Been a while since I posted anything here and I appear to have been somewhat remiss in documenting my latest project, which is a follow up - or rather a prequel to my recent Hurricane IIc project.

In October 1942, my Dad was posted to 81 Squadron which at that time was in Gibraltar, awaiting the launch of Operation Torch to invade North West Africa. At this time 81 Squadron were flying Spitfire Vc which were adapted to the Tropical configuration by adding a Volkes filter at some point.

So my source kit is the HobbyBoss Spitfire Vb Trop and to convert to the Vc I'm using the resin C wing conversion from Grey Matter Figures.



Obligatory sprue shot




Some of the aftermarket - the wings and some other bits turned up later


The most glaring problem with the kit is the tailplanes which are metal on one side and fabric covered on the other! This is easily fixed by the QuckBoost update. I've also sourced fabric seat belts from HGW and metal cannon barrels from Masterworks, plus some Eduard PE for the exterior.

Now comes the major admission - I appear to have all the photos taken int he early part of the project. I'd been keeping a photo record of the cockpit progress, but all the pics seem to have vanished, so all I have left are those I've taken very recently which you will see is some distance into the build!!!

For this build I am going to do another diorama with my father in like I did with the Hurricane, but this time it will be set in Algeria in winter 1942, so no shorts and bush hats! The first thing I need to decide is what will my father be doing? For the Hurricane it was easy - open up the sides and have him fiddling around with the main junction box behind the cockpit. The HobbyBoss kit comes with an openable radio hatch and a crude representation of the radio set, however my dad wasn't a radio tech but an electrician.

While building the cockpit I realised that the 3 lights that are on the port sidewall are only represented by small blobs in this kit... bingo, Dad is obviously replacing these lamps!! That means he'll be standing on the port wing leaning over the side if the cockpit.

Although this kit comes with an engine and removable cowelings, the engine isn't a very good representation of a Merlin 45, so I'm going to leave it closed.

The main work is going to be replacing the kit wings with the resin wings.

So to begin - a lot of work was put into the cockpit, the Baraccuda resin set is very nice and although intended for a Mk IX, it'll pass for a Vc. I also used an Eduard Zoom set for the instrument panel. So here are some photos taken this evening to show the cockpit. There is a bit of dust from sanding the wing joints which I'll need to flush out with some air and the control stick is missing as it fell out during assembly so I left it out for now!

The cloth seatbelts were superb and took staining very well and I would recommend them to anyone who has the patience to assemble them properly!!









and here is the radio hatch - I did superdetail the radio but you can't see it in the small opening. I did add some placards from the airscale set to try to make it a bit more interesting and there will be a PE door from the Eduard set to fit later.



So what of the wings? Well let me tell you they are beautifully cast but a total bugger to fit! For a start they come with the tips missing so you can add your own LF, high altitude or normal ones. Problem here is that the HobbyBoss kit, unlike the Tamiya kits come with the wing tips moulded on! So you need to cut the wing tips off. Then you find that the wing chord and width of the resin wings are just a little bit smaller than the wings that come in the kit!

Fortunately, I have a Tamiya Spitfire VIII in the stash, bought when I thought my dad was with 81 Sqn in Burma. I'm still planning on building an 81 Sqn Burma Spitfire VIII but will build that with the high latitude wings as they first used when being posted there in late 43 early 44. So I can use the normal wing tips from the VIII to match up with the resin wings as their chord is slightly thinner. However they are still about 4 mm too wide when joining up. I solved this with some careful trimming and sanding as you can see above.

Now when it came to attaching them to the fuselage, you need to cut up the kit lower wing section to provide the under-fuselage joint. I managed to mess this up a bit and had to insert extra triangles where I'd been too eager to cut and got the shape wrong. The upper surface fit is quite good but again the resin wing is about 6 mm narrower than the original kit part. The wing thickness is also thinner but this isn't so prominent.

Here are the wings fitted and the cannon bulges added (these come as separate blisters that need gluing to the right places. Notice also the pencil marks to show where the cannons and machine gun ports need to go on the leading edge)



Here is the underside where you can see the triangular in-fills I had to add where I'd made mistakes



The trickiest part here was getting the dihedral right and I think I might have overdone this just a little - judge for yourselves here:


So thats the progress so far. Its been about a month and a bit elapsed time but I haven't been rushing...

Oh I almost forgot, I'm also building another of the iconair accumulator trolley kits to go with the diorama, but this time I'm doing it in RAF blue (ish) and adding a small motor on top as was seen on many airfields like here:


(Copyright IWM Archive, used here for reference only)

and here it is so far


I used a piece from the Tamiya 1:35 US Maintenance kit which has a compressor with a small engine on top. I cut of f the engine and stuck it on top of the accumulator trolley. I doubt if it is 100% accurate but its a decent representation of the sort of thing they would have had.

Oh and there will NOT be another PE toolbox in this diorama - I had enough with the one in the Hurricane dio :)

Has anyone succeeded in doing this with acrylic paint? All I get is a drop or two after spraying gloss varnish for some time into a bottle.

Made a quick start on this one as im building the Shelby along side it.

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Enjoy.

John

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Bit of a change from my normal stuff.


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Till next time

John

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I really messed up the paint job on this , I tried something new and it didn't work but by then it was too late

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I had problems with this build from the begging , even though all the parts are clean an straight they don't fit properly , I had to fill up to 2mm gaps in the body, my advice to anyone looking at purchasing this kit or have it in their stash is to file down the deck plate and the role bar of the cockpit so the body fits properly.

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Just thought I would add these to this section as a possible reference point for the Roils Royce Griffon engine. This one was strapped to a test bed and fired up at a recent 1940's weekend at Howarth.

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Steve

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Hi Guys
Well Ive spent a lot of time on my local railway lately, the Keighley Worth Valley Railway, which has ignited an interest in steam locos. So for a change from model aircraft I thought I would have a bash at building some. For the kits I have used the Dappol 00/HO models which I believe are the old Airfix moulds. I have to say that the detail is pretty impressive. There has been a lot of cleaning up to do during construction but on the whole they go together very well and reasonably quickly. To save on paint time I decided to build two at the same time and both will be finished in British Rail green (of which I have learned there are multiple choices). The models are of a Battle of Britain Squadron class and a Standard 4 Mogul. I hope to be painting them over the next few days.

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These are my first efforts at building locos and its been difficult deciding on which parts to fit and which to leave off prior to painting. I should know shortly if i made the right choices.

Steve.

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This is a new ship for this year revell's rms oylmpic i have just got going on it i have painted the main hull colors and painted the forward well deck the hull is alot better than revells titanic of witch i will get soon but here are the pics
cheers peter

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hi all,can anyone give me a little help I am building a yamaha R1 and cant get a good black gloss on the exhaust (3 layers and a strip off then 1 more try) and still not happy,any tricks you wise old men know (only 56 myself).
many thx.
jeff.

Hi guys I am new to this model forum. I wonder has anybody attempted scratch building model cars in 1/24 scale at all? I have seen paper model cars done on various web sites and wonder if they could be used as a template at all?

Check this out.

SPITFIRE 944 - YouTube

Steve

I thought I would put this up as a thread mainly to spur me on to get on with it. I am using it as an attempt to improve it and try new techniques. I bought it in a sale very cheaply so no problem if I muck it up. It has been quite enjoyable so far trying to work out how to do things. The fit of most of the parts is not too bad however the cowl seems to be very wide at the sides as when you look at photo's of the real thing the cowl fits fairly flush to the fuselage sides. So, some photos of the cockpit, and I've managed to open up some of the major slots etc and tart up the wheel wells so far.

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Has anyone got one kicking around, please? I wish more model companies would include them.

Thanks

Finished this baby...

Hope you like it


















Cheers
Roman

Just to post that I'm not dead or gone AWOL.....me and the bride returned last night from a three week tour of the Normandy landing beaches and sites further inland....I was as excited as a Jap in a camera shop, climbing over and in bunkers with a torch, visiting museums and cemetries. On our last day in France we found some huge casemates/bunkers hidden in some woods nr. Cap Griz Nez (West of Calais) well over grown and off the 'tourist' tracks....All good stuff and an emotional roller coaster too!

On the way back to Calais, we did a slight detour and went through WW1 territory to try and find my great uncle's grave near Arras.....He was K.I.A. a few weeks before the end of WW1.....We managed to locate his grave stone and layed a single rose and a small wooden cross with a poppy attached at the base....All very moving, with cemeteries all over this small area of the Somme.

I'll post a few of the 600 or so snaps I took when I've looked at them myself!lol

Anyway, it's good to be back with my mates on here and now I'm going to get me some pleasure time catching up with all the new stuff on S.M. and seeing if we have any new members joining this merry throng!!!

Cheers all,
Ron