Revell Spitfire FRIXc MK915 pink recon

[Fanes]

22 hours ago, Greif8 said:

Grüß Gott Joachim, I missed your build thread and have just read through it.  Your scratchbuilding work is very beautifully done, as is the riveting.  You have also done a fantastic job on the modifications to the base model kit.  The 3D printed cameras and frames look quite good.  Sehr beeindruckende Arbeit!

 

MfG,

Ernest

Thank you very much Ernest (still impressed by your German!). It's a long project and I'm learning a lot on the way. Hopefully I'll get to finish it one day.

Grüße aus dem sonnigen München in die Oberpfalz!

 

[Fanes]

6 minutes ago, Wackyracer said:

Keep going Sir, it will all be good in the end.

 

Personally I didn't mind messing up a couple of £20 kits instead of a £100 Tamiya one. 

Hehe, good to hear that from a Revell-Spitfire-conversion-expert

Past me would have agreed a 100% with you, Aaron. Maybe I'll change my mind after my first Tamiya Spitfire (classic Mk.IXc in desert camo).

[Greif8]

24 minutes ago, Fanes said:

Thank you very much Ernest (still impressed by your German!). It's a long project and I'm learning a lot on the way. Hopefully I'll get to finish it one day.

Grüße aus dem sonnigen München in die Oberpfalz!

 

 

Thank you, and I am in turn impressed by your English - it is excellent.  I have an unfair advantage when it comes to speaking/reading and writing German as my mother is German (from Wacken, Schleswig-Holstein) and so is my wife (from Amberg, Bavaria).  Also, I live in a small village in the Oberpfalz and speak German everyday with the other folks that live here.  I always laugh when my relatives in north Germany tell me I am not really related to them because I speak with a Bavarian accent! 

 

Grüße aus die Oberpfalz!

Ernest  

[Fanes]

Keeping this rolling

 

Well, my over the weekend cycling trip got cancelled, so there was a lot of time for the Spitfire.

I applied Mr. Surfacer 500 with a small brush to fill all the small imperfections around the windscreen.

Here's where it's at after careful sanding. The next task will be my least favourite: rerivetting and rescribing..

 

 

The drying time wasn't left unused, so I flipped the Spit on its back and tackled the Barracuda carb intake.

Since the fit is less than perfect and the glueing area rather small, shims of 0.5 mm plastic were added to ease the process.

 

 

First up the rear part was attached with quite an amount of thick CA. Note the gap at the front.

 

After a decent drying time the front part was forced into fit with a rubber band and again quite a lot of CA.

 

The next issue is already peeking through: the Barracuda part is about 0.5 mm too long compared to the Revell nose (or the latter too short..). So, there's two options:
1. sand/shorten the resin part, which will be quite hard to keep parallel

2. shim the fuselage

 

Not sure what to do, but I'm leaning towards the latter.

 

[Landrotten Highlander]

I would go for a shim, seems to me that this will be the easiest option to keep things parallell

[mc65]

I follow this work with a mixture of admiration and apprehension (I have plans for a Mk.XI on Revell kit).
I think that the choice whether to add or remove material behind the base of the propeller is dictated by the plate of the same: the two diameters must necessarily match, I guess.

 

keep on gluing, I like it a lot! 

[Greif8]

Nice work Joachim!  I think you have done a very fine job on the carb intake.  I think adding a shim would be a bit easier than trying to sand the Barracuda part, though Paolo (mc65) bring up a good point about getting the diameter right.  Whichever course you choose I am sure you will master it.

 

On a cycling note, I managed to get in 1.5 hours onthe road with my gravel bike yesterday.  Unfortunately it is somewhat foggy and raining with poor visibility in my part of the Oberpfalz so I was chained to the trainer for 1 hour today - not so much fun!  I hope you are able to get out and ride soon.

 

Ernest  

[Fanes]

4 hours ago, mc65 said:

I follow this work with a mixture of admiration and apprehension (I have plans for a Mk.XI on Revell kit).
I think that the choice whether to add or remove material behind the base of the propeller is dictated by the plate of the same: the two diameters must necessarily match, I guess.

 

keep on gluing, I like it a lot! 

 

Thank you very much for the praise, Paolo.

If you ever start a Revell Mk.IX, stay clear of the eduard resin cockpit! The Barracuda cockpit parts look so much better and are for sure an easier install as well.

 

Took your advice and checked the spinner against the fuselage. It's a so-so fit diameter wise. Especially with the resin part.

So removing more material from it would of course increase the diameter of the facing area and therefor worsen the issue.

Shimming it is.

0.5 mm plastic seems to do the trick:

 

 

Already glued on and the spinner's outline traced with a pencil (+margin of error).

 

I didn't hesitate to long and cut all the unnecessary plastic of. It still needs some smoothing and reworking of the lost rivets

 

 

Buuuut it does look consistent enough, so that I can live with the result. Yeah, it's not perfect but I think it's good enough for the overall appearance.

 

[Fanes]

3 hours ago, Greif8 said:

On a cycling note, I managed to get in 1.5 hours onthe road with my gravel bike yesterday.  Unfortunately it is somewhat foggy and raining with poor visibility in my part of the Oberpfalz so I was chained to the trainer for 1 hour today - not so much fun!  I hope you are able to get out and ride soon.

I'm a little bit jealous there, Ernest!

Haven't been on my gravel bike since Wednesday, even though we had perfect conditions here in Munich (sunny and dry). So hats of to you fighting the poor weather up north.