The Official 1942 70th Anniversary Group Build

Nice pair of Spits! I was wondering about the early war scheme in 1942, but it appears that that particular Spit soldiered on in its original colors. Nice.

Nice brace of Spitfires Chris. I enjoyed the tail of NK-K in particular. I was one who built the 1/72 Revell kit as a kid, having been given it by my father one Christmas. It might have been about 1977 I'm guessing.

Cheers

Tony

And well done in your spit Mike.

Looks great!

gunner_chris and corvettemike - Great Spitfires! 

Thanks for the history behind your builds - it brings so much to the experience.  I especially like a good story to go with a scale model.  Salute!

I love Spitfires.  Both of you have done an outstanding job with yours.  

Really nice to see.

I think half of the enjoyment came from the research.

Really gave the build some meaning.

You can never have too many Spitfires in the stash.  Good work guys, and I too enjoyed reading the history behind the builds, (as well as Old Ordie and his excellant Dauntless build).  I noticed one of the aircraft, DB-X didn't have the canopy frame painted - not sure if an oversight or ... ?

I think I will be adding to the Spit pool with a Sword kit in 1/72 scale, a tropicalized Vc.

regards,

Jack

Ummmmm yea that's just a slight oversight......

Nice Spits Mike & Chris  !!

Will read the histories tomorrow 

Jack i'm really curious about a short-run Spit

Excellent work, Chris and Mike! Great to see the histories behind both aircraft. I always like to get a book about the particular plane I am building, not neccesarily to make the build more accurate (though sometimes it happens) as much as just to read up about it and get inspired. And Chris, it's also great to see a personnal story behind a model too. Every model should have two stories, the historic one, and the personal one.

Geratic, updated your build. It's only natural to have you add a Spit for us, and that's a neat looking one! Is that Greek markings on it?

Our little group sort of turned into a Spitfre GB, huh? :)

BTW, where did our two tank builders run off too? Our group is very aircraft heavy!

Thanks, Budd

sub - there are 4 decal options in the kit, the box art illustrates a RAF Spitfire in the Pacific, hence the deletion of the red center in the roundel.  

Being a Canadian, I'll be cobbling together markings for one of Beurling's mounts which he flew during the siege of Malta.  It will be one of the more skeptical schemes:  tropical colours but with the stone section oversprayed with EDSG.  Something like this:

regards,

Jack

Cool! It's different, and I like it!

And thanks for the info about the roundels in the Pacific, I never knew that!

Thanks, Budd

sub revolution

BTW, where did our two tank builders run off too? Our group is very aircraft heavy!

I can always toss in my DML El Alemein Sherman Mk. III as a late 2nd build. We'll see I'm on hiatus until the end of the month and it depends if I find a decent Tiger at Modelfest in which case I'm jumping in to tigerman's steel cats GB.

I could do an easy (Tamiya) tank kit, if my hands were not so full already.

sub, One of your two tank builders is still here!  I'm painting the Sherman.  Well, cursing and painting the Sherman to be exact. I had trouble masking my camouflage, twice!  I hope to have an update by the end of the weekend with pictures.

 Sorry sub, I am still here but I have been having camera and CPU problems, my cpu got a virus and needed to be fixed.

Good to see you guys are still around! I understand life happens. I have certainly disapeared off the radar a few times...

Well last week on my days off I was laid low by some illness, and in the mornings here before work afterwards were not conducive to modeling due to 1) having to work late most every nite this past work week, and 2) it was too damn hot in my work area with this heat we have been having this past week which cooled off a bit on Sunday.... But, this did lead to a strong desire to get some model building done on my days off this week for me. So I was able to get some work done on my TBD today. First up I airbrushed on a primer coat of Tamiya Surface Primer thinned with generic lacquer thinner on all areas that will be interior green. And the Instrument Panel for good measure...

And I airbrushed on a coat of MM Acrylic Steel on the engine.

Tomorrow I plan on getting the interior green and other colors airbrushed on.

Good to still have you with us Stik! I'm having issues with work right now too, so I totally get it.

I am just starting to get my steam building here... too much family stuff getting in the way of bench time on my days off. As far as work, its just the time of year and the schedule... it will quite down soon for me a bit when the weather cools off.

Today's progress on my TBD was just getting Interior Green airbrushed on... all over...

Next week on my days off I will get the detail painting done along with some washes and drybrushing...

As I said last week, my goal for this week was detail painting and washes. Along with some dry brushing.

Engine with the basic colors, and then washed

fuselage sidewalls

nose area

front cockpit

rear cockpit

close up of the gunner's floor area

gunner's "turret"

and the last odds & ends green parts for the cockpit & nose

Looking good! Very nice detail work, and I especially like the floor! Looks great!

Thank you Sub. I am already getting ideas to dress up the cockpit for the other TBD that I have in my stash.

stik - Nice examples of how a wash makes the details pop (especially that engine).

Thank you sir. I am so wanting to do this TBD right.

Lots of progress on my TBD today. Based off of some photo interpreting that I have done, it appears that some TBDs had the rear cockpit decking painted in Blue Gray, so I did that with mine today.

and since it would be easier to paint certain areas of the fuselage in the same color at this time prior to installing some windows rather than masking off the windows after installation and painting the surrounding areas later, I did that. I mixed up more paint than needed for what I intended, so I painted both fuselage sides. I had also tacked the access panels in place to mask off the green areas there.

Then it was time to glue the engine into the cowling

Glue the side windows into the forward fuselage

then seam clean up on the outer wing panels with a needle file... talk about a challenge...

And finally I used ProModeler USN instrument decals on the front and rear IPs using some good reference photos I had to get the look right.

Nice progress, Stik.  It's looking  really good.

Thank you sir. I am having fun and getting quite a few flashbacks building this old beauty.

During the weekend I glued the fuselage halves together and installed the rear cockpit decking and gunner's turret

Then it was time for seam clean up today. Since the real TBD had overlapping skin panels and this kit has raised panel line details, I decided to try a new technique here. First I used a needle file along the trailing edge of each cross fuselage panel lines to create an overlapping effect. Then I used my sanding sticks to smooth out the seams on each panel.

since there were none of those panel lines on the forward fuselage, all I had to do was scribe in a filler cap that would be lost, and then sand the gluing seam smooth.

and then clean up the vertical stabilizer and rudder seam in the usual way. How it looks overall now...

Inventive technique to take care of the panels.  Very creative.  It's all coming together nicely.