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HKM Gloster Meteor Mk IV


Dpgsbody55

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This is my present project, the HK Models Gloster Meteor Mk IV, with the addidtion of the Profimodeller engine set, fabric seatbelts and an Eduard photo etched cockpit set.  I am presently well into the build, so for the moment, this will bring you you to date.  I must also add that a 1/32 Meteor Mk IV is a kit I have wanted someone to do for about 45 years.  When I was a teenager, a Frog Meteor IV was a favourite build and I would have loved to have seen it in what was then the new 1/32 scale.  So this build is a small dream come true for me.

 

On opening the kit, I found that the right side wing root fairing was broken.  This seems to be a fairly common occurrence, from what I've seen of previous builds.  Thankfully, the broken part was found so I taped it to the RH fuselage side for use when the wings were attached.

 

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I started work on both the engine and cockpit simultaneously, but I'll come back to the engine later.  Rudder pedal push rods.were added to the cockpit floor, a right angle reinforcement to the rear cockpit wall, and details sanded back on the 2 sides in preparation for the Eduard bits.  I also scrapped the kit seat in favour of a metal part not used from a previous build.

 

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All of this was then painted a black/grey mixture.  I find normal flat black hided any subtle detail you may add, so this is a bit better.  Here's the finished floor and side walls.  As well as the Eduard bits, I've also added wiring to each side, as well as the floor.  A hydraulic hand pump has also been scratch built.  The trim wheel was fashioned from an old undercarriage wheel centre, to which I added some wire for the wheel rim.  Finally, I also added a couple of placards and dry brushed the whole lot with silver from a Tamiya weathering set.

 

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Here is the rear cockpit wall and seat, finished.

 

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This is the cockpit going together, and the finished instrument panel.

 

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That's all for the moment.  I'll post some more tomorrow.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited by Dpgsbody55
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Nice project, Michael! I built a test shot of this kit, and really enjoyed it. I have another one with some upgrades from Profimodeler and Paul Fisher, so I'll be following your adventures avidly.

 

Kev

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Hi Kevin.  Are you looking at building a T-7??  That's something I'd love to try too.

 

Can't post any more progress today as Photobucket seems to have gone to sleep.  I'll try again tomorrow.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

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The colour was mixed up from Tamiya acrylics; dark gray as a base, with flat black added to taste (as the best TV chefs say!!!).  When compared to actual flat black when dry, it is noticeably different and with the dry brushing looks much better, I think.

 

Here's the fuselage going together, together with some detailing I added made from stock strip and U channel.

 

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Now to the engine.  The Profimodeller kits contains parts for 1 engine and a dummy front intake and exhaust that is an improvement of the basic kit.   However, the resin parts contain very little detail.  Detail is added by attaching PE parts as directed.  Construction started with the combustion chambers and immediately I realised how vague the instructions are, combined with parts that give almost no idea as to the location of further parts, this is not for beginners.  The combustion chambers, 9 of them, come as a resin part to which you add flanges, as the real thing was built up in 2 halves.  The flanges (18 of them) are PE brass and you first join 2 front to back to form the front and back half of each flange, then mount this to the chambers.  This caused a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth!!  The front of each chamber is painted gloss black and the rear in steel.  There are more PE parts to attach to the combustion chambers, but I left these until these parts were in place.
 

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The engine itself comes in 3 main resin parts.  I glued the rear turbine to the middle and attached the relevant PE parts to them, then painted the lot in steel.  The front is the air inlet and manifold, and I painted the manifold gloss black and attached this to the main body, then painted the front of the inlet flat aluminium.  The air inlet grille was also painted flat aluminium and then attached.  Once dry, I attached the combustion chambers, starting at the top, then adding 1 each side of this, then another each side of the first top 3 and continuing round to the bottom.  Thankfully, the inlet manifold has 9 tiny little marks to show you where to attach the combustion chambers.  It turned out to be just as well that I worked this way, as the bottom 2 chambers would not fit without some filing to narrow the chambers.  I think the reason for this is that I put the combustion chamber flanges in the wrong place, meaning that there is too much distance between each chamber as I added them.  If I'd placed them a millimetre or 2 further towards the intake (black portion) then I may not have had this problem, despite mounting the chambers as closely as I could.  I also found that the chambers would not attach cleanly to the inlet manifold, so this was filled with putty and painted.  Here's a shot of the complete assembly, together with some engine ancilliaries, engine rear mount and the beginning of the dummy front for the other side.
 

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At this point, I began to wonder how the engine was going to mount into the wing, so I decided to start on the starboard wing as this would contain the dummy front and rear, by way of practice for mounting the fully built engine.  The above picture shows the rear engine mount and jet output turbine and the turbine mounts to the resin part of the PE brass/resin assembly.  You then build the jet pipe and attach this to the output turbine.  This can them be mounted in the wing.  The instructions say to thin the wing part, but not how much.  I simply cleaned up the wings (ejector pin marks etc) and mounted the wing, temporarily clamping the wing top in place for correct alignment.  The dummy front was built up to match the other side, and the tail pipe was also added.

 

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Sorry about the second picture not being that clear, but you get what's happening here.  I'm not so impressed with the starboard side, compared to the left, but it's an improvement on the stock kit.  If I'm feeling really rich next time I build one of these, I'll build it with 2 engines.  The last shot shows the addition to the port side of some PE detail additions to the engine bay.  As so often with the Profimodeller kit, placement here is very much trial and error.

 

That's it for the moment.  I will continue with the engine tomorrow.


Cheers,

Michael

Edited by Dpgsbody55
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Thanks Bill.

 

Next up is the front of the engine with some accessories going into place.  Again, I'm not 100% sure of the placement of the black part behind the intake grille, but some interweb researfch suggested this was OK.  Also, you need to watch where you fit them as they need to clear the inside of the engine nacelle.

 

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Next up is the rear of the engine coming together.  You can see some more PE parts attached to the combustion chambers, as well as the fins on the tail of the output turbine.  These were simply butt glued onto the turbine cone, and the parts have no marking to suggest exactly where they go,  One thing to be careful of is that they don't interfere with the jet pipe, as this has more fins attached inside it.  The turbine itself was painted flat black, then given a heavy dry brush of silver to bring out the detail.

 

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Here's the jet pipe attached.

 

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And what it looks like when you peer up the jet pipe.

 

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Finally, here's the completed engine.  Plumbing and wiring is as per photos found on the net, and the instructions as best I could interpret them.  Where a wire could be seen at one end and not the other, it was left off.   After much trial fitting of engine to wing, more wailing and gnashing of teeth, the front engine mounts were also attached to the outermost edge of the (black) inlet manifold.  The black pipes were attached by drilling 0.5mm holes in the engine where they are attached, gluing a short length of wire, then glue the tube over the wire.  This also helped with the shaping of the tube.  The rear engine mount is also attached and needs to be aligned carefully, as this will glue to the sides of the engine nacelle.  On the real plane, the rear wing spar followed the shape of the nacelle, with a hole to mount the engine.  The instructions suggest the the 2 larger holes in the PE part need to be equidistant of the left and right wing spars where they continue on to either side of the wing, and the 3 smaller holes between them should be at the top.  Hpe that makes sense.

 

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Next up is to mount the engine into the wing.  More on that later, but we're catching up to where I'm presently up to on this build.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited by Dpgsbody55
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The engine is now glued into the wing.  I started by first gluing in the air intake assembly to ensure I could not possibly set the engine into the nacelle too far forward.  After this was dry, I dry fitted the engine with the upper wing also dry fitted to check placement and clean off paint for the front and rear engine mounts.  The engine should sit in the nacelle with the PE part of the rear engine bearer, or mount, sitting about 2mm behind the rear of the opening in the top wing.  The resin part of the rear bearer can be glued to the lower wing portion of the nacelle, and the front engine mounts can be glued to the lower portion of the nacelle.  The engine was then CA glued into the nacelle with the top wing dry fitted for alignment during the drying process.  Once dry, I fitted the rear exhaust pipe, which meant some small adjustment to the rear of the nacelle where the kit part of the exhaust mounts, as there was some small misalignment when I glued the PE exhaust tube from the Profimodeller engine kit to the HKM exhaust kit part.

 

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Next, rib detail was added to the top inner nacelle and engine cover from the parts provided in the Profimodeller kit.

 

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Once the wing/engine assembly was dry, I started to check the balance of the model.  The starboard wing top had previously been attached to the bottom wing with the aileron set in place.  I taped the top port wing to the bottom wing and marked to the bottom of each nacelle a point across the wing that lined up with where the main wheels would contact the ground.  Then a piece of 4mm tube was taped across the wing to simulate a datum to determine if, with the engine (most of which has it's weight behind the mainwheels), the model would be a tail sitter or not.  The tail wings were also taped into position.  Sure enough, it sat on the tail, so 2 1cm lengths were cut off an old tire balance and mounted in the forward fuselage under the cockpit.

 

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Now the wing could be closed up ready to mount.  Here's the wing being glued together, and the present state of my build.  The next step will be to attach the main wing, which I'll do tomorrow.  The tape on the fuselage holds that part of the wing root broken off from the fuselage, which I will glue into place as the wings are glued on.

 

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Cheers,

Michael

Edited by Dpgsbody55
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Over the weekend, I've mounted the wings, then the tail plane, and last night I did some gap filling.  Here's where the build presently stands.  In mounting the wings, I tape each wing to the fuselage centre as I find this gives me better control over each wing and achieving correct dihedral angles.  On this plane, it was easily set as all I had to do was tape each wing tip, then press down on the model and attach the tape to the fuselage.  Only minor adjustment was made after that.

 

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The instructions say to mount the tail first, but I prefer to do this after the wings are on and dihedral has been set.

 

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So now it looks like a plane, which is always an exciting stage to get to.  I have also started working on the undercarriage, which will be stock.  One thing I like about this kit is how HK Models have bulged the bottom of the tyres and ensured that the bulge goes to the bottom as the wheel mounts are D shaped.  Nice touch.  I can't find any decent shots of the undercarriage, so I have no idea where the brake lines are routed, so I'll leave them off.  As the plane sits so low to the ground, I don't see this as an issue.

 

The wing/fuselage joint is nice and tight on this kit, and only a small amount of filler was needed.  The same comment can be made of the tail joints too.

 

Next up will be the gun sight and canopy.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited by Dpgsbody55
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Thanks Kais.  Great pictures.  It looks to me as if the brake hydraulics are attached to the left side of each leg, which means that the line runs down the wingtip side on the port leg, and to the fuselage side on the starboard side.  I think that's enough for me to go on for this model.

 

Did you take the pictures??  I've been to Temora twice and seen this F8 flying both times.  Haven't been for a few years and would love to go there again.

 

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Cheers,

Michael

Edited by Dpgsbody55
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Michael,

yes , my pics. More in the walk around section.http://www.largescaleplanes.com/walkaround/wk.php?wid=29

I can't claim all of those however, some are Matt Gannon's and others are Sean Trestrail's.

I have more I have not yet sent in, wheel bays and such. Let me know if you need any more.
You're right about the routing of the brake lines, but also note the hubs are not handed.
Temora is a treat, isn't it!
I'm enjoying watching your Meatbox build.

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