Hi All:
It was a nice day at my purveyor of Styrene's place, two iterations of the new 1/48 scale Classic Airframe's Gloster Meteor Mk.8 kit had arrived. Classic has evolved a bit with these kits, they now have decals printed by Micro-scale and they are very nice. On the down side, they have dumped the vac-u-formed canopies for injection molded ones and they are not the clearest items of the genre I have ever seen. A good polish and a dip in Future will definitely be in order unless you plan to go to Aero-Club or Squadron/Falcon for vac-u-formed replacements. No etched metal, but some very nice appearing gray resin parts for the cockpit and engine fronts. There are two kits: Physically, the early version has the canopy with the solid rear portion while the late version has the complete clear canopy. Other than this, the differences are in the markings.
- Early version; all three decal options are in the "high speed silver" finish. First is 56 Squadron circa 1953, second is a really flashy set of markings for 326 Sqdn, Royal Netherlands Air Force @ Soesterberg in the early 50's and finally an Australian bird from 77 Sqdn. in Korea in
- Late Version, Three birds again, all camouflaged this time. First two are for 501 and 609 Squadrons, Royal Auxiliary Air Force in the late
For anybody "down under" I do have one question concerning the Australian bird. Did the 77 Sqdn. aircraft really go to Korea with the early type canopy with the solid rear portion? Seem that would be one more item to work against them when the excretia hit the rotating blades.
Final Question: Would anyone out there have a copy of Dutch Decals 1/48 scale set RAF/Special 1, squadron markings for Gloster Meteors. This set was originally made for the Aero-club series of mixed media kits but it would sure be nice to have now. Wonder if we could get Dutch Decals to re-issue this sheet?
Bill Shuey