1/72 Revell Spitfire MkVb Trop

by Vidal Antonio de Azevedo Costa

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This is one of those models that I struggled with to the very end.  It is actually a kind of a kitbash... originally I started with the Revell kit, but eventually I changed my mind regarding the version I would make and ended up using parts of the Italeri kit to build a Trop version.  Why didn't I use the Italeri kit instead?  Well... the Revell kit has much better surface details, so I decided to mix them both in order to get the version I wanted.

But strange things kept happening all along... from perfectly good decals dissolving as if they were ancient to a fateful crash right in the end... this last bit made me christen this baby "Espatifire" - from the Portuguese verb espatifar, which means "to smash" or "to be break into pieces".

I hope you forgive my play upon words, but I had to laugh at the whole thing to avoid giving up... which I was about to do when a friend of mine helped me to reconsider.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

I finish the model the night before our local IPMS contest and it received a gold medal... a happy end, isn't it?

Vidal 

Photos and text © by Vidal Antonio de Azevedo Costa