Leon suggested that I write a series of features on my various WhatIf models, with photos and the theoretical backstory where applicable, and after checking that it wasn't April 1^st I agreed, and this is the first one.

Firstly I thought I'd better explain my overall philosophy in building these 'off the wall' models as many modellers just can't get their head round the reasoning behind them, which I can fully understand, and we members of the WhatIf SIG spend a lot of time explaining our reasoning at various shows around the country, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but that's life.

In my case I've always had a fascination with the actual development process itself, how an aircraft (or car or ship or railway locomotive....) is developed from a basic prototype to a much more advanced and capable version. The classic example of this process is the Spitfire of course, and the original prototype, K5054, hadn't a single part that was the same as any on the very last Seafang 31, VG481, some 13 years later. Another is the Harrier, stretching from the P.1127 right up to the Harrier T12 trainer, and every mark shows a change from one version to the next, and hopefully a better performance in one or more aspects. Oddly Hawker didn't follow this process with their WWII series fighters, instead choosing to redesign each upgrade as a different aircraft. The steps between the Hurricane, Tornado, Typhoon, Tempest and Fury are much more marked than those of the corresponding Spitfire variant.

My interest in this process probably comes from my own involvement in the field as I was an apprentice in the Research & Development Department at Pressed Steel Fisher in the 1960s and spent many hours working on many variants of cars built for many car and van manufacturers. In 1969 I left PSF and moved to British Rail, also in the R&D field and found myself being an actual development engineer, but this time on a very advanced train. Sadly I never worked directly in the aviation industry itself, but for the last 30 yrs. of my working life I spent a lot of time installing, maintaining and upgrading various structural testing rigs for most of the aviation companies in the UK, and some in Europe as well.

Going on to modelling, I'd built a number of models that showed the development process, and knowing my interest in airliners it won't surprise you to know that one of those was the Douglas DC9, an aircraft which I've always liked and have been lucky enough to fly in various versions of it. I've modelled the prototype, the DC9-15, the DC9-20, the DC9-30, the DC9-51, the MD80 (a stretched DC9-51) the MD82 plus a few versions of it that I invented myself, and this is where the WhatIf modelling comes in, hereafter called 'Whiffing'.

An almost logical extension of building a series of models of aircraft showing their development seemed to be building the versions that the manufacturers didn't actually get round to building themselves, some that were actually designed but never built, or ones that were never really thought of in the real world, but could have been. One that will be mentioned quite often in these articles is my Meteor PR19.

Meteor PR19

The Meteor PR19, the model's Mark No. came about because neither Gloster nor Armstrong Whitworth ever used the '19' number, so I pinched it. Some of my ideas came to me in a flash, the PR19 being one of them, as I was building a U-2, a Phantom RF-4C and a Meteor NF14 at the time (I usually have 3-4 projects on the go at once...) and my son-in-law found some underscale engines for a Canberra RB-57F knocking about and asked me what I was going to use them for. In an instant the thought of a photo-recce NF14 with the U-2's wings and the big turbo-fan engines came to mind and some weeks later appeared in plastic.

The overall back story of the PR19 goes on for some while, and is probably too long for this initial article, but it resulted in me becoming somewhat infamous in the modelling world, and even resulted in a phone call from the CIA at Langley enquiring about further details of '…the RAF's secret PR platform, the Meteor PR19.....' Yes, they really did phone me!

Without further ado, here's the infamous PR19 itself, a Matchbox Meteor NF14, fitted with Airfix U-2 wings outboard of the engines, and the U-2 nose, installed upside down with the RF-4C camera bay grafted on underneath, and with a U-2 tailplane. The big engines are 1/82 scale resin TF-33s, moulded in the wrong scale by accident by Dave Buttress for an RB-57Fconversion. The recce pod underneath is half the EMI pod that comes with the Matchbox Phantom kit.

At Telford that year I entered the PR19 in the Mushroom Monthly Trophy, the class for WhatIf models, later to become Class 33 or 34 depending on the Competition Manager, and to my amazement I won! Roger Walsgrove, who edits the Mushroom Monthly magazine asked me to write a back story for his April issue, and asked for the plans as well! Of course there weren't any plans then, but I drew some up using the model itself as a basis, and wrote a fanciful history of the aeroplane.

I did go a bit OTT with the back story I must admit, as I spent some time 'inserting' the PR19 into real world situations of the 1960s and 70s, and in the process invented both an earlier version, the original PR19, which made my build the PR19a of course, and a later version, the PR19b. In my story I had the latter aircraft sitting in the Cosford Museum, and as a result the staff there DETEST me and all my works. When the story was published, some people just didn't bother to read the bit about it being a model and went to Cosford hoping to see the real thing!

Here are the three versions together, the earlier PR19 with J-57 engines and an all black finish, the PR19a as described above, and the huge PR19b, which has TR-1 wings, tail and nose in place of the U-2 parts in the earlier versions, and full size TF-33 engines, producing a VERY large aeroplane....

Just a couple of years ago the WhatIf SIG Forum held a Group Build entitled 'Prototypes' and in a fit of madness I built a FOURTH PR19! This one depicted what would now be called a 'proof of concept' aircraft, and consisted of a Meteor NF14 kit, with U-2 flying surfaces, the wings and tail remaining in natural metal, as if they'd come straight from Lockheed, and the fuselage in Armstrong Whitworth house colours, complete with a Class B registration as would befit such a trials platform.

That will give you some idea of how my mind works building these flights of fancy, and in the coming months I hope Leon will let me do some more, and there's LOTS of them! 

If any of you are interested enough in this madness to want to read the PR19 backstory I'd be happy to email you copy, so please contact me and I'll send it out for you. I warn you, it does go on a bit and it reads as if Bill Gunston wrote it, but as he was a hero of mine that's not surprising.