Cockpit detail as supplied in the kit is pretty much non-existent; a seat that looks like it came out of a miniature fast food restaurant, an attempt at the armour plate and a decidedly non-standard floor is all there is, therefore everything had to be made from scratch or whatever aftermarket parts I could get my hands on. Construction began by thinning down the cockpit sides as much as I dared using a grinding bit in my Dremel and finishing off with wet sanding. The cockpit door was cut out so it could be replaced later with a photo etched item.
With all the bits and pieces in place the cockpit was taking on a decidedly cluttered – not to mention fragile – appearance. When I felt I had crammed in as much detail as it was practical to do, the fuselage halves were finally put together. Some of the details such as the pipework coming from the landing gear / flap control unit and some wiring were routed through the cockpit frames, therefore these had to be carefully fitted in from the bottom after the fuselage halves were joined.
The Spitfire of course has no cockpit floor as such. A Mattel Vacformer was used to produce the fuselage bottom in .020” plasticard using a Hellcat drop tank half found in Ye Olde Spares Box as a mould. Both the cockpit bottom moulding and the inside of the bottom wing half had to be drastically thinned to get the wing to fit, in fact the wing is so thin that the white plastic of the cockpit bottom was clearly visible through it.
There are two gaping holes for wheel wells so these need to be boxed in and some detail added. Fortunately the Spitfire has very simple wheel wells so this was a refreshingly easy job using .020” sheet. The large sockets moulded to the upper wing halves to locate the gear legs were removed and smaller holes drilled into the top wing halves to accept brass rod glued into the top of the gear legs. The ribs in each well were added from strips cut from .005” sheet and then the wings were assembled and fitted to the fuselage.
Fit of the major components was quite good, though some gaps occurred around the wing roots and the wingtips on the bottom. These were filled with Milliput, other minor gaps taken care of with one or two heavy coats of Mr. Surfacer.
There are some inaccurate panel lines and inspection panels and some that are missing entirely which I dealt with at this stage. Scribing is my most despised operation in modelling therefore I kept this to a minimum. It doesn’t seem to matter how careful I am, how many light passes I make or what kind of scriber I use, at some point the darn thing will go skittering across the surface leaving a chaotic panel line where I had no intention of putting one. My efforts always seem to consist of one part scribing to ten parts filling, sanding and rescribing.
I also made up a template for the small panels over the flap linkages on the wings which pop up when the flaps are down, these too are absent from the mouldings. I chose not to drop the flaps as they were rarely, if ever, left down on parked Spitfires. Pilots could in fact be fined for leaving them down as they impeded the airflow through the radiators which compounded the Spitfire’s tendency to overheat during engine run up and taxying due to the radiators being outside the propwash.
The filler for the upper fuselage tank was also missing. Being placed right smack in the middle of a major seam, I decided not to attempt to scribe this in for fear of it all going horribly wrong. Instead I drilled a hole to accept a short length of plastic rod, this being a snug fit so it wouldn’t drop inside the fuselage (I forgot about this earlier - obviously I should have done it before fitting the wings!). The rod was pushed in until it was flush with the upper fuselage then glued with a touch of liquid poly.
Once the scribing was out of the way I tackled the control surfaces. As I mentioned previously, the positions for the rudder and ailerons had been thinned down in the fin and wings respectively to allow them to be inset properly. This was a bit more problematic with regards the elevators as the stabilisers were single piece mouldings. For these I used a fine round file to cut a groove in the rear of the stabilisers where the elevators would fit, followed by a small round Dremel cutting bit used manually as a scraper. Hinges were added from scraps of .010” sheet and sanded to shape once dry. Once I was happy with the stabilisers they were glued on and minor gaps filled with Mr. Surfacer, the elevators being added during final assembly.
Strips of .030” plastic were glued to the leading edges of the control surfaces which were shaped with files and sandpaper once dry and small slots were cut for the hinges. The fairly prominent fairing for the rudder trim tab actuator is missing, this was added from a bit of scrap stretched plastic tubing. As always, constant test fitting is required to ensure the control surfaces fit in the correct position without excessive gaps. In the end I somehow managed to get the ailerons to fit without glue, though of course they were permanently attached later. It’s very embarrasing having bits spontaneously dropping off at club meetings.
The radiator housings lacked detail and were incorrectly shaped. These were reworked and then cast in resin for use on future Spitfire projects. The radiator faces are also not deep enough, merely sitting on top of the wing surface instead of extending up inside the wing as they should, therefore I scraped and filed inlet and outlet ramps into the lower wing surfaces and extended the radiator and oil cooler faces to suit. A hole was drilled in the starboard radiator inlet ramp for the water spray tube which would be added from fine wire after the painting stage.
Navigation lights are represented by vague lumps on the wingtips so these were built up with a mix of super glue and talcum powder. Once set, they were sanded to shape and tiny quarter sections filed out with the edge of a cutting file. The lights themselves were one of the last things added at the final stages of the build, these being represented with tiny blobs of Testors Clear Parts Cement and painted Gunze Clear Red and Green. The clear teardrop shaped position light behind the cockpit was from a CMK set of resin lights.
The 20mm cannons are from the excellent range of turned brass guns from Polish firm Master. A simple and inexpensive addition which is a big improvement over those supplied in the kit.
The Pavla vac form canopy intended specifically for this kit fit quite well, though some of the frames I felt were a bit heavy. It was cut apart so that it could be displayed in the open position and each section dipped in Klear to give it that sparkling clarity a Spitfire deserves. Prior to adding the windscreen, a resin British reflector sight from Quickboost was glued to the top of the instrument panel. The windscreen and small rear section were then glued in with cyanoacrylate, the Klear having the added benefit of protecting the canopy parts from frosting due to cyano fumes. The canopy parts were masked with Bare Metal Foil prior to painting the airframe.
The cockpit door was made up from parts in the aforementioned photo etched set and consists of two very fragile frames which are laminated together and added to the back. All of these need carefully bending to match the shape of the fuselage. I rolled the handle of a hobby knife over them to gently bend them to the correct curve, annealing the parts beforehand was unnecessary and in fact the fragile frames would probably have disappeared in a puff of smoke had I attempted it. The door locking mechanism is also included in the photo etched set along with a spare, both of which I managed to lose amongst the many half completed projects and associated detritus littering my workbench. A replacement handle was therefore fashioned from flattened copper wire with the linkage and springs made from fine steel wire. The crowbar is from fuse wire with one end flattened under a knife blade. The cockpit door was temporarily installed in the closed position with dabs of Humbrol Maskol used to seal any minor gaps and prevent overspray entering the cockpit.
Masking of the cockpit opening was done with Tamiya tape. Any gaps were sealed with Humbrol Maskol.
The fuselage band and spinner are Model Master Sky Type S. Leading edge stripes were masked using thin strips of Tamiya tape and then sprayed with Model Master Insignia Yellow. Once all painting and touch ups were complete a couple of coats of Gunze clear gloss were applied in preparation for the decals.
The decals themselves are nicely printed with good colour density but were fairly resistant to decal setting solutions and loathe to settle down into the panel lines. I sliced each decal along the panel lines, doused them with Daco’s strong decal setting solution and pressed them down with a soft cloth to get them to conform. A couple of repetitions of this process eventually bedded the decals down nicely.
The kill markings were on a small ALPS printed addendum sheet to replace those on the main sheet which were incorrectly printed in 1/48th scale. They should be applied at a slight angle to the centre line, roughly parallel to the upper wing surface rather than the top of the cowling as the instructions show them. The code letters were replaced with some from an Arrow Graphics sheet which looked better and were also a closer match to the Model Master Sky paint. Stencils also came from an Arrow Graphics “Spitfire Scribbles” sheet. After the decals had dried overnight I gave the model a quick wash to remove any excess adhesive and solvents. Final finish was Gunze Clear Flat after most of the weathering had been applied.
To me, panel lines should be a subtle accent to a model, not the first thing you see from 10 feet away. While it is true that dirt and oil will collect in panel lines and make them appear darker, in propeller driven aircraft at least, this is usually more prominent around engine cowlings and the underside of the aircraft and is carried back by the effects of the slipstream. It would not therefore be appropriate to have the same intensity of panel lines towards the wingtips and tailplane as it would on the engine cowlings and forward fuselage, and even at that the effect is not overtly evident from any great distance, unless the aircraft is very heavily weathered. Aircraft just do not consistently weather from wingtip to wingtip and nose to tail, nor do metal panels conveniently fade from the inside to the outer edges! While I admit the effect is quite dramatic, it's not very realistic and I find restrained weathering far more effective than a heavy handed approach.
It is for these reasons I don't use any pre-shading techniques, preferring only to accentuate the panel lines with a medium-dark grey wash with chalk pastels used for general dirt and grime. I decided to give Humbrol’s recent line of washes a go, Blue/Grey in this case, and was very pleased with the results. I found it still required some thinning with mineral spirits to wash out the colour a bit and make it run along the panel lines more easily but it worked very well and I will definitely use it again for this purpose.
For the exhaust stains, I airbrushed on a few drops of a pale grimy grey colour mixed with clear flat which allows the stain to be built up slowly and gives it a nice translucent finish. On top of this I used pastels in brown and dark grey, ensuring that the stains curve downward as they tend to do on the real aircraft. Quickboost exhausts were used, these were finished in Testors Metalizer Burnt Metal and dry brushed with rust, brown and black. A thin wash of semi-gloss black with a touch of brown in it was brushed on for the characteristic oil stains on the underside. Paint chips were done with Testors Metalizer Aluminum applied with a 00000 brush.
Resin prop blades and spinner from Quickboost were on hand but when I came to use them I thought the exaggerated groove in the spinner spoiled the otherwise fine casting and the prop blades were warped and lacked an airfoil shape. Both of these went back in the packet after I had another look at the kit items and decided they weren’t too bad after all, though I did use the very handy Quickboost jig with a bit of modification to suit the Airfix prop. The kit prop blades were excessively rounded on both sides and the tips were a bit too pointy. The blades were cut from the rudimentary hub and then reshaped by scraping with a hobby knife, finishing off with fine sandpaper until the backs were more or less flat and the fronts were an airfoil shape as they should be. The tips were reshaped then painted Insignia Yellow with the blades in semi-gloss black. The brass leading edge strips were carefully hand painted with Gunze Mr. Metal Colour Brass and stencils from Airfix’s Mk. 22 Spitfire kit were applied to the spinner. The prop was then attached with super glue.
The sliding canopy was glued on after adding the handle and miniscule etched latching mechanism from the Fotocut set. The final additions were the pitot tube, rear view mirror and the landing gear indicators that protrude through the upper wing when the gear is down, these are from fine wire painted red.
I’ve never had much interest in counting the hours or number of parts invested in a project, suffice to say there are a lot of both in this! Despite all the work I stand by my initial opinion of Airfix’s Mk. IX as the best mainstream kit of this subject in 1/72 scale and I’m sure it would look every bit a late Merlin powered Spitfire even if built straight out of the box. The time and effort I spent on this is far in excess of what I had originally intended and it may be a long time before I again go to such lengths on a model, but in the end I’m pleased with the outcome. More importantly, I think I’ve discovered a cure, or at least a control for AMS – let it have its way now and then!
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