Meteor F.8 Details

by Brett Green

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The RAF Museum at Hendon has a fantastic range of military aircraft from before the First World War to the present day.

I visited Hendon yesterday, parking my rental car at Luton and catching the train and bus to the RAF Museum's facilities on the outskirts of London.

The displays are thoughtfully organised, with excellent access for photography from most angles. All the aircraft are positioned on white-painted floorspace. This is also helpful for photography as light reflects from the white paint onto the lower surfaces of the aircraft.

One of the many displays in the main hall is an immaculate Meteor Mk.8. This is an interesting aircraft that features the small (early style) intakes and the all-clear (late style) canopy. It was not unusual to see examples of this "mix and match" approach on Meteors.

The glossy "High Speed Silver" finish is quite clear in these photos. This is an overall aluminium coloured paint, not natural metal. Also of note is the Accumulator Trolley attached to the airframe. This combination suggests some interesting diorama potential!

I took a number of photos of areas that might be of interest to modellers including the nose wheel, interior of the dropped landing flaps, the aerial arrangement on the upper wings, the cannon ports on the forward fuselage and underneath  the wings and tail planes.

Photography conditions were not ideal as the level of light was very low. I did not bring a tripod, so I took the photographs using shutter priority Programme mode, resulting in shutter speeds of between 1/8 and 1 second, and fill-in flash. A very steady hand is required to avoid blurry results - next time I will bring a tripod!

The pictures were taken with my Nikon Coolpix 5400 digital camera.

Click the thumbnails below to view the images full-sized.
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Text & Images Copyright © 2003 by Brett Green
Page Created 21 November, 2002
Last Updated 19 April, 2004

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