Nord Griffon II

by Mick Evans

images by Brett Green

Fonderie Miniature's 1/48 Nord Griffon II is available online from Squadron.com

Fonderie Miniature’s 1/48 scale kit of the Griffon II is quite a nice follow on from their release in 1/72 scale over 12 months ago. The kit contains 19 injection moulded plastic parts, 9 resin parts, 18 white metal parts, 2 vacuum formed clear parts, and 24 etched metal parts.   The etched metal fret has been enlarged from the 1/72 scale kit and therefore about 50% of the parts are redundant as the seat and undercarriage legs are moulded in white metal and have all the etched details moulded on. The plastic parts are the usual soft grey plastic with lots of moulding flash. On the positive side, the parts are easily cleaned up and fit together very well.

The resin parts are crisply moulded in a very hard chalky resin.  The 1/48 scale kit has resin moulded wheel wells with some very nice detail a huge improvement on the 1/72 scale kit.  There is also more detail in the cockpit, separate speed brakes, and nice resin wheels that were not present in the 1/72 scale kit.  The metal legs have far more detail as well and look the part compared to the photos at the French Aeronautical Museum.  A big plus is the addition of a separate resin nose, this was integrally moulded in plastic on the 1/72 scale kit and would have been hard to replicate in 1/48.  It also prevents the kit being a tail sitter, although I did add some extra weight.

My main criticisms are of the clear canopy and ejection seat. I feel that the ejection seat would have bean easier to cast in resin than white metal and seems a bit under-scale with questionable detail, while the canopy is not very clear and has no mould lines or even a template for the windscreen framing and the small windows on the canopy.  This may have something to do with fact that the later test flights had a clear canopy and not a solid canopy with small view windows, but nothing is mentioned on the instruction sheets. A quick dip in Future brought some clarity to the canopy, but it took me many hours to get the masking close, having to try to scale the masks up from the simplistic line drawings.

Another down side was the 1/72 scale kit had a good representation of the axial flow jet engine exterior that formed the core of the ramjet engine, the 1/48 kit just has a front and rear bulkhead with the compressor and jet pipe represented on each respectively.

If you wish to model the speed brakes closed it would be best to remove the bays from the fuselage and make the speed brakes from plastic card to match the cut outs.  The bays are simply not deep enough and the doors are not the same shape. 

The only build difficulty was with the engine bulkheads and canopy, but once these were ironed out the kit went together very well.   Time must be spent in thinning down the fuselage in areas where components like the cockpit, wheel wells, and bulkheads fit

Fonderie Miniature could go a long way with some improvement to the instructions. These have always been bereft of detail and leave a lot of interpretation to the modeller. I managed to get some good reference from various web sites to fill in some detail on the aircraft.   I can not comment on the accuracy of panel details as there were no accurate line drawings available, but the panel lines do look a bit overdone.

The model was finished in Alclad Polished Aluminium over Alclad grey primer.

Fonderie Miniature is to be congratulated on covering a rare aircraft that was the foundation for the French experiment into engines and supersonic flight.  

Thanks to Squadron.com for the review sample.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model and Text Copyright © 2004 by Mick Evans 
Images Copyright © 2004 by Brett Green
Page Created 29 January, 2004
Last Updated 17 March, 2004

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