SPITFIRE GROUP BUILD 2007-2008

TANGO 1 wrote:

Frank- glad to see your Mk.46 finished at last! What can I say? She's a real beauty! Certainly worthy of the hallowed three thumbs award! You have worked hard and produced a real winner-well done!

Woohoo!  I have finally earned the coveted O.T.T.!!!  Thank you, THANK YOU!!!

-Frank O.T.T.

John, Greg- Thanks for the kind words!

Greg- I remember reading the same thing about the door bars!  If I recall, they were left in natural metal but you are correct that modern restored aircraft have it painted red.  I thought about it, and decided that I liked the flash of color whether correct or not and painted it as such.

Or, maybe the pilot's favorite color was red so he had his, ah, door bar painted so to reflect the fact!

Frank-

glad to see your Mk.46 finished at last! What can I say? She's a real beauty! Certainly worthy of the hallowed three thumbs award!

You have worked hard and produced a real winner-well done!

Frank: It is a very nice build.

One question: recently someone pointed to me that a door bar not supposed to be painted red. When I checked my resources - I realized that at least 50% were painted with some kind of natural color - not really sticking out from the interior green the rest of a pit is painted and some did not have it at all.

The currently restored and flown machines have this bar painted red.

What is the story on your s ?? Do you know if it was in fact red ??

I am just curious what to do with mine Vb (still waiting to de-decal and re-decal a Donald Duck [:0]

I managed to get a lot of work done on my Mk.46  In fact, I finished it!  Here she is, hope you enjoy!

I want to send out a special "thank you" to Darren (Tango1) and Jon (jwb) for all of their help on this one.  With out you guys, this plane would be sitting in the bottom of my spares box as we speak!  Thanks again guys!

A little technical stuff now.  Paints were Gunze acrylics, Pollyscale clears used to seal and protect.  Cockpit is mostly OOB, with homemade seatbelts.  Whip aerial from 2lb fishing line.  The clear parts were a nightmare on this kit!  The wingtip nav lights encompass the lens AND the immediate housing and are thicker than the wing.  I superglued them on, then sanded them fluch with the wing.  Some of the rivet detail on the housings were lost, but I'm OK with that.  The front canopy had a molding flaw right down the center, Tango1 to the rescue!  Darren graciously sent me a replacement that had even been Futured for me!  The rear canopy suffered from an incomplete form and was also too narrow to sit down onto the rear of the fuse.  I used a Squadron vacuum form part for this.  A little tricky to work with for a newbie, but all in all I like it and will use them again in the future.  The kit decals were horribly printed, with the yellow so bad that the printing was completely off of the carrier film by almost 1mm!  Not sure what to do at this point, I pleaded for help on the forums and jwb to the rescue!  I could not even a mention of Mk.46 decals, let alone locate any.  Jon had a set of Aeromasters I could have, and he graciously sent them to me!  Thanks again Jon. 

Frank, thanks mate I'll have to check some of that out.

Cheers

Darren,

Thanks!  The parafilm is only slightly tacky, but seems to hold on quite well from static cling.  I left mine on for almost a month and a half, and read in a couple of places to NEVER leave it on for over two weeks.  Needless to say, I was a little worried about I would find when I removed it!  But, no fear- it came off quite easily and without ANY residue!  I have to say, I really like it...

Here's a link to a tutorial about it:

Parafilm

Frank the spit looks fantastic and the canopy worked out a treat.  I've never tried Parafilm myself but I've heard some swear by it.  Just exactly how tacky is it and does it leave any residue?

Mark great looking progress on the Mk.VIII.  It's always hard to tell from photos but I can't really see anything that looks wrong with the rear of the lower wing it looks just fine to me.  I agree that the engine is a bit of a pain with the ICM Spits, in the two that I have built I have left the engine out of both.

Cheers

Nice work Mark, I'm interested to see how this ICM kit goes together.

Frank, for some reason I am not able to see any of the pics that you have posted in the last day or two.  Did you start doing something different with your files? 

Frank & Mark, looking great so far guys

Roy

I'll tell you what....this kit is really trying my patience!

I got the fuse halves and the lower wing in place this past week. the fuse fit was pretty good with minimal sanding and filling.(thank you tenax!) The rear of the lower wing has a terrible fit.....lotsa flash and thick on bits and thin on others. I've dry fitted the upper wings, and I think I'll get those on before I try to straighten out the rear of the lower wing.

I know, I know, you're saying "where's the engine? how's it gonna fly?" but I left out the engine and firewall because of major space and/or fit problems that I just didn't want to tackle at this time.......mabye my next spit.

thanks for looking! And as always......all comments and critisims welcome.

I added a few more decals to LA546, some stencils and the wing walkways.  The black stencils in the kit were mostly usable, but the red and yellow were WAY too out of register to use.  I also pulled the masking from the canopy.  This was my first attempt at using Parafilm, and I must say I really like it!  Definately gonna use it again.

Thanks Greg.....I would have never known that. I'm sure I'll have other accuracy problems, but It's nice to be able to fix em while its still easy.

I guess I gotta quit trusting instructions! hehe

darson wrote:

Looks great from where I'm sitting Frank.

We must be sitting in the same place cuz it looks good from here too. 

Nice job !

The door bar should be a natural color (metal) but not red. Someone pointed this to me once and I checked my references: no red bars. The red once are a result of modern painting of still flying Spits 

I got most of the PE cockpit parts done. Its my first time working with PE. In some ways its easier than I thought, and some ways its alot harder! I think the effort is worth it though.

Thanks for looking!

Mark

Darren,

I didn't like the decals because they are extremely glossy and thick.  They really don't want to pull down into panel lines like say, superscale decals do.  This is the third set (if you count my test pieces) that I have had this problem with.  Both the Aeromasters and the Eagle Strikes are difficult to work with, IMHO.

Looks great from where I'm sitting Frank.  I'm curious, exactly what didn't you like about the decals?

After a day of decaling, I can say that I successfully applied the Aeromaster decals to the '46.  They aren't quite as nice as I would like, but I think they look OK.  Especially when I consider that I had no back-up plan!  The major markings and squadron markings are on, but I have to wait for my stencil decals to arrive from Squadron.  So far so good!  Here's a couple of shots with the markings on:

I cannot believe it, I had to go all the way to page 2 to find this post!

Change of plans! Instead of doing a Mk.VII I will be doing a Mk.VIII. Finding the decals I wanted for a MkVII proved to be fruitless.(most all I could even find were OOP) After a little research, I found out that the ICM kit I have has all the parts to make a Mk.VII, VIII, or IX! Problem solved!

I ordered a set of decals I liked(Aeromaster Aussie Spitfires pt.III)(gotta love the sharks teeth Harvs!), an Eduard PE cockpit set, and a set of True Detials wheels. While I'm waiting for those to be delivered, I started some interior painting and engine work. Nothing much yet, but its a start.

For the Mk VII you could always do a RAAF aircraft. Here's a review of the decals as well as my two attempts at it using the ICM kit:

http://www.aussiemodeller.com/pages/Reviews/Decals/RRD4840%20Spit%20Mk7.htm

http://www.aussiemodeller.com/pages/Gallery/Harvey_SpitMk7-1.html

http://www.aussiemodeller.com/pages/Gallery/Harvey_SpitMk7-2.html

The decals in the kits are definately not worth using. I attempted to use some of the stencilling markings but they either wouldn't stick, shatter, wouldn't settle down (and silvered of course) or just way too thick.

Darson, I don't think the store owner realized that the box contained 4 kits. It was sitting right next to an ICM Yak kit that was priced around $18-20 if I remember correctly. I had passed over it myself a few times without noticing what it was. The box is only slightly larger than the single kit box.

Thanks for the tip on where to look for decals. I knew about Greatmodels and Squadron, but I hadn't heard of Meteor Productions.

Max that's an absolutely fantastic find, especially the Spit and the P-51 and if my maths is correct it works out to under $7 a kit .

The biggest problem that early ICM spitfire kits had was the poor quality control at the factory.  A lot of the kits that came out were "short shot" and these ended up in consumers and reviewers hands and a bad reputation was born.  The truth is that since those early problems were fixed ICM kits are of a very good quality if perhaps a little over engineered.

The only issue which continues to plague them is the quality of their decals which IMHO are crap.  All I can suggest on that front is have a hunt around Greatmodels, Squadron or Meteor Productions and see if you can find something that catches your eye.

Cheers

ruddratt wrote:

Nice work on both, Dave! Well, this thread has taught me one thing already, and that is how popular the Spit is as a modeling subject. So I pose a question....what do those who have embraced this aircraft as a favorite find so appealing about it? I've often wondered why modelers gravitate towards particular subjects, and the Spit seems to have quite a following.

Spitfire: the wing tips and the non bubble canopy, and the paint styles

P-40: { before the N, when it still had the oblong rear windows}, and the funky 1 wheel at a time retract Plus the Flying Tigers....

Corsair: the cockpit shape {not birdcage} and the wing

Mosquito: like a Spitfire on steroids