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Copyright 2009

By Owen Ryan

XtraKit/MPM’s Gloster Meteor F. Mk. 8 is an easy build that finishes up as a really nice looking model. Though some nitpickers have observed that the wing trailing edges are too thick or that the canopy doesn’t look quite right.

Assembly of the main parts – fuselage,
wings, and tail – is very straight forward. In removing the front strut fork from the spure, this delicate part broke. The kit has four or five similarly delicate parts that make up each gear leg. I doubted if I could get them off the sprue without further breakage.

To accommodate the 3 grams of nose
weight suggested by MPM, the top of
the resin nose wheel bay was cut down
to make space. It provided enough
space for 2.5 grams. Another gram fit in
the void cut out below the cockpit floor. I tested the balance by taping the kit together and used matchsticks for the gear struts. This proved that it still
needed more nose weight to avoid being a tail-sitter. Another 0.8 grams was placed behind the interior plates in each of the engine nacelles. This resulted in the model firmly seated on it’s tripod landing gear..

The Meteor kit’s cockpit is very basic
and lacks all of the knobs, switches and other details that make a cockpit look right. The Czech Master Resin cockpit set with the kit does not offer much more except a nice resin ejection seat. CMR does provide a very nicely detailed nose wheel bay which MPM completely ignored in there molding. CMR’s cockpit and nose bay are all one piece that looks like it should just drop into place, but it did take quite a bit of trimming and test fitting to get a good final fit.

Fortunately, Aeroclub makes a set of
landing gear for the Meteor in white metal that with a minimum of fuss fits in very nicely. Once the white metal parts are cleaned up, painted and detailed they make a nice alternative to the ones furnished in the kit. Lindy or Jim at Military Hobbies can supply you with the Aeroclub and CMR parts.

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One final cautionary note – 

the canopy is very thin and brittle. If you try to separate the windscreen and the canopy it will crack and break! So I would advise you to model it with the canopy closed.