Matt

From a size perspective, I think you've got it pretty much where it needs to be. The padding looks fine. The only comment would be that it seems awfully red. That may just be the way the pictures came out, but the colour probably should be more a reddish brown. Closer to the colour you painted the spade grip. Other than that its looking good and coming together. The gap on the chin is common with the ICM Spitfires. Cheers, Matt

A small update. I'm still fiddling around some minutia before I can finish of the cockpit and close up. Because of all the detail, I don't think I'll be able to slide the IP/rudder/seat assembly in afterwards like you usually can on these Tamiya Spits, so I have to get everything done ahead of time. The only thing worthy of a picture was a quick attempt at a Sutton Harness. Tamiya tape and speaker wire. Cheers, Matt

Because of the discolouration, I had no choice but to remove the decals and apply fresh ones. Unfortunately, whilst 90% came right off with a bit of tape, the patches that had discoloured wouldn't budge. They appeared to have welded right through the decal, the Future and the paint, and bonded right to the plastic. Nasty stuff that Solvaset. My guess is that it might have puddled slightly and that gave it more time to softens and eat all the way through. Anyway. Those parts had to be sanded back, and with a pretty aggressive grade at that. That meant I had to re do the paintwork around those

There are others that almost certainly know more than I, so I'll throw in my 2c but defer to anyone with more detailed knowledge. My understanding is that there were problems with the DH prop early on with the MkV, freezing at higher altitudes. The Rotol prop with Jablo blades was not affected and gave a performance improvement at altitude. However the supply of Rotol props were initially at least in short supply, being mostly needed for the Hurricane and high altitude Mks of Spitfire. Also, the Air Ministry were concerned over industries abilities to supply the metal Jablo blade in sufficien

I haven't used the full set, but I have used just the cockpit set in an ICM MkIX. It had very good detail. The set is engineered for the Hase kit, and as such, its has some length problems in the ICM fuse. I haven't tried it in a Hase fuse, so I can't say how well it fits there. If you do end up going with a fuselage correction on the Hase set, then expect a lot more effort to get a fot for this set. Aires stuff is somewhat hit or miss, some sets fit really well, others need quite a bit of work done to both the kit and the detail set. Also, in recent years, I've had problems with the way Ai

I see what you mean by obsessed :) Attaching PE to a canopy, now that's a place I fear to tread. FYI, the little hooks on the underside are to hook the back end of the drop tank to. If the pilot has to release it in flight, it will pivot back and away on those. Coming along very nice indeed. Cheers, Matt

Then you are a better modeller than I !! Moving right along, the cockpit is almost done. I still need to make some mounts for the seat , make some seatbelts and start on the rudder pedals and control column. Oh, and a radiator flap control. Here are all the bits, all together. I think the Waldron stuff is slightly overscale, making it hard to cram it all in. Seat bits. Door Instrument Panel Left Side Right Side The emergency blowdown bottle is scratch built. I found it in a box of spares from another project. Its also slightly overscale, but it does the job. Cheers, Matt

Thanks for the suggestions. I did hit them with Solvaset last night. It helped a little, but then one of them got discoloured (its got a kind of crazy/cracked light blue finish on parts of it) almost as if the Solvaset removed some of the ink. I think time has come to pull them off and hit the spares bin for some replacements. Cheers, Matt

Time for decals. Decals for me are the best of times and the worst of times. I love the way it brings the subject to life, but for some reason, there's always something that doesn't go quite right. This build would continue that streak. Both sets of markings are from an Iliad Designs sheet for 'Silver Spitfires'. The decals are a little on the thick side, as they are printed over white. This makes them very opaque and gives good colour. They settle down nicely. My set was very very slightly out of register between the white and the rest of the print run. As a result some markings had a ver

As my other entries are slowly moving through the decaling process (stupid wrinkles) I had more time to move a little further forward with this one. At the moment I'm just noodling with the various bits, figuring out how far to go with it and what parts to use, and what to leave stock. Seat Frame, Seat, and seat parts. The PE is all from Part, a mixture of their MkI and MkV sets. There are 11 pieces to the seat. Sidewall. There is still a lot more to do here. Cockpit Access door. This one nearly drove me mad, there's 12 pieces to this little beast. Throttle quadrant. This is from

Don't know for certain. According to the notes that accompany the markings for this aircraft on the Victory Productions sheet, it was an early MkIXc with the early short carb and early (MkV) elevators, so that would suggest the early 'c' style, rather than any later style, but thats just conjecture from a decal sheet source so take it for what its worth. Hopefully someone will know more. Cheers, Matt

The bottle is always yellow. From what I recall it works great with thin light coats, and so far nothing on my shelves that I used it on have yellowed (in 10+ years). Cheers, Matt

I originally had plans for 6 or 7 Spits for this build. That was before SWMBO decreed a spending freeze in the new year. So, I'm forced to dig through the stash and look for unfinished relics to be dusted off and brought to life. As result, I found this MkI. Obviously at some point I was going to go mad with the detailing, hence the stripped out interior. In the box I found a couple of frets of Part PE for Mk I and V (but no instructions), a set of Waldron placards (nice) and some Ultracast exhausts. (I also found a set of Vc cannon, covered wheels and a De Havilland 3 blade prop and spinn

Another really quick update. Whilst I was waiting for paint to dry I gave the wheels, exhausts and undercarriage legs a quick wash and drybrush. I've run into some odd issues recently with acrylic washes over Future. They bead up and won't settle properly. So, as this was Citadel on Citadel, and I must have washed 100's of figures before I'de even heard of Future, I figured I'de get this step out of way before the Future coat. Cheers, Matt

I've seen this before on an airbrush with a similar design. The trigger plunger goes down through a rubber o-ring seal. If that o-ring expands, then it can overly grip the plunger and overcome the force of the return spring. Possible causes are deformation due to age, over tightening of the vale assembly, deformation due to chemical attacks from hash cleaning chemicals. It might be as simple as checking and replacing that part. Cheers, Matt

Yeah, the only problem with online is you can't pop the shrink to see if whats in the box actually matches whats on the outside. Which is why I'm building a low-back XVIe for this GB Cheers, Matt

Thanks Ralph. Citadels are acrylics. Come from Games Workshop. They are designed for the fantasy figure painting markets, so they brush well, but they also airbrush pretty good. They don't match specifically to any given FS number, but they have a good range of metallics. The finish isn't as good as some of the lacquer based paints, but better than Tamiya. I'm not sure what the availability of ICM Spitfires is these days. My LHS no longer has them in stock. The last few I ordered online were odd balls. The box art would show a high back/ small rudder version, but in one box I had a high bac

A very quick update. All major construction is done and the first pass through the paint booth. MJ250. As she is meant to be a stripped war weary bird, I did base of Citadel Mithral Silver then noodled on some Citadel Chainmail to breakup the monotone of the silver. At the moment she's still drying. Tomorrow I'll have to decide if she needs more or not. TE395 As she's meant to be a post war example, I'm going to keep her much cleaner, so she got just an overall coat of Citdel Mithral Silver. Thanks for looking. Both are 1/48th scale. Cheers, Matt

At the front of the airbrush there are 2 parts, the cap and then the 'nozzle cover', the bit with the hole in it for the nozzle to stick through. Take this nozzle cover off and clean that hole very very carefully. That is your air path. The air has to move from the body, flowing across the outside of the nozzle, through this hole (around the nozzle) and thus drawing paint from the nozzle and onto the work. Any interference here, like dried paint, can effect the airflow across the nozzle and thus cause inconsistent paint flow. If there's a partial blockage here, then this can cause a pressure

The early proposals for the Rolls-Royce PV12 (which later became the Merlin) was also an inverted design, so clearly it was an idea that engine designers were playing with at that time (early 30's). Supposedly one of the reasons was improved visibility, but there was opposition from the airframe manufacturers, and that layout was apparently dropped. We often forget how designers of that period were still dealing with fairly basic issues of aviation engine design. Things that we take for granted now (such as efficient liquid cooling and low drag radiator duct design) were clearly very much of

Thanks Mat, just what I was looking for. Much appreciated. Cheers, Matt

If, by postshading, you mean the addition of slightly lighter and darker shades of the primary colour to breakup the monotone of the original paint, and possibly to replicate weather and fading, then for a complex masked scheme its probably best done with the masks in place. I usually lay down the 'main' colour first, then do my post shading to that. Then I'll mask and spray the second colour and postshade that, and so on until all the colours are done. I've seen some folks apply the post shading freehand after the fact, but I'de be very hesitant with such a complex scheme unless I'de had a

Thanks Edgar, I thought you might have more details. Do you know what the differences were between the Sutton K and the later QK ? Anything obvious or just minor improvements ? From this, its fair to say that the Quick Release style of harness is for post war Spitfires only ? Any thoughts as to whether they would be for post war production or would have been retrofitted to existing aircraft that survived into the postwar ? Cheers, Matt

I spray 99.9% acrylics (Tamiya / PollyScale /Xtracrylics). Here's my regimen for what its worth with an Iwata HP-C Between colours. Add half a cup of Windex, swirl around with a big old paintbrush, and dump it out. Another half cup of Windex, a final brushing of the colour cup, then shoot the lot out at higher pressure into a wad of rag/papertowels. Draw the needle all the way back and swab the nozzle/cap with a windex loaded Q-tip. If the colour change is 'risky' (ie, white after red) then I give the colour cup another going over and shoot clean Windex through again. If its just a differe

Putting aside the question of how the Sutton Harness should route, Ultracast have 5 seats. 48198 and 48199 are 'early' metal seats without and with a moulded in harness. Good for early '40 and before. 48149 is the 'late' seat (often referred to as the bakelite seat) without harnesses. 48020 is the 'late' seat with Sutton Harness 48068 is the 'late' seat with the late/postwar Q harness. I'm not 100% on when that came into common service, but almost certainly not for a Vb So, for a Vb ,either 48020 or 48149 depending on whether you want harnesses moulded in or not. My personal take is that