Schaf
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 2, 2010
- Messages
- 51
This is the recentely released Airfix Spitfire Tr.IX
The kit is well detailed and not surprisingly a lot of the parts go into the cockpits which are quite well detailed. The only addition I made was a pair of Quinta Studios seat belts. The kit instrument panes were cut up and applied individually to the kit panels, then a drop of UV resin was used to simulate the glass lens.
The instructions called for the seats to be painted in the interior grey / green color instead of the brown plastic resin color typically seen. Not 100% sure this is correct, so compromised by adding chipped areas with a reddish brown color to represent the underlaying material under the paint. Also added some wires to the back of the rear instrument panel as photos of the actual aircrafts showed that they were visible through the small spine window behind the forward canopy.
Once the cockpit is finished, the rest of the assembly went pretty quick. The only modification here was to replace the kit exhaust was to replace the exhaust stubs with ones from Eduard which are hollowed out. Even though these are made for Eduard kits, they are a drop in fit to the Airfix fuselage. Cut off the Airfix mounting guides, sand the inside of the fuselage smooth and the Eduard mounting plates drop right in!
Modified fuselage on the left, stock Airfix fuselage on the right.
After that everything else went together really quick and very little remedial work with putty was required.
The model was wiped down with a lint free wipe and ISO alcohol and masked up for paint.
Mr. Surfacer white was used as the primer and then a splatter template was used with Tamiya X-19 grey to add some "texture" to the surface. Since I was just essentially experimenting with this technique I got caught up in the process and didn't take a picture.
MRP British Aircraft Grey/Green was used as the overall color and this was applied in light coats until I got the coverage that gave an overall solid coverage but still allowed the underlaying tonal shifts of the white and grey to still be faintly visible.
The kit decal sheet includes wing walk areas for the wing roots, but looking at photos shows that these areas varied greatly between aircraft and time periods in the life of the aircraft. So I masked and sprayed these areas. I had also picked another aircraft to model, so these markings are not totally incorrect for #158, however they are more suited to aircraft #163
Tamiya Rubber Black and NATO Black were applied in a blotchy random manner for the wing walk colors and then the masking removed.
Now, I had always intended to do an Irish Air Corps aircraft in the grey/green color scheme, and the kit decals supplies this as one of the options, however I also wanted this to be a bit different and so chose to replicate the aircraft with the later "Celtic Boss" tricolor roundels, so I had to substitute Xtradecals for the markings. Unfortunately Xtradecals supply "handed" roundels for the fuselage side, I did not realize until I went to apply them that they were incorrect, so I had to order another sheet of decals from Hannants for just one extra roundel to finish the markings which put a halt to things for about three weeks. but it is what it is.
And so that pretty much catches things up. Weathering has started and I will add photos of that as it progresses.
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