Kotare 1/32 Spitfire Va as flown by Douglas Bader

[Edbert]

These were taken with one side panel at a time, during the test-fit period. It is TIGHT, all the parts must align perfectly or there will be gaps.

First two are with the starboard fuselage half in place, bottom three with the port half.

 

[BarleyBop]

about to all be invisible

Thanks for the peek!
Great work on that interior.
I'm frankly surprised at the number of gauges, dials and controls for that era.
In stressful situations such as takeoff, landing and dogfights, a modern eye tracking study would certainly be interesting to see which and how often the 'user' interacted with them. (I guess once a UI interaction designer, always a GUI guy!)

 

[kevin]

Well done.....
I was the same way when I did my two tanks with full interiors. Even though probably 75% will never be seen, I painted and weathered everything as they were built.

 

[Littlemarten]

Well done.....
I was the same way when I did my two tanks with full interiors. Even though probably 75% will never be seen, I painted and weathering everything as they were built.

Why are some of us like this? (We probably don't want to know the reason.)

 

[Littlemarten]

These were taken with one side panel at a time, during the test-fit period. It is TIGHT, all the parts must align perfectly or there will be gaps.

First two are with the starboard fuselage half in place, bottom three with the port half.

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I'm getting jealous …

I wonder if there is a way to make the fuselage open to see the wonderful detail.

 

[Edbert]

The fuselage halves went together great, but I did not take any pictures. I spent 2 days (technically, but probably 30-40 minutes actual "work"), did the back half and had so many clamps on it that I just let it lie overnight. Ditto on the front half, you can see the captured shaft where there would be an engine on many kits. The shaft obviously spins freely but to to the anchors/bearings in the front and rear it is very sturdy and straight.



Those three parts and the door is all I'll need to finish the fuselage assembly. There's a bit to do yet on the wings but I can see primer coming up soon. One thing caused me to have to stop. Have you ever seen (or noticed) "station keeping lamp windows" on a Spit cowling before? They are not shown in the portrait I posted on page 1. They show up in the Kotare paintings, but the instructions are very clear.



It can be found in many photographs, most of them are vintage and quite hard to see in detail due age of the photo, usually just a dark blob like this.



But I'd say an equal number of pictures are clear there is/was not one there. Some of the photos in Kotare's instructions do not have them. But this one with Douglass in it, there it is.



Many of these photos where it is absent are later Marks, even the Vb, but restored versions of the early ones do not typically have them. This one is an exception.

 

[Edbert]

Step 1 = drill 2 holes.



Here's one of the little buggers I have to install.



And pull out the medieval tools.

 

[Edbert]

I ground away a large amount of plastic from the inside, the sheet metal of the cowl would be about 200x too thick for scale, nothing like a little clear window to show that. Each of the clear bits is a square with full shoulder, but 1/4 of that shoulder would interfere with part of the cowl used to locate it correctly.



You can see I am trying to avoid that pin with the tools. I thought I'd just cut it off since locating this part should be easy, but I decided to leave it and cut off a shoulder of the clear bit for clearance.



The hole was easily squared up from the ouotside, and the window fit pretty well too. Gluing it was not easy, I wanted to use super-thin but could not guarantee missing the pane, so I tried the old Testors clear stuff. You know, the thin but milky looking stuff with the long tube?



It looked kind of like this from the inside Not quite true, but while struggling to get it perfect it occurred to me (shutup, I know I am slow) that this glue is often used to make windows. So the pic above is just a blob of the Testors clear cement.



After drying the effect is good, no worse than I was getting with the 2mm clear plastic.

 

[Littlemarten]

After drying the effect is good, no worse than I was getting with the 2mm clear plastic.

How are you going to mask that when painting? Or are you just going to replace it after painting?

 

[Edbert]

How are you going to mask that when painting? Or are you just going to replace it after painting?

I considered trying to wipe the paint off with a detail brush and alcohol. That will only work if I do it before clear coating, and it runs a big risk of hitting the paint I want to keep, and it is in a VERY visible area.

I think instead I'll put a drop of liquid mask on it, and push the blob into the corners.

When finished, it should be barely visible, it will be dark inside. Since these are marker lights, I thought one would be red and the other green, but in all the pictures I can find they are just dark spots, or in some cases (modern color photographs) they appear as paint.





In the end, I think I'll just have a dark, slightly recessed, shiny square.

 

[BarleyBop]

marker lights

Some interesting info from these guys:

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234940983-mk1-spitfire-light-colours/

In typical forum fashion, you have to read through a ways for a better understanding.

 

[Rimmer]

A superb looking build thus far!

 

[Edbert]

There's a relatively new casting technology called side-loading or slide-loading (I think, too lazy to research) that enables engineers to cast parts that would be impossible through traditional methods. Kotare is using this technique on at least part of their parts.

It does have a drawback, what appears to be seams show up in places were not used to. Maybe they are not seams per se, but the lines/ridges that come out visible on parts, like landing gear struts.

In this case I found some on the engine cowl and even the propeller blades. They are small and hard to photograph with a phone, but I think you can see them in these two images. We're all used to looking for them in the traditional places, like the landing gear. But with this new thing you have to look everywhere.




The way I understand it is; that cowling is made in two parts for just about all Spitfire kits since the real-life seam is near the exhaust, so there's a pronounced curve. This is one reason that many folks use resin aftermarket parts for this. I have never seen a seam like that on a prop blade before. The new technology prevents me from having a large seam to hide, I just needed to knock these thin lines down a bit.

I used Scotchbrite pads in order to be gentle and not mar the surface.

 

[Edbert]

I attached the pilot-door and one-piece canopy using white glue. Both will be discarded after painting in favor of the open-door and open-canopy look when finished.




Not shown, I also put some of that liquid mask on the large marker light behind the antenna and the tiny side marker lights my previous posts were about.

 

[Edbert]

Also decided I will not do Douglas Bader's airplane, instead I'll build one of those famous A-wing night fighters.







Totally kidding of course, that is just a layer of 1500-surfacer.

The surface detail on this kit is SUPER thin, I'm worried about filling it in.

 

[Edbert]

I think my biggest problem with modeling is laziness. I enjoy the work, but want to finish too much, and that causes me to skip details or not pay enough attention sometimes. I think the most evident case of this is my inattentiveness to seams, but I also skip some things in the instructions if I feel they are too esoteric or that the effort is not worth the result.

One case is this part of the instructions...



The portion circled in green there, it asks that I shave off the detail for 3/4ths of the trapdoor. I figured, why bother, nobody will know or care. That reminds me of the active discussion in another thread about accuracy and who will notice. Anyway, I skipped that part completely. Only to find out why I was supposed to remove that.

The Spit Va is a bit of an odd-duck, they only used them for a short period of time before the B-wings came out. So for Kotare I have a fuselage of the "5" but the wing of their earlier kit the "1". If I were building the Mk.I that door is in the right part of the underside, but for the Mk.V they moved it further back which Kotare has molded onto the fuselage (not shown in the diagram), which results in my model having two of the trap doors, grrr.



This shows what I mean. While some might not notice that, it is the kind of thing that really sticks out for others. So it had to be addresses. Also in that icture above, it the only seam that I feel needs to be addressed. There were others I looked hard at, around the cowling mainly, but I think Mr. Surfacer rescued me on those.



This is the 2nd worst seam I could find, the one right in front of the canopy, was much tighter on the other side.

 

[BarleyBop]

skip some things in the instructions

Know what you mean... I've been burned a few times as well... now, when I feel the urge to skip, that's a good indication that I haven't familiarized myself enough with the instructions and should look ahead. Often there's no issue, but when there is, it can be a doozy!
A variant of the old "measure twice, cut once" dictum.

 

[Littlemarten]

Is every part of a Spitfire Va included in the kit? No. Are you building it for a contest, or for a museum display? Or are you building for the pleasure of it? While I'm all in favor of patience (have to be, at the glacial rate that I build) sweating all the details is for people who do contests. I don't. I also don't always follow the instructions, but I always study then carefully before I start—mostly to find the places where I think they could be better, or a different sequence. Build first for yourself.

 

[docsudy]

These were taken with one side panel at a time, during the test-fit period. It is TIGHT, all the parts must align perfectly or there will be gaps.

First two are with the starboard fuselage half in place, bottom three with the port half.

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I really love your build. The interior cockpit and GTL came out splendidly. You should be proud of this work. By the way, that vice type appliance that you have holding the fuselage. Where did you get it. It's an awesome little tool. Could you share where you got it and what it might cost and how to get one. All the best. Keep going!!!
Docsudy

 

[Edbert]

Is every part of a Spitfire Va included in the kit? No.

Technically yes, but in the case of the door used for flares I got both the Mk.1 and the Mk.5 versions. Guess I could have shaved off either one and been fine. I am generally on the "it doesn't matter" side of the maximum accuracy debate, but seeing the two doors side by side triggered me into fixing what I had decided to ignore.