Sword's 1/48 scale Night Fighter
Gloster Meteor NF.14

by Brett Green

Gloster Meteor NF.14 Night Fighter

Here is my Sword 1:48 scale Gloster Meteor NF.14, Kit No. SW 48011.

This is a limited run kit but the quality of the mouldings is very good, with crisp and consistent recessed surface textures and smooth plastic.

There is a little more cleaning up of the parts and there are fewer locating devices than you would expect from a mainstream model today, but if you take your time with preparation and test-fitting, you should find that everything fits together very well.

I only needed to do a little trimming off the upper wing halves at the wing root and the saddle mount for the one-piece engine intakes to improve the fit in those areas. Otherwise, only a few smears of putty were required to fill some minor gaps.

The cockpit looks basic on the sprues but I think it looks good once it is painted and weathered.

The kit does not supply harness straps or instrument dials so I added Eduard Item No. FE840 – Spitfire Mk.IX Seat Belts STEEL and Airscale Instrument Dial Decals – AS48 RAF WWII RAF; AS48 JET, Early Allied Jets.

The instrument dial decals were each topped off with a spot of Deluxe Materials’ Looks Like Glass acrylic gloss. This was also used as the gloss coat after painting.

Sword’s Meteor NF.14 will be a tail sitter without nose weight. To address this issue I used Deluxe Materials’ “Liquid Gravity” weighting system for the first time. This is essentially a bottle full of tiny lead pellets that will flow into and fill any space that requires weight. I carefully poured the weights into the nose halves, pausing about halfway through each side to fix the weights in place with Rocket Hot super glue. I was a little worried that the large amount of super glue may overheat while curing but all was well.

I finally settled on a marking scheme representing WS723/S of 153 Squadron RAF. To achieve this, I used the striking red and white fuselage flashes and the unit bat emblem from Alley Cat Decals Item No. ACD-48003 – Gloster Meteor NF.11/12. National markings, wing walkways and stencils were sourced from the excellent kit decals and the serials were a mish-mash of letters and numbers from both sheets.

In summary then, you’re never going to mistake this for a Tamiya building experience, but take your time with parts clean-up and alignment and you will have a satisfying and impressive result.

I am writing this one up in detail for Issue 197 of Model Airplane International magazine.

Thanks to Sword for the sample.

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2021 by Brett Green
Page Created 25 October, 2021
Last Updated 26 October, 2021

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