BradG

I've had this model kicking around the stash for many years and thought while I'm a bit crook with some head cold and currently high on cough medicine, it might be time to start a WW1 aircraft. I don't usually build WW1 so fitting the struts was interesting, I think I managed to get them mostly lined up. I also in my haze, decided rigging would be a good idea. I drilled small holes and threaded some stretchy line through them. It took me a day but it does look nice. A simple little base was made from a wooden thing i found at a good will shop, grout, some spares box stuff, CMK resin pilot and Mini Natur grass tufts. I left the aircraft pretty clean and glossy, I've read that WW1 paints were high gloss and then faded off, but as this aircraft was not in use long I figured a dead flat finish wouldn't be realistic.
 
The aircraft is apparently one flown by Olivier Freiherr von Beaulieu-Marconnay in probably Jagdstaffel 18, some time in late 1917 or early 1918. He would score 25 victories flying mostly the Fokker DVII between March and October 1918. On October 18th he was hit in the leg, probably by friendly fire. He managed to get back to base but was not expected to survive his wounds. His recommendation for the Blue Max was rushed through, but he would not live to know he'd become the youngest recipient of the award at just 20, dying in hospital 10 days later, only a few hours before confirmation of the award arrived.
 

 

 

 

 
 

You'll have to bring it to Northerns comp in September.
 

Alex is next over the line with his RCAF spit in desert colours. Nice job indeed.
 
Link to build thread;
 

Some really nice work by Javlin1 here on his George. Great work mate.
 
Link to build thread;
 
 

I've always liked the Skyraider and Alex has done a smashing job on this South Vietnamese marked machine.
 
Link to build thread;
 
 

artoor_k show us just what can be done with some slightly older Hasegawa LSPs. Great work on this mate.
 
Link to build thread;
https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/101875-132-hasegawa-a6m5cmaster-finished/#comment-1492416
 

Very nice indeed I will add to the gallery.

Alex is next over the line with his RCAF spit in desert colours. Nice job indeed.
 
Link to build thread;
 

"Nurse, pass me the scalpel"
 
Surgery has commenced tonight!
 
 
The conversion set comes with a tail including the retractable tail wheel that the PR XI had and the IX didn't, so the saw had to come out.
 
Also, a lot more detailing and cockpit internal work adapting and modifying the kit parts to reflect the PR version.
 
 
Where did that three hours go?!
 

Next set of fuselage mods are for the vertical camera fit. Here I marked their location using a template from an Alleycat PR XI conversion I have. 
 

 
I drilled the starter holes. 
 
 

 
Then using a reamer, I enlarged the holes until I had the correct diameter. 
 

 
The forward most hole has a double thickness again because of the kit design. 
 

 

 
This was cut away to leave just a single layer of plastic. 
 

 
Last mod was engraving the second fuselage hatch on the starboard side. Again I used a template from the Alleycat conversion set. 
 

Back to the fuselage, for the oblique camera fitting I had to modify part of the fuselage. 
 
Kotare designed the kit with a false upper section that needs to be cut away. 
 

 
With one half cut away. 
 

 
With the second half done, I test fitted the cockpit tub. You can see the space needed for the camera fitting which means the shelf has to go as well. 
 

 
The culprit:
 

 
Some careful cutting and it's gone. 
 

 
 

Some good progress on the big Spitfire of late...
 
Following others when building/improving this kit, I have added some plastic card laminate to the leading edges of the ailerons to improve the fit. Being designed to move, there were unsightly gaps where the ailerons join the wing - this improves things greatly and avoids the 'toy-like' look of the original:
 

 
The original Airfix kit is well know for its retractable landing gear and hollow wheel bays - it's relatively simple to box these in using plastic card and improves the look immeasurably:
 

 
With this done the rest of the airframe comes together very rapidly - there's some filler needed but it's very much a product of its time. I've painted the prop, too, and this is just a push-fit. I am not using the engine but the forward part of the Merlin is easy to attach to the forward part of the cowling to hold the prop in place:
 

 

 

 
I now need to sort a few blemishes and install the clear parts. It's all coming together rather quickly!
 
Until next time,
Tom

Alex is next over the line with his RCAF spit in desert colours. Nice job indeed.
 
Link to build thread;
 

Thanks all!
 
 
 
Wheels and tailwheel painted with Alclad Aluminium….
 
 

 
 
…and painted Tire Black, not good enough, I´ll have to paint them again.
 
 

 
 
A new, better hatch with much better detail has been purchased from Barracuda Cast, I just LOVE those small sets from Roy!
 
 

 
 
There´s two landing lights in the kit, one on each side, but I can only see that this variant have the light on the left wing tip.
 
The landing light have been painted amber (on the back/inside) and glued to the wing…
 
 

 
 
To get some “shine” behind the glass I´ll use some Aluminium foil (shiny side down) and then I masked the front (outside) with a tape mask.
 
 

 
 
On the other side I glued the glass into the wing, filled and sanded smooth.
 
 
 
 
All interior parts painted British Interior Green (Hu.78)…
 
 
 
 
The fuselage insides painted with the same paint, Hu.78 IG…
 
 
 
 
The wheel wells and the interiors of the cooler as well…
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The fronts of the coolers had been painted Matt Black (Hu.33) before…
 
 
 
 
The exhausts and the crowbar have been painted Alclad Steel….
 
 
 
 
The crowbars in the Spitfire was either Steel, Interior green or black, NEVER red!
 
A close-up on the decals I intend to use for this build, It`ll be YB o A, with the white gauntlet (decal #18) on the nose.
 
 
 
 
Small blue roundels, Burma camouflage, blue spinner, clipped wingtips and white 18inch bands over wings, stabilators and fin will It be.
 
The decals are beautifully printed by Catograf, top-notch quality!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
More to come soon!
 
 
Stefan  

I have been sick so not much done for a while but the build still lives. 
 
 
The new, Brass cannons are soo beautiful, the plastic just can´t compare!
 
 

 
 
The bulkhead with the pilot seat and armor assembled, I drilled out the all the holes in the frames, in the back seat and in the seat´s sides….
 
Sorry for the lousy picture!  
 
 

 
 
The very detailed resin panels glued to the fuselage sides….
 
 

 
 
The interior of the wing coolers assembled….
 
 

 
 
 
Stefan 

Hi All!
 
Yes, I have built the Spitfire Mk.IXe and the Macchi Mc.202 Folgore earlier and both were really nice and fun kits.
 
As Dennis and Mike said, If you take it slow and easy and test fit a lot, they go together quite well.
 
AND you´ll get all you need in the box, which makes them very cost-effective!
 
I like them a lot and usually have a lot of fun while building them!
 
 
I´ll start with what I call “destructive building”, ie removing ejection towers/marks, any flash and as here, removing the wingtips.
 
 

 
 
Several projects on the go gives a quite cluttered table…
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
The wheel wells are glued to the bottom wing.
 
 

 
 
Very good fit, indeed…
 
 

 
 
The backing plates for the exhausts glued in place…
 
 

 
 
 
More to come soon!
 
 
Stefan  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This is always time-consuming...

 
But the results are worth it.

 
After cleaning up the PLW I shot a coat of clear flat with a little bit of white in it to help fade the bright blue. 

 
I then made up a little palette of pastels to add some more fade and tonal variation.  Going for the dusty, worn-out look here.

 
 
Below is the result.  
 
If I'm careful, this is all the masking off I should need to shoot the topsides.

 
I started with overall Middle Stone, shooting a mist of white over the top again to fade the color.

 
I decided to approach the camo in stages, so I did not have to wrestle with holding onto a model completely covered in putty snakes.
 
Step 1.

 
I worked out a convenient way to mask around the snakes.  Placing a piece of semi-translucent wide tape on top of the snake, it's easy to trace the line of contact with a sharpie.

 
Then remove the tape, cut along the line, and reapply.
 
This was the result of step 1.

 
Step 2 was the starboard wing and the cowling.

 
And then the rest.

 
Next up I need to cut my masks out and paint the roundels and codes.

Started out by painting the wing roots with Alclad Aluminum.  I then masked around the area in which chipping is going to happen, to avoid getting the chipping medium in places where it can only serve to trip me up by having paint flake off where I don't want it to.  Then sprayed the AK chipping fluid, diluted like 4:1 with AK thinner.  This strong dilution allowed me to spray a nice uniform thin coat with no gloppy texture at all.

 
The clever magnets that Tamiya supplies to fix the engine cowling pieces in place work well enough to hold them on against gravity, but only just.  It was clear the first time I put them on that an airbrush would blow them straight off, and thus that I'd have to paint that part separate from the fuselage, and just make darn sure to line the camo pattern up.  To make things a little easier I taped the forward cowling sections together from the inside, so I can at least paint it as a single unit.

 
I decided to start the paintjob with the undersides, however.  The thought is to take it through most of the weathering process so that once I flip the thing over and mask off the underside, I won't have much of anything left to do there.   So I gave it a coat of MRP Azure Blue...

 
I followed that with a coat of Tamiya X-22 clear gloss.  When that's fully dry (tomorrow morning) I'll go over it with enamel panel liner to pick out all of the exquisite detail that Tamiya molded into these pieces, and maybe just a bit of oil paint dirt aft of the engine.

So I'm just partway through this, and already I've learned some things, including some counterintuitive ones.  I started with the MRP paints, and did the masking for the Dark Earth with my putty snakes and some Tamiya tape to avoid overspray.  You can see below that the MRP paint was weakly enough bonded to the chipping fluid layer that anywhere tape touched it, it pulled away.

 
Critically, you can see adjacent to the pulled-away areas little bits of paint that pulled up off the substrate but stayed attached (lighter colored) presumably because the paint film itself is pretty strong.  I have not tried yet to manually chip this paint, but that aspect now worries me.  More annoying, you can see that for the two truly water-based acrylics, AK and Vallejo, they immediately reacted with the dried chipping fluid, creating unwanted surface texture and crazing of the paint (especially the Vallejo).  I may have put the chipping fluid on too thick, but this is annoying (and did not happen with the lacquer-based MRP or in the last experiment with the Mr Hobby alcohol-based acrylic diluted with it's own thinner).  Finally in the bottom center you can see where I shot a little of the Mr Hobby Middle Stone to confirm how much greener it is than all the others.  Plus, for this little patch, I followed Kev's suggestion and diluted it with Lacquer thinner, which worked just fine.

As I had mentioned, I want to use a chipping technique to depict the typical wing root wear and tear that appears in so many Spitfire photos (and models!).  Here's a good example from the RAF archive that Airscale linked to a few days ago...

 
The only way I've attempted to show paint chipping in the past is by dabbing silver paint on top of the camo layer, which never looks like anything except silver paint on the model.  So I'm determined to learn the better way of doing this, by actually wearing away the paint.
 
To try out a few options for this, I ordered three different chipping solutions: AK "Heavy" Chipping Fluid, Vallejo Chipping Medium, and Ammo "Scratches Effects" Chipping Fluid.  I have no independent way of knowing if the stuff in these bottles is exactly the same across all three or not, nor whether it is anything other than bog-standard hairspray from the corner market, cleverly repackaged.  But figured it can't hurt to try a few options.  I also decided to try two different paint underlayers (for the "metal" layer), Alclad Aluminum and Mr Color Silver.  I prefer the look of the Alclad but was worried that it might be too fragile to stand up to this process.  So to do this I set up a grid on some primed styrene sheet:

 
Sprayed on the metal layer (both proper solvent-based lacquer paints):

 
I then sprayed on the chipping fluids.  They went on gloppy, but finally dried acceptably level.  The AK and Ammo products were pretty thin in consistency, so I used them neat.  The Vallejo medium was thicker, so I cut it 50:50 with Vallejo thinner.
 
To try and hasten the chipping process I used a tiny piece of sponge to dab on some masking fluid, with the notion that this would come off easily and provide spots for the chipping process to nucleate.  I saw this done on-line somewhere.  Obviously on the upper left panel I got too much on.  Live and learn.

 
I then painted on the two colors I need to use for my Spitfire, Middle Stone and Dark Earth.  I had these left over from another model I did a while back.

 
I believe I bought them at the time to try out Mr Hobby's acrylic line, since their lacquer paints are a mainstay for me.  I now remember concluding at the time that:
 
1. The Middle Stone seems way too green, and 
2. I hate using acrylic paints
 
But, as I understand it, it's pretty essential to use them if you want to chip, since lacquers will create too water-proof of a layer. 
 
So, here's the basic scheme.

 
As you can see, I painted the Dark Earth over the Middle Stone, creating a thicker paint layer.  I'm glad I did, as this bears on the result.  You can also see here that I scribed some "panel lines" in the plastic before painting to see if they impacted the process at all.
 
I did this last night, and after waiting a seeming eternity for the acrylics to dry (realistically 30 minutes, but I'm used to 30 seconds with lacquer paints), I wetted a piece of paper towel and put it on one of the rectangles for a few minutes to try and "activate" the chipping layer.  I then tried gently, and not so gently, scrubbing with a soft toothbrush, both on the area that got the masking fluid and the area that did not.  After that I variously poked around with a wad of fine steel wool, and a much stiffer brush, and a toothpick.  I did four of the panels in total and then left the other two for today, when I wet them for a good 10 minutes and then chipped away.  This is what the final result looks like.

 
So what did I conclude?
1. The AK product does seem to release more easily and tend toward bigger flakes of paint coming off.  I did not see much difference between the Vallejo and Ammo options.
2. The masking fluid works a treat.  It releases almost instantly and provides a great starting point.  You need to use it very sparingly and only in areas where you want most or all of the paint to come off.
3. The Alclad Aluminum stood up fine, so I'll use that.
4. Paint thickness really matters.  You can see above that the brown areas look less chipped, despite my having spent considerably more time scrubbing away at them.  The difference of two layers of top paint versus one was very noticeable.  I'm not sure how I will deal with this, as the area I want to chip has both light and dark color in the pattern.
5. Soaking time matters.  Some of the panels I wet for only 5 minutes, and they were harder to work with than ones that were soaked for 10-15 minutes.
6. Waiting time matters a lot.  The two panels I did the following day (upper left and bottom middle) were noticeably harder to get going that the ones I did the same evening.  So if I want to get fancy with weathering my paint colors with filters etc I need to block off a big chunk of time so it can all happen in one day, and I need to keep the paint as thin as possible.  Ideally I even want to  apply the final flat coat before chipping, so I don't matte the metal parts, but that's a lot of layers and time.  I need to think more on this.
7. The steel wool abrades the paint rapidly.  You need to be careful, but it has a lot of potential for fading paint or wearing away one layer to reveal the paint underneath.
8. The Middle Stone is too green.  I need to look at some other acrylic brands for better options.  
9. I hate using acrylic paints.  But I'm kind of stuck with them here.
 
So this project will pause for a few more days while I try out some other paint brands to look for a better Middle Stone (or at least one more to my liking).  But I now feel pretty confident that I can make this chipping thing work and get a result that looks heaps better than dabbing on silver paint.
 
 

Engine and prop are now complete - just dry-fit for these photos.  I've also got the landing gear built and painted, so it's only the final exterior paintjob remaining.

 

 

There's the engine almost done.  I still need to attach the frames on the sides that the cowling panels mount to, and I have not yet started to paint the exhaust stacks.  This is by no means a paragon of either completeness or accuracy, but it is pleasingly busier than you'd get just assembling the kit pieces.

 

 

 

 

 
There's very little actually left to build now - really just the prop.  So soon on to painting the exterior.  I'll detour before that and test out some chipping techniques on scrap plastic before committing to the method I'll use to try and reproduce that seemingly ubiquitous trod-off swatches of paint on Spitfire wing roots... 

Couple of in-process photos.  Should have taken more but I've kind of been on a roll, just trying to make progress.

 

 
Lots more still to do but it's underway at least.  I still need to make the ignition harnesses.  I was out of 1mm styrene rod, so had to order it, since the sizes I did have were clearly either too large or too small to look convincing. 

Looking more like a Spitfire all the time...

 
Going to go work on the engine now.

Took a bit of fiddling to get all the piece parts of the wings together cleanly, but patience pays off with this kit - there's such fine detail that you really want to avoid having to sand anything if you can.  And the parts fit well enough to make that possible.  In particular the wing to fuselage fit is perfect.

 
I've got a few more things to do to get ready to prime the airframe; mainly getting the canopy masked and in place.  Once that's done I can focus on the engine, which is beautifully set up for covers-off display, just like in the Tamiya Mustang I built a few years ago.  Of course this is going to force me to deviate from the OOB mantra and do at least a little bit of scratch building to enhance what's provided in the kit.