Bradleygolding

And the Cash Cow starts! I guess it will be $300 though. Steve.

Anything has to be an improvement over that dreadful flour and water mix they call plastic! Steve.

Hi There, I have seen the movie and think it's a P&W450. Which is a fairly standard conversion in Stearman land. It has a CSU and spinner, which again kind of implies P&W. Don't know which Stearman they used. Steve

Very understated, lovely. Steve.

No I have not contacted him, but they were produced in 2011 so I suspect that they are suffering from age. As you can see they did eventually go on.

Thanks Mike. MH415 had the wrong under wing roundels when it went to Spain. They were all semi corrected later in filming. Steve

Let me start with a story…… I am eight years old and it is the Summer of 1968. On holiday at Dymchurch in Kent my Dad starts pointing at the sky, and there they are, some very war weary looking Spitfires and Me109s coming back from a filming sortie. Spool on to 1970 and home in Biggin Hill valley just under the flight path of the main runway, when Ray Hannah turns up in MH434 still in a Battle of Britain scheme and beats up the airfield, valley and anything else he could find! Dad and I rushed to the airfield just in time to see him side slip it onto runway 29. Marvelous! He did it all again a couple of hours later when he left. MH434 remained in those colours until 1974. And that to me is a real Spitfire, a cleaned up Mk IX in Battle of Britain colours. So here is my take on MH434 during the filming. Is it MH434? Three cleaned up Mk IX single seaters were flown during the film. MK297, MH415, and MH434. They were all different! MK297 had fishtail exhausts so not that one. MH415 had straight exhausts and then later fishtail ones after an engine change, it also had strobe lights in the gun ports so not that one. MH434 it is, we’ll say later in the filming due to the lack of an odd short rod sticking out below the rear fuselage which is visible in some early shots. The colours? Hm…….always a contentious one this. Every photo you see is different. I have ended up using Dark Earth and Light Green, which are not quite colourful enough, but they are close once weathered. The under sides had a bluish tinge (look at the wing behind Kenneth Moore’s shoulder in the collapsed hangar. Not a flyer but they were all painted the same.) so I used Sky with added White and a dab of Navy. The weathering. Originally the aircraft were to be presented as quite clean and there are some photos around that show quite some subtle dirtying up. However the R/C unit was having trouble getting the models to look real on film so the great weathering up of models and full size began. Lots of dark washes and black brush strokes. The markings. These are from Fundekals and although reasonably accurate are some of the hardest I have ever had to apply. They are thick, brittle, and self-destruct the moment they get near the model, and the guide as to where to put them is incorrect in many respects. My advice is to look at the film photos in detail first. The under wing roundels are wrong for the film as well, but right for the actual battle. Excuse the lack of a gun sight, it kept falling off so I put it somewhere really safe, if only I could remember where that was…… Steve.

I have to say that the sprue and pre kit shots above do look rather good. Steve

Okay, so Airfix have listened to all of you who have been begging for an updated Spitfire on this and other sites. They have produced a new 1/24 scale super kit so you should all be happy, but you're not? Although pleased that they have done this I am a little underwhelmed by it. After the incredible detailing of the Typhoons and Hellcat, this should have been the greatest Spitfire kit ever! Unfortunately it smacks of clunky detailing and and what appears to be very average surface detail (and I agree that the prop blade roots are wrong). As has been noted in other posts it offers no increase in detailing over the Tamiya kit and less that the Kotare one. It seems to have been designed on a very tight budget to maximize profit, which is not a bad thing for Airfix, just a bit disappointing for the rest of us. Add to that Airfix's flour and water based plastic and it's all a bit nah. I did hear that some new models did have a much harder plastic so we will have to see. Like all these things I will wait until it is released and pass informed judgement then. Looking forward to more test shots over the coming months. Steve

Hi Folks, I own both (not built yet) and a real Stearman. Forget the Silver Wings one because the fuselage is the wrong cross section. The ICM is by the looks a more refined kit and judging by their Gladiator which I recently built, probably a better bet, although some of the detailing on the Roden one is more accurate! ICM I recommend. Steve

Hi Nick, Thanks for your comments. I had never really thought Turnbuckles necessary, but having seen them on a number of models posted here I am beginning to consider the idea, although for the Felixstowe it would be an extra massive job. The rigging here is the elastic type from WnW which I find very frustrating to use. I am getting better with it and refining my technique, the Glad only took a day to do! You are right about the port machine gun, it has had several knocks and losses, I even made a new piece from Evergreen and whilst gluing it on found the original on the floor in another tiny part search I was doing. The decal silvering is only noticeable since the matt coat went on so I guess I could paint it over. One last thing I could say is I used a mixture of Tamiya and Vallejo paints. Tamiya for brushing mainly, and Vallejo mainly fro spraying. Really getting used to these modern paints and unlike the tins of Humbrol of my youth, there is no colour variation when touching up the finish later! Steve

So here it is, the first 1/32 model I have completed since about 1975 when I made a couple of Hasegawa inter war biplanes. It's not perfect, but I just wanted it out of the way to work on other projects, like the still uncompleted WnW Felixstowe. Although that will have to wait a little longer. What did I think? Well generally it's a really good kit, great fit and reasonable detail. Only the seatbelts were added. I do have one or two niggles though. The plastic is very soft and weak allowing many small parts to break if even breathed on, I wondered if Revell's version would have Revell's plastic which is stronger? ICM show rigging spreaders between the wings, and a mast above the wing, but these are not part of the kit. I almost had to buy a biplane jig to put the top wing on it was so tricky. I still think it slopes forward too much, and the box unless shut up completely allows small parts to fall out and disappear! Apart from that all good. Steve

Nice. My local model shop here in Adelaide said just over AU$1000. Steve

Always interesting watching a train wreck! Having read Border Model's statement and thought about it for a while I am coming to the conclusion that WnW think that Border were given a lot more than just the Moulds! The CAD images bear such a striking similarity to the WnW ones, it is uncanny. Border suggest that they backwards engineered them, but although possible from an STL or similar file for mould maintenance and manufacture, that would be a ton of work. Steve

$979 is the cheapest I have seen it advertised in Australia at Creative Models. Steve