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Well, it's been a while. I'd not realised that my last post was a ready for inspection of my 1:24 Airfix Hurricane Mk1 back in January of 2018: I already had this build of the Airfix 1:24 Spitfire Mk1a on the go back then and with the sad passing of Squadron Leader Geoffrey Wellum DFC in July of 2018 I decided to build it as K9998, the plane he flew with 92 squadron in the summer and autumn of 1940. Sadly, due to hard drive problems and being too idle to upload the images to the cloud, I lost the build pictures I'd taken, hence it's miraculous appearance in "Ready for Inspection" fully built and ready to go. As far as the build goes, a brief resume: I lined the wheel wells, added an Airscale Instrument panel and their excellent cockpit placards to liven things up and a Grey Matter control stick. A metal coat hanger and some scratch built brackets gave me the dihedral and removed the wing droop. Dry stencils from Hobbydecal are brilliant for the instructional markings around the plane, even if their supplied diagram is a bit out in places. The drop down door had the crowbar that didn't appear on the Mark 1 sanded away and a locking mechanism added with some wire and made up spring arrangement. The hinge assembly at the other end is wire again with silver foil wound around to represent the hinges. So that pretty much took us to the paint stage. Black primer undercoat followed by Vallejo aluminium paint and a layer of Vallejo chipping medium meant I could spray the camouflage and chip away to my hearts content. Afterwards a gloss layer fixed all in place and allowed me to go to town on the markings. I sprayed these on using making tape and Tamiya paints for two reasons. One, it allows for more realistic weathering and two, I couldn't buy the non standard markings off the shelf. The fuselage roundels for this Supermarine built "K" plane had the 7" centre red spot instead of the standard 5" so it was do it yourself or nothing! Underside panel centre lightening and upper side panel line darkening gave me the effect I wanted and oil fading effects and a nice panel wash completed the job. I always like to try to envisage a moment when I'm planning how I want the weathering to look a la Jon Bius so here was my thought for the day: So I imagined: "A wet, miserable autumn morning in October 1940. K9998 has just returned from a morning patrol and is thickly caked with the clay of the wet soil. Ground crew have already swarmed over the wings to talk to the pilot and are about to get the aircraft ready for its next patrol with a refuel and re arm." Anyway, here it is. I hope you like it:

It's for my son so please be kind with the colours and finish This is the recent QuickBuild release that goes together much like Lego blocks. Which means he's been having fun re-enacting the Battle of Britain in our living room. He's already asked for another so I might have to break down and their BF109 too. It has helped to learn the various parts to a plane although fuselage is still a bit hard for him to pronounce. Not bad for a 3 year old. Carl