Well, this is THE
classic aircraft as far as I’m concerned. Mustangs and things are all very
well, but the Spit is the one we’d all like to fly. I fancied doing a Spitfire
in the earlier green/dark earth/sky colour scheme a la Battle of Britain, and
after my encouraging experiences with the 1/32 Tiger Moth I did for a previous
model, I thought 1/32 was the way to go. I scoured Ebay and bought myself a nice
cheap Revell Spitfire I/II in 1/32 scale, and had a play with the Eduard
photoetch cockpit set, although I know that’s really for the Mark V. When you
look in a cockpit though, you see the busyness of it all, rather than start
wondering why the chassis lever is different on this one than it should be, so I
decided not to bother too much about pure accuracy - even the squadron codes
depict an aircraft from 1942 – but does it look good?
That’s the main question.
I tried a few
new techniques on the cockpit, namely mixing my own cockpit green, coating
the assembled and painted parts with Johnson’s, shading the raised
details with very thin Tamiya Smoke, then flat coating the results.
Although it seemed like a lot of stages to go through for something
that’s pretty much hidden, I think the results were reasonably good. One
thing I left out was the PE instrument panel – the one from Revell
responded well to drybrushing and the drops of Johnson’s in the
instrument faces.
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The seat was the PE
one, (which looks a bit big to me) sprayed with Tamiya Red Brown, and then
oversprayed with a thin coat of Tamiya Clear Red, to get that deep Bakelite
colour of the real seat. PE harnesses were given an anchor cable to further back
in the fuselage, as per my references, and I tried the trick of coiling fine
wire around another wire to make the pilot’s oxygen hose. One of my references
showed a bundle of wiring coming out of a former under the instrument panel and
disappearing under the floor, so I bundled up some wire and shoved that in too.
All that effort, and still hardly any of it is visible in the final article!
The wings on the kit were new
mouldings, and the fuselage was old with raised panel lines, which necessitated
rescribing the whole fuselage. Still a new skill to me, that, and some of the
panel lines weren’t quite as uniform in depth as they should be, a fact which
came to light when I used the water/pastel/soap mixture to accent them. Still,
better luck next time.
I also tried masking
the camouflage colours with the trick of rolls of Blu-Tak to give the feathered
edge. Had to re-do that a few times, as it’s obviously a knack one needs to
develop. Once all the camouflage was applied, it was on with the Johnson’s
ready for decals. This is where I found out that the Revell decal guide is pure
fiction. My normal technique is to place the fuselage roundels first to give a
reference for others such as the code letters. Do the codes looks squashed up to
you? That’s because the decal guide tells you to place the roundels too far
forward, if you follow the panel lines. The underwing roundels were the wrong
size completely, but in the absence of any spares I had to live with the
undersized ones. (Anyway, in the early war years all sorts of colour schemes and
roundel placements were tried to prevent “friendly fire” incidents, so
it’s possible that there was a Spit with this arrangement.) One amusing
misprint was in the decal for the side hatch. Instead of reading “make sure
door is locked before flight” it actually read “NAKED sure door is
locked…” Frostbite, anyone?
Once everything
was sealed in, it was time for weathering. Panel lines were accented with the
aforementioned water/pastel/soap mixture, and then fasteners and edges of panels
around the gun bays and cowling were chipped with Tamiya flat aluminium. I
didn’t want to go overboard with the weathering on this Spit, as BofB planes
didn’t tend to last that long, and anyway, I wanted a plane that was in the
early stages of the battle. Then I held my breath, loaded the airbrush up with
matt black, and sprayed on the exhaust and the gunsmoke stains. I’ve always
shied away from doing this in the past, as after all the effort that goes into
getting a decent paint job it seems a pity to disfigure it, and if you get it
wrong, it’s pretty much irreversible. Still, it all seemed to go OK, if a bit
heavy on the gunsmoke streaks. I’ll be more careful next time.
The
undercarriage was strengthened with steel wire into drilled holes, various
lights were painted, the elevators were separated and dropped slightly, antennae
and pitots were attached, and the prop was fitted. That was about it, really.
Some people will always complain about accuracy of the Revell kit, but to my
mind it looks pretty good, especially in its early colours. I’ve got a Bf 109E
in 1/32 scale in the stash somewhere…maybe I’ll do that soon to complement
the Spit.
This one is for
the pilots on both sides during the summer of 1940.
Dean
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