Pro Resin 1/72 Folland Gnat F.1 / FR. 1 By Bill Powers

Introduction

The Gnat was designed as a lightweight fighter and with a wingspan of 22 feet and length of 26; it is precisely that! The British used this little plane plus it was exported. Finland and Yugoslavia planes are depicted in this kit. The two Gnats sold to Yugoslavia were both photo recon, the kit shows it as the fighter (according to my source). So use only the photo recon nose on the Yugo planes. The plane was also licensed to India but those markings are in a different kit.

The Kit

Again this is a beautiful kit, even better molding than the XF-92A. You can tell when the mold makers like the plane and they love this one! There are fifty parts in the box plus two beautifully vacuum formed canopies! The panel lines and surface detail is exquisite. I didn’t find any air bubbles in the resin. All the pieces are attached to their mold trees so cutting will be required.

The fuselage goes together easily. I taped it together for picture taking and it fit perfectly. The wing/fuselage joint will require some strengthening with brass rod, also the horizontal flying tail. All the pitot tubes and other pointy things are provided and none broke during shipment. But to be safe, I’d replace them with tapered brass rod. The kit provides two noses, photo recon and fighter. The recon nose just begs to be drilled out and a camera inserted!

The cockpit parts include the floor, seat, dash and beautiful sidewall detail. The kit has the canopy closed, but all will be seen under the very clear canopy! There are no instrument decals but the plans show what should be where, so dig some out of the spares box, punch out the instruments and fill up the holes! They will be seen!

The landing gear wells are separate pieces to be glued inside the fuselage. LOTs of landing gear pieces! A nice touch is a detail on the plans showing the proper angle to the ground for the main gear strut.

The air intakes are separate pieces and again seem to fit perfectly. The detail on these is really beautiful!

The two large (relative to the plane’s size) drop tanks are provided, again very nice detail. The little plane had only 500 mile combat radius with external fuel!

There are beautiful decals of the two planes with stencils. Stencils add a finishing touch to a model, so having nice ones on the decal sheet are a real plus. I had planned to build the Finnish one but those Yugo decals are colorful!

Conclusion

As I said before, my other ProRESIN kit built into a beautiful model and this kit is even better!

Thanks to Mat Bittner for the two kits and to Pro Resin for very nice work on these kits. Keep it up!