|
I know you’re probably saying to yourself, d---! Not another Spitfire!
There are only 35+ articles about them!
Well, sorry about that, but I figured one more wouldn’t hurt, since
everyone has stopped counting by now! Besides, this one is a little different
from the rest.
I have just recently started building aircraft, coming from the world of
automobiles, so bear with my crude techniques; hopefully I can learn more from
all of you. I like my cars big
(1/24 primarily), so I was attracted to Hasegawa’s 1/32nd scale Mk
Vb “I R Greed”, for that reason
and a couple of more: the price was great (car kits are a lot more expensive!),
and the fit from Hasegawa is among the best, in my humble opinion.
In addition to the basic kit, I added Eduard’s interior and exterior
photo-etch conversion kits, which I think really adds to the appearance of the
finished product. The first photo shows the cockpit and seat proportions which
are far better than the kit offerings. I didn’t
do much other than basic painting, but I like how it turned out.
It’s hard for a car guy to build and then paint, since with most car
kits it’s the other way around, especially when ‘weathering’. I want my
cars to be perfect and clean, while with aircraft it’s ok to have some
flaws… I think that’s part of my reasoning for the switch to aircraft!
The biggest change that I decided to make (and that was well into the
build), was to add the Tropical filter bulge to the nose. I started with the
larger air opening but soon found in my research that most Vb’s had the really
small filter opening under the nose??!! Mr Len Thompson, help!! Anyway, one of
my photos showed a clipped wing tropical filter Vb in flight, and ‘lo and
behold, it also was carrying a 250 lb. Bomb!!
A Spit with bombs!? Now,
how cool is that. Eduard’s
exterior kit conveniently provided the
bomb carriage mechanism, (photo 3), all I needed was the bomb.
I used the kit’s decals (sorry for the inaccuracy, artistic license,
you know) and painted the “bomber” with Polly scale and Tamiya acrylics.
The exterior is Dark Earth and Middlestone on the upper surfaces, and
Azure underneath. The kit instructions called for Light Mediterranean Blue, but
I was not able to find that color. Another source I checked into said that
aircraft in the Mediterranean theater of operations were primarily painted
Azure, so that is what I went with. Any help regarding accuracy here would be
appreciated.
|
The Eduard exterior kit included some really neat photo-etched
flaps that I represented in the down position. I realize that while on
the ground, that is not correct, (at least in all the pics I saw showed
them up), but it was hard not to show the detail, especially after all that
work gluing the ribs on.
Most
of my reference photos show the horizontal stabilizers drooping, so I cut
and lowered them.
|
|
The
bomb presented the only big problem in that I was unable to find a 250 lb’er
in this scale. Lots in 1/48th
scale, but at least I could not find one, so I left it off.
So, clipped wings, tropical filter, and bomb carriage all made this a fun
and different build.
Thanks,
Wade
|
|
