Airfix Folland Gnat T1

And now for an official milestone. The 400^th completed model in the 72 Land State Museum of Aircraft Design. It isn’t the best, nor was it the easiest, but it is the latest.

This is the new-tool Airfix Folland Gnat T1. I don’t have a copy of the original tooling, so I can’t give an opinion of where improvements were made, though I assume the old one had raised panel lines. Fit is a bit indifferent, especially around the cockpit and the piece that attaches the upper wings to the fuselage. In fact, if you aren’t scrupulous about dry-fitting the canopy while you are cement that seam, you are likely to end up in the same boat I found myself: with a canopy that resolutely would not fit snugly. In the end I got it attached as best I could and tried to make up the difference with a couple of coats of Mr Surfacer as putty. If, as some modellers have suggested, there is an A-team and a B-team designing Airfix kits, this has the hallmarks of the backup squad. Still, I do appreciate the opportunity to build a Gnat using recent kitmaking technology.

Decals were a mystery for a while. The kit decals didn’t do it for me, so I went looking for alternate schemes. There aren’t too many, but I decided early on that it would either be the Red Arrows or Yellowjacket version. And since I already have a finished Red Arrow Hawk, I decided that the Yellowjacket would do. I have an ancient – I mean, this must be 70s at least – Aerodecal sheet with serials for all the Yellowjackets. I wondered if their age would make them brittle, but they performed as well as any of the recent decals I’ve used lately. I did have some trouble finding the proper serial for the team leader (with the black tail), but a combination of a Google search and a query on 72^nd Scale Aircraft gave me the info I needed. Thanks as always, gents.

400 may not put me in the league with Alan Hall’s Airpower Model Collection (a travelling exhibition of 1000+ in 1:72 that he used to show at different places back when he was editor of the original Airfix magazine). Or even in the 500+ collection of 1:72 WW2 models currently on exhibition at the Seattle Museum of Flight. But in a hobby where many participants haven’t actually completed a model in years, I can at least prove that I am a Profoundly Average Kit Assembler and not a Profoundly Average Model Collector.