The antique BoB Revell Spitfire Mk.I

[thierry laurent]

On 8/1/2020 at 12:56 AM, Pete Roberts said:

Spoke to a Spitfire pilot many years ago who flew reconnaissance out of North Africa. He recalled the little red rubber ball for use where a quick exit was required, but he also recalled that most of them had deteriorated and were inoperable (!)

Interesting. Note that as far as I know the ball was made of wood and sometimes painted yellow or black rather than red. 

[thierry laurent]

I suddenly remembered I had three cd-roms dedicated to the Spitfire. The first two did not have interesting information about the electrical and radio systems but the third had developed dedicated TM and pictures sections. Alas, after fighting with old and recent laptops for more than three hours I never succeeded in running that damned last CD!  I tried with four laptops and had all possible types of technical issues (power supply problem, stuck hard disk, locked BIOS, inoperant admin rights, etc etc). I never had such a series of frustrating IT issues one after the other. It looks Murphy's law was actually the rule of the day. Finally, my last day of holidays was a total mess and I did not even had remaining time to handle one plastic part!  I was so fed up I left the house with the wife and son to calm down in a Chinese restaurant!

It looks I will have to find disk space somewhere to install a virtual machine and a developer version of XP to get again access to such CDs (hopefully!). They were issued by flyingzonedirect and were terrific sources of technical information about WW2 RAF planes. So I absolutely want to get back my access to their contents! 

[Landrotten Highlander]

37 minutes ago, thierry laurent said:

flyingzonedirect

did a quick search on the net - found 2 links to a website that do not work, and 1 to farcebook, but as I do not use that site I cannot take this any further.

I did find an email address (enquiries@flyingzonedirect.com) and sent them an email.  Can keep you informed of the reply if any of you are interested.

[Pete Roberts]

1 hour ago, thierry laurent said:

Interesting. Note that as far as I know the ball was made of wood and sometimes painted yellow or black rather than red. 

 

According to the pilot I spoke to, it was rubber and you squeezed it to release the canopy. He recalled it was a dull red colour. 

[Robthepom]

fantastic modelling, thanks for the pics and descriptions

[thierry laurent]

9 hours ago, Landrotten Highlander said:

did a quick search on the net - found 2 links to a website that do not work, and 1 to farcebook, but as I do not use that site I cannot take this any further.

I did find an email address (enquiries@flyingzonedirect.com) and sent them an email.  Can keep you informed of the reply if any of you are interested.

Thanks very much. The Facebook page has alas not been updated for some years. It looks that company very probably vanished. It is a pity as I really wanted to get their Lancaster disk. 

[thierry laurent]

Thanks to a very kind LSP member, my build will restart quickly.

 

If the pictures of the battery system are elusive, fortunately, there were some TM views. This does not mean that some elements do not stay a little bit obscure but at least I have a sufficient amount of information to add the battery.

 

It is quite incredible we do not have any documented thorough analysis of the technical evolution of the Spitfire. This reminds me the huge problems I had to find information about the oxygen bottles in the PRXI, the landing gear bays of the Mk.XII or the cockpit or LG bays of the FR47!

 

This is a pity as the Spit family is at the top of my favorite planes and I've been commonly stuck during builts by the lack of information...

[Lothar]

I really do admire your persistence in researching the subject your modelling, that's probably why the results are very

convincing and realistic. Wish I had a bit of it. Stunning progress so far 

Lothar

[thierry laurent]

Thanks Lothar,

 

To me, the research part is really a major part of my hobby. I'm probably too worried by such a dimension as in the end those are just bits of plastic!

However, I can't help but allocating time to that! I guess this probably came from the time I had spare time but could not allocate it to actual modelling (this was the time when I had hours of commuting in a train). Then, I started making tweak lists as I developed progressively an interest in airplane history and engineering besides the simple model dimension. This also corresponds to the time my library grew to become far too large! Just ask my wife. She's desesperately waiting for the 2021 house extension as I'm storing books everywhere in spite of the fact I've a dedicated small library room!

[thierry laurent]

Hi guys,

 

No plastic picture today but some interesting information. The digital world took all my available time but I won the fight with my old Cd-rom! This was far from easy: recreate an XP ISO boot CD, install a VM hypervisor, create an XP Virtual Machine, restore access of the App to the CD-DVD reader, solve driver issues, etc. etc. but I finally succeeded. The CD interface via the VM was crappy but at least I got the interesting parts.

 

First, the battery that moved during the Mk.I production clearly stayed on the floor under the oxygen bottle up to the longer generation of Merlin-engined fighters (such as the Mk.VIII or IX). Second, the mystery bracket I built (that was used on some Mk.Is as the Hendon plane had it) was actually the IFF box tray. As the IFF was not used during BoB, I will not use it in my kit (I do not care as I have at least two Mk.IIs in my stash). It is never funny to build useless items but at least I will recycle the part and this resulted in learning A LOT of things regarding the evolution of the early Spitfires!

 

The following picture captured from the CD is showing the IFF green bracket (in the red circle) and the battery location (in the yellow oval) in a preserved Mk.V.

 

 

So, to summarize:

 

The radio location never changed.

Early Mk.Is Spits had the radio tray with the TR9D and the battery was located in a tray over the two gas bottles located on the port side.

Late Mk.Is got the TR1133 in the radio tray and the battery moved to the floor starboard side. During BoB, TR9D or TR1133 were used in the same planes according to the circumstances. After the BoB, the Mk.Is got the IFF box. Note the use of both items had an influence on the presence of wires over the fuselage (for TR9D) and between the fuselage and the stabilators (for the IFF). However, during BoB you could have a plane with the wire antenna but using the TR1133 for some time. For a model, this is not really important if you do not open the radio hatch.

Mk.IIs and Mk.Vs kept that configuration (TR1133 and IFF) but the radio progressively changed to the TR1143 and when longer Merlin Spits appeared the battery was moved to the rear fuselage to keep a correct center of gravity.

 

The flare launcher system also evolved in the rear fuselage but this is a completely different topic!

 

Last, I took all the measures to scratchbuild the battery. I should do that tomorrow as it will absolutely be impossible to paint (38°C in the shadow are foreseen). Ouch!

[Pete Roberts]

Nice detective work Thierry. 

 

One small correction - IFF was introduced late September/early October so some BoB aircraft would have been so equipped.

 

We are seeing out winter at the moment - looking forward to 30 degrees + !  

[MikeMaben]

I read somewhere that the first IFF was installed on squadron leader a/c only.

 

??

 

 

[thierry laurent]

Indeed. In October, the first planes with the IFF arrived in the squadrons. As Mike mentioned it looks the planes were shared between squadrons to ensure some progressive global IFF capability. However, this stayed the exception rather than the rule, more particularly for the Mk.I.

[Sabre F-86]

On 7/31/2020 at 7:58 PM, LSP_Kevin said:

 

No, CA is definitely an issue here, as I've had it happen too. I no longer use CA to glue lead weights into aircraft noses; it's too problematic. A brittle bond, combined with the exothermic curing action, just makes it too risky. For adding nose weight, I'm a complete convert to using good old Blu-tac! It works much better than you think it would.

 

Kev

I've been working on boats for god knows how many years and have developed a serious love affair with two part epoxy. I always have a gallon or so kicking round. I use that for fixing lead weights. Also mix it with filler and it makes a real nice fine grain filler. Won't work well for attaching  PE, takes too long to cure. I used to use West System epoxy, now I use East System. It's a cheaper priced competitor to the West System gang.

[thierry laurent]

Hi again,

 

Alas, it took me more time than foreseen to build the battery, its support and modify the kit to be able to locate it.

 

First, the bump over the three holes in the lower side of the bulkhead must be removed as it looks the Mk.I had not such a bump (at least when the battery was relocated there) and this prevented adding correctly the support. Here's the standard part:

 

 

And here it is after the modification.

 

 

It is useless to say this would have been far easier and less time consuming to do that before assembling everything with CA glue! I did not worry too much regarding the finish as the battery and the support fortunately hide that area of the bulkhead edge. Fortunately, the flare launching tube was not firmly glued. Removing it gave  me a little bit more room to use my jeweller's files.

 

And here's the battery and support combination:

 

 

 

Everthing was made out of plastic card and strips except the fixings. I made them out of my favorite Albion microtubes and photoetched washers. finally I should not have added the washers as they are too small and virtually invisible!

 

The battery and its support were painted actually flat black. On some planes, the fuselage area around them was also painted black. I'm wondering if it was done to detect leaking...? It is useless saying that washes and drybrushing on the edges will be required to see a little part of such details. Nonetheless, as that fuselage area was painted light green, the absence of such a black element is visible. The following picture shows the parts in their final location:

 

 

I had a lot of fun building such details but succeeding in locating the support correctly was quite frustating and asked for a lot of dry fitting attempts and modifications of the support arms!

 

The final details to recreate will be quite trivial in comparison with that assembly.