldecal Sheet 39, the fin flash from an Airfix Spitfire sheet I have in my spares box, and the serial number from the HPM sheet.

2) Build the FROG kit as W4046/G in the only scheme it ever wore, the DE/OG/Y scheme, using all of the decals from the HPM sheet except for the serial number, which I can construct from Ventura sheet V7252. These are not quite identical to the style used on the HPM sheet, but are near enough, and I doubt most people would notice any way.

Neither kit will require the tail fin modifications so in both cases it will be just general detailing. The FROG kit will have the wrong fuselage of course but as I say above, I wouldn't even know how to go about trying to fix that. The proportions are wrong at just about every point from tip to tail.

Now that I (theoretically) know what I am going to be doing, I can get started ....
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by Eric Mc »

There is colour film footage about of the E28/39 flying.

It also had all all metal finish for a short while as well. There are photos and some film footage in its unpainted state.
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by Marek »

This is going to be an interesting project, awaiting impatiently :)
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by OllieSmith »

Going to keep an eye on this build, will be very interesting!!! :)

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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by ShaunW »

Interesting stuff Bruce and you have certainly done your research here. I like modifying old kits and trying to improve them if I can but I don't think I'd fancy the amount of work that correcting the Frog fuselage would probably take. I'd leave well alone, add some detail to the cockpit and not park it too close to the more accurate High Planes offering :grin:
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

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Work begins!

The HPM kit gives you a fairly nice seat, a part to represent the IP (but with no details molded on) and a template to cut out to form a cockpit floor. Well, I feel a little more than that is required, especially as photos and drawings show quite a fair bit of interior detail (most of which I will probably not bother with).

I spent a fair amount of time last night cleaning up the fuselage halves and the afore-mentioned parts. Of course, the template doesn't represent the interior shape of the fuselage at all and won't fit without being shaped, and in any case you have to guess where to put it! While the seat is nice enough it has no detail, and is missing a seat cushion and some simple straps. The cushion was easily fashioned from some scrap, I'll add the straps later. The IP is not really the right shape (or more accurately, is only about half of the right shape) so I have cut it, and used a small punch die to add some dials, but I'll have to simulate most of this with paint. After guessing the best spot for the floor it was added, the seat was elevated (so the pilot would have somewhere to put his legs), again with scrap, and a rear wall added to block off the view behind the seat.

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I still need to add the joystick and various other levers which should all be simple enough to add from odds and ends. I may also detail the inside of the cockpit walls with some basic ribs, I'll see how I feel.

The next piece of the puzzle is the intake vane, which in the kit comes in two parts (again requiring a lot of cleanup), inside of which you are expected to put the noseweight (amount required unknown! -- the illustration says "9" but 9 what? Grams? Pounds? Tons?) It's a moot point because with the floor in place the vane doesn't fit. (And the floor has to extend that far to meet up with the IP, so really this is an issue with the way the kit is designed.) So I will have to truncate it by about 5 mm and fill the remaining space as best as I can and hope it will be enough.

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And that's as far as I've got. Next job is to construct and detail the nose wheel bay. I don't think that will be very involved or complicated. Once that's done I shall move on to the FROG kit to finish it to the same point, and then do the interior paint jobs for both.

In the real aircraft the intakes were separated into two ducts which wrapped around the cockpit walls near floor level. I am not even going to bother trying, I just want to make sure that you can't look down the nose and see out the tail pipe!
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by TobyC »

Look forward to seeing this. I had heard the Frog kit wasn't their best and now I can see why.
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by ShaunW »

A good start Bruce. It looks like there might be a fair amount of the cockpit visible through the large looking canopy on this type, so a bit of additional work in there would probably not be wasted effort.
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by Stevehnz »

I'm so pleased you're doing this Bruce. I've recently picked up the HPM kit, the price seemed right but then I researched it. :cry: So I'm rapt you're going where I was fearing to tread. :-D keep up the good work. :)
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Re: A Pair Of Pioneers

Post by BWP »

Thanks all for the encouragement. This was supposed to be a pair of simple builds, but it's not really turning out that way!

Useful progress has been made today. After watching some video footage of the E28/39 the other night, from the front some horizontal vanes were visible in the intake. Closer examination of the photos in my references showed that these were located to the rear of the main intake, at the opening of each tube that ran around the sides of the cockpit. This, and the fact that there were still gaps visible around the cockpit I had constructed made me decide that I needed to do more work to box it in. A little fiddly, but nothing too stressful.

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I cut off the rear of the intake vane so that it would fit. I also needed to do a lot of sanding of the parts at the front end where it fits in the nose; the fit is really rather appalling. Fortunately (?) it's a fairly thick plastic section at this point so you can really go to town on it (unfortunately, you need to). You can see here the hollow space where you're supposed to squeeze the nose weight in. I wasn't sure that there would be enough room for the weight required though.

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I finished off the interior of the cockpit (as much as I intend to do, any way). The IP part needed more trimming to actually fit. Really, aside from the seat, all of the interior parts in this kit leave a lot to be desired. Some spare pieces of PE (left over from a previous tank build) yielded the seatbelt.

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I recently purchased some "Liquid Gravity" and jolly useful stuff it is. After I had got this much done, I was now sure that there would not be enough nose weight. I had formulated a plan however ....

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I realised that after I boxed in the nose wheel bay, there would be little "compartments" that I could use to fit more weight in. Now I'm confident (well, hopeful) that there is sufficient weight. The LG is kept in place with big dollops of super glue.

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And finally all the parts in place, ready for painting (a little bit of filling will be required to plug gaps in the corners, etc., but not too much; the worst area is in the nose where the two fuselage halves meet the intake vane). (Sorry for this blurry photo.)

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Next task is to bring the FROG kit to the same relative point.
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