Well, here's some pictures of my K5054 project. I've got the basic cockpit stuff done, but still have some wiring and plumbing to add, and a few more levers. The relief on the instrument panel made it fairly easy to get a nice look. I started with flat black on the panel and also preshaded in places on the sidewalls with flat black. Next on the panel I drybrushed aluminum metalizer, then a drybrushing of flat black. Next I picked out the details with flat white, and after going around with a little more flat black to subdue the white a little, I placed Future on all of the instrument faces. You'll notice there is no control column, I messed up the paint on it and stripped it all off to start over. The compass is moved to the left, and a porthole window from a Hobbycraft 1/72 C-45 was put on the top. On the right sidewall, I moved the gear selector handle to the top forward position which was gear down on K5054 and some of the first Spitfires, and put a handle made from .030 brass rod with a superglue knob on the end, for the hydraulic pump attached under the gear selector housing. The gear selector housing was reshaped some, it's close but not quite what it should be. All of the lightening holes in the cockpit formers and seat brackets have been drilled out, and I preshaded with flat black inside all of them before putting on a minimum coat of the interior green. The photos I have look to me like the seat in K5054 was aluminum, so I painted it interior green. I have some Eduard prepainted PE seat belts to go on later. The lower seat armor was not installed. I probably should have removed the armor on the headrest, but I thought I might cause myself a lot of grief so I left it as it is fairly small.
I removed a lot of the locating lugs in the cockpit area, many were in very visible areas and lined things up and glued the bulkheads to the floor while they were all temporarily on the left sidewall. The floorboard was modifioed by increasing the size of the open areas above the rudder linkage and the center front was removed completely just ahead of the pivot point for the rudder bellcrank. A rudder bellcrank was made for the rudder pedal mechanism and the linkage was relocated to put the rudder pedals a bit closer to the seat, and the rudder pedals were changed to eliminate the upper foot rest. The tops were cut off and thin plasticard was attached to simulate the foot straps. The bellcrank was painted silver, and after an interior green coat the linkage and pedals were drybrushed with metalizer aluminum.
I've filled all the panel lines on the wings that I think would not be visible with the Rolls Royce paint scheme, but in the photos I've taken you can't really see what's filled and what isn't so I saved pictures of the wings for later. The coolant radiator areas have been modified, as well as the oil cooler. I may be wrong, but I don't think K5054 had quite the same shape on the front end of the oil cooler as the production airplanes. Milliput was formed in on the inside of the upper cowling and the nose contours were rounded off so it looks like the photos and to fit the resin spinner.
