Sometimes you just wake up with a spontaneous idea. Something that sounds like fun, and you can't get out of your head. Well Yesterday was such a day. During the week I read the latest edition of Model world, in which a builder was ageing his cockpit with the method of spraying the whole cockpit black. And then adding the colour in thin layers. (A method i've seen here on this forum too, but I did't know from the dutch forum i'm a member off.) I also saw that a spitfire campaign started on the dutch forum I just mentioned. And I was reading a “Flugzeug classic” magazine, (a German magazine on classic airplanes) wich featured the Mk. Vb spitfire. In this really nice colourscheme...



Yes, a nightfighter spitfire. Looking in to it a bit more, it turned out that the British were afraid a new blitzkrieg would be started in '42 by the germans.
In '41 Hurricanes were used as nightfighters with mediocre succes. In the winter of '41/'42
the decision was taken to try out the spitfire in the nightfighter role.
Therefore 3 squadrons were selected who painted there spitfires mattblack. The 41th, the 65st and the 111th.
The basic idea was to hunt the enemy on sight, with the help of the searchlights of the ground crews. A bit like the germans did with their “wilde sau” (wild boar) technique. The british trails went under codename 'smack'.
The trails soon showed the results wouldn't be great, while the risk of damage was quite high. Spitfires are not known for their good forward view. You need to bring it down in a curve to see your landing spot. And in the last moments you would be almost blind landing in the dark. The narrow set up of the landing gear also didn't help.
The torque of the engine was another accident waiting to happen..To quote a pilot..”In a Spitfire there’s one engine and torque going one way. It scared the [auto-censored] out of you. The first time you took off you didn’t know where you’re going, the swing was terrific and had to be corrected right away"
(quote and info taken from: http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2006/06/stuff_eng_profile_night_spitfires.htm

So after three months the whole idea was thrown in the dustpin.



But I will happilly pull this project out of that dustpin again. As said in the beginning. I want an easy build to try out some things and get my airbrush skills to an ok standard. So a nice small kit that can be build strait out of the box woill be perfect. The victim in this case will be The 1/72 Revell Supermarine spitfire Mk. Vb kit. One of a whole series of budget kit that revell, Italeri and Airfix all have in their catalogue.



They can be re-issues, that bring tears to your eyes..But in this case it is a recent mould.



Three moulds to be precise. Two grey styreen sprues with not to many components. And a closed canopy in -off course- clear...(duh)



Mould quality is not bad at all. Detailling I find ok for the price.









A pre-trail to see how everything would fit shows a bit of work on the belly. And some flash. But nothing dramatic.







The instructions are standard Revell stuff...



So in eleven steps you should have a nice Mark 5 on your bench...



Wich you can then decorate with these decals...



Possible are two versions. The clipped version of S/L Jeff Northcott. D.S.O. D.C.F. Based on Duxford in 1943. And the “G-AZ ' flown by Axel A. Svendsen. Stationed at Tangmere in 1942.




But I was going for a “night' fire. First job as always was cleaning up the cockpit parts.
Nothing special here. A bit of sanding, cleaning up the seams. All nice and easy.
Although I would advice a “not-spitfire-specialist” to check some references on the “joystick” To prefent you from cleaning up to much. It ended up beeing a shape I didn't expect. So i'm glad I did.






As said, the whole thing started with me wanting to try the trick of using a black background to give more depth and age to the cockpitdetails. So here we go. A spray of black...



Followed by the interior green in thin layers ...I didn't have a pot of the real thing laying around. So I gave mixing it myself a go. Based on a reference picture of a Mk VII beeing restored. Using Olive drap, mixed with grey and a spot of blue.)...The dilution adviced was 30% extra fluid against paint.









I like the effect. I have to say...And the colour matches the reference picture nicely. Although i'm not sure the reference is right. But that's another story...



second step was to highlight the details...





A seriously diluted black mix was used as a pinwash for more shadow affect. Residue removed straight away with a cotton stick



And with the adding of some switches and clocks the fuselage was already done. Nice technique..One i'm gonna use more often..






Same technique was used on the other cockpit parts..






Here I do have some self critique. I'm not happy with my dashboard. The Black is to black in this scale I think. Next time I'm gonna go for a really dark grey. But this time it will do..

A small trick I discovered. My eyes are having a bit of trouble seeing the really small bits nowadays. Especially in black...



But some extra light from a flashlight solved that problem nice and easy.



So I ended up sticking the parts to my desk with some tack. Painting with a added flashlight in my left hand...(which brought a nice smile on my girlfriends face)

Some seatbelts are drying as we speak. The chair was a mess and I;m gonna redo that somewhere in the coming week. And then I can already assemble the whole “bathtube”. Just as I wanted. Nice and easy..

Illiad Design have markings for a 'black' Spitfire on their Oddball Spitfires decal sheet.

http://www.hannants.co.uk/product/ILD72002

BTW. Crowbars were not painted red during the war.

Ahh good to know. Considering that they just painted over the existing airplanes have choosen to use the roundels from the kit...And mix them with a set of sky markings i've ordered.

And...darn...That's the downside of using restauration aircraft as reference. grmmbl...well in that case it's the BBMF spitfire painted to represent a "night"fire. A version to be seen in real life somewhere in the future. (That's my story and i'm sticking to it. But thanks for the heads up!)

Cliff,
Very interesting project, although if you're having issues seeing that scale, just join us 1/48 scale devotees.

I use the flat black base coat for all my interior work, as it really helps with the deep shadows in tight crevasses, and it does help to tone down the intensity of the base color. Highlighting with a lightened mix of the cockpit color is perfect.

I've been experimenting with using less flat black for IPs and small detail parts, by using Nato Black, which seems to be a grayish black to start with. I really don't dry brush the IP's so it's the easiest way to tone it down, unless you're looking for a more pristine finish.

I noticed that the wing to fuselage seem is going to need quite a lot of filler. Try gluing a piece of thin sheet plastic on the inside to seal that gap. It will make the job that much easier.

Looking forward to your next update.

Joel

Thanks Joel. A lot of usefull info there.

In general a small question. The battery like item on the right in this picture. What is it actually. I would like to check some references on the net. To make sure it looks like it should. But that's kinda hard when you can;t put a name on it..

Looks like fiction to me. If its the IFF or radio it's not very convincing.

The last two days i've been busy fixing the shortcuts Revell has taken in the design of their spitfire cockpit. It's 'intresting' how they solved things so to say. And iam not experienced enough to spot those shortcuts straight away. So it gave me a surprise or two. I'll show you all in a second.

But for starters..If i'm gonna correct those mistakes and make a mess of my paintwork anyway. I might just as well correct the biggest fault first. The colour!
Now as i said i was using reference pictures of a magazine..This one to be precise



And the colourmatch was great..But..if i would have looked ONE picture further i would have seen this...



A nice border between light and shadow. Something to do with sun and shade. And guess which colour i went for...:-)
Time to dive in my paint collection again..And try another, more sunny, mixture..



So if you see the cockpit change colour from picture to picture. It's not your screen playing tricks on you again.

Back to the shortcuts..The first shortcut needed a hole to fix it.



...The hole started with me asking myself how seatbelts are actually fixed in a spitfire..



Aha..through the armourplate...and then fixed to the fugelage..Not quite the moulded on seatbelts Revell applied.
But looking through the hole, i spotted that odd looking box again that Antoni called: "fiction"..And rightfully he did. Here's what's there in real life. Nothing. :-)



It turns out to be a bit of Revell cosmetics. Now i don;t mind cosmetics..As long as it's not in my way, that is..



There...That gives a much clearer view..



And after some paint, arts and craftwork...



We can go on to the next problem. The black bit just under the toothpick



That should be a visor. Now as far as i know the main feature of a visor is..that you can look through it...So a bit of fiddling later..



We have a visor.
Next up..The biggest shortcut. Revell claims that this black plate on the picture should normally be painted green. And forms the floor of the cockpit..




Let's see how that looks in real life...



Hmmm..not that much floor there...In fact there is no floor at all...And how do other manufacturers solve that?





A bit different so to say. Now the stick is also atached to the "black plate". And i thought it was to much work remaking that fixing point at the time. So i decided to go for a bit of cosmetics of my own...





Wich worked for me. Up to the point where it was dry and i had to fix it all. Here''s what Revell wants me to do..



A shame thou that the whole plate is almost 2 mm to long..So you need to cut off the legs from the dashboard to make it fit. (They don't have a function anyway. Not even a cosmetic one.)



The best way to go, i thought, was to fix the chair..fix the dash..Fix the fuselage together..adjust it from the underside..and thán put the floor in. (if you still want to that is..)



..Because soon enough you will discover that the legs under the chair section are too long as well..They are level with the outer skin..



Sadley enough you have to fit a wing unit in there that also has te be level with the outer skin..



So those legs also have to be removed. How nice to discover that when everything is already firmly in place..And does it then finally fit?



Well,,,it is all in there..But it's gonna take some more sanding and reshaping to really get somewhere...







Based on a days modelling getting nowhere. :-) My suggestion would now be..Cut of the leggy bits on both the dash and the chair unit. Make some piping from scratch. Fit does in from underneath..and forget about the bodemplate all together. It will save you a lot of hussle...
And while we are on the subject of hussle...Another small attention point...



I would give the top of the dashboard a splash of colour to. Again the fit is not great.
So is this gonna be a update full of wyning and grinding..Nah. I had way to much fun fiddling with it all. And the endresult isn''t all bad...









Next problem..ixing the wings...But that's for another update

Nice build, uour work in the cockpit is making my head spin.

I was wondering if the kit was correct with the under wing radiator layout, I had in my head the small cooler on the port side was revised to match that on the starboard prior to the Mk V. And so I went looking for some references and the kit would appear to be correct. Anyhow I found this very nice walk round set of pics of VB http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/mark_hayward/supermarine_spitfire_vb_bm597/

Thanks Stooge. In the end most work on the cockpit...well was actually leaving things out. :-)

To be honnest i am at the moment on that transition point, from glueing pieces together and painting it as the manufacturer advices, to seriously knowing about the subject and beeing as acurate as possible. So often i start taking it, as is. Because i give priority to learning all the basic modelling skills. (Like stop throwing on to much glue and paint..grmmble)..And in the end quite often i redo halve of it anyway.

The air intake i didn;t look at i have to admit. Good to know i can leave that as is. And thanks for the walk around link. I think i'm gonna use the exhausts picture on those as a reference for mine. They look nicely aged.

And just because you can't have too many Spitfire pictures.

I think you and this guy: more spitfire pictures Could have the same source Jessie. :-)

I left this blog yesterday, complaining about the general fit of the wing...



Odd thing was. When i started work on it this morning..And removed the upperwingsections..Everything was suddenly fine while again...



So i had another look at the upper wings segments..And.."Shame"...could this bit of excess sprue have anything to do with it...



(That's what you get when you forget you taped the wings for a test fit. And did nothing more to them afterwards ..."blush blush blush"

Ok. That was problem was quickly solved with a bit of sanding. I straight away started on the fuselage. And discovered a small "dent"in the nose...






I still have the same kinda problem waiting with a wingwarp. Which i both gonna try and fix with some added styreen strips..



I must say that, as a whole the fuselage fit is a wee bit off. Something i didn't see while putting them together..
Wich is a shame cause in fact it's an easy fix.



So i would advice to check for that when building this kit. I personally would have removed the pins and fixed the halves without them in retrospective.

...Back to the build. I was now more focused. Checking every segment twice. And the wing needed some work..



My solution. Sand the connection to shape. And then only fit one upper segment of wing. Using the lower wing only as a guideline



After dryin, the right upper wing side got the same treatment. And the seams were way less then before. (Note the lower wing section still beeing unattached, until i was convinced the upper section was perfect.)



Next thing the wingtips.



Now i understand that Revell wants to offer the option of two versions. On the other hand you DO run the risk of a poor fit on a very visible spot. And that's exactly what happened. So in this case i cut everything clean..and was therefore capable of getting a way better fit.






Not perfect. But "workable..

Then Revell suggested to add some "goosebumps"



But where??



Reference shows that it has something to do with the cannons..



So i only needed to find the hole for the cannon and i was off...



If you look reaaaaallly careful.. You will see a slight engraving where the cannon panel should be. So i decided i was better off with a marker of my own



And then there was the problem of fixing two tiny, flat. oval, slippery pieces without loosing them to the carpet monster. :-)



Same story for the underside..





Nicely measuring the upper side up..For a mirrored effect..



To discover that those bumps are way bigger then real life. And the wheel bays are nicely screwing things up. I wonder if i was wise putting them on..looking at it again..



But moaning and groaning as i was..I slowly run out of parts to add. Sure the landingg ear, cannons, antenna and exhausts still need fitting. But that's a job best saved for last. So tommorow is putty time. And then hopefully sunday paintday!







..And still with that last picture i had the odd feeling something was off center in the whole thing..So i measured the tail section..checked it again. Checked the front and rechecked what i did. Still very single connection looked fine..Up till the point where i had the fuselage straight in front of me..And saw what WAS off centre...



The total front wing. Talking about it with a modelling friend we think that i was so focused on preventing a big gap between the wing and the fuselage. That i didn't realize that i was putting more tension on one side then on the other. Creating a off center V shape. Solving one problem to create another.

Oh well as they say. You live and learn.

And again i'm one stage further. Almost done with the Putty /sanding stage. So here is an update off the progress so far.

First of, i needed to take care of the bigger damage. I think it was Joel who suggested to fill those up with some Styreen strips. And i totally agreed. A dutch guy i followed a lot when i re-entered the hobby, has the tendency to overflow the Styreen "bandages' with glue afterwarts. And i wanted to try that too.




As he predicted the glue makes the plastic really weak. And in that state it "flows" into the gaps.



Other then the big "monday-morning-mould -gaps'..The kit actually doesn;t need that much putty. Bit on the wingroots, the tailwings, a bit around the antenna and at the frontnose. But nothing dramatic really.









While that was drying yesterday, the postman brought the markings i wanna use..



And i went out to buy a "bit' of paint..



...(Oh and i just couldn't resist this small little cutty. Wasn't there a 1/144 campaign coming up?)



..ack on topic...After putty comes sanding.



It was a bit hard to see when i needed to stop. But i remembered getting the advice to "mark' the area you sand with a different colour. Again something to try out..







Yep makes perfect sense..Same story happened underneath..



The black part that was left over, is lower then the wing section. That's already been filled up with putty and drying..

The "soke it with glue" technique worked like a charm. Only thing i discovered is that the plastic under the repairpatch was still a bit soft. So next time i'll probably will let it dry one, maybe even two days more. Just in case.

Then i realized that it might be smart to compare the sanded down fuselage with a original one. To see if i damaged the overall shape. So out came the Airfix Mk 1 version. The retooled one.



Good..I did manage to keep it intact. In that case. It's overview time again





Which means tomorrow i can get some paint on...

Now i thought i could do some painting today. Only a Few jobs left. So why not..Well because things don't always turn out as you plan. :-)

First on the agenda this morning, was some last sanding. And repairing some of the damaged panel lines.



And then preparing the last small bits was all that was left. In my head i had jumped that stage in a jiffy. In reality those things always take longer. Most of the stuff was basic prep work. Cutting them from the sprues and running the knife along the seams to clean them up. Some other stuff took a bit more work..

The wheels for instance. i sanded them down on one side to mimic the weight of the plane..



I also tried sanding the bottom of the tire with a rough sandpaper. (180 i think) and then leaving it that way. I'm hoping that the roughness will give a more natural looking worn down effect after paint. ...



I also drilled out the exhaust pipes..



Which went a bit wrong on one of them. (the middle one on the right in the picture below.) Which made me thinking. As a right handed person i turn the drill in the direction of the clock. Therefore the drill has the tendency to slide a bit to the right. (as you can see in the damaged part.)
So after realising that i tried drilling the first drill a wee bit to the left of the real centre. Hoping that would adjust for the slight slide. And it did. :-).



Next up were the two canons.



In this case drilling was not an option



So i went for a hot needle



In the end the needle i choose was still a bit to big..But the heat worked. It did make the needle sink in without bending the delicate barrel. Next time i need to try that again with a thinner needle



By know i had a nice collection of small bits..



And two empty sprues...So now could i start spraying..?



Nope the canopy still needed to be taped off. And that became a ..well a frustrating job.. Cause was the section i circled here



I didn't manage to get the angles right..Or the lines..or the symmetry. Or all of them...So i kept struggling, removing, re-trying..and so on and so forth. Up till the point..(read almost 2 hours after starting)..That i finally realised that no-one ever said, i had to do ALL the lines at once..Duh..! Somehow i always see canopy's that look like they have been done in one go. So i never questioned that. But in this case it is so much easier to do it in two sessions. First the lines going from left to right over the canopy. When they are done i just remove all the tape. And then tape off the diagonal.

After that moment of brightness masking only took another 30 minutes..





so finally all is ready for painting.

Today was paint day. And i was quite excited about it. Because it's the second model i'm gonna do using an airbrush. The previous one beeïng this: "what if the dutch would have had one..." Hawker Hurricane



The colourscheme i had in mind was this one..



The spitfire EB/W 41e squadron; Hawkins, Kent in 1942.

Not for a specific reason. It just happened to be the one shown in the Januari edition of Flugzeug classic magazine. First job was finding a colourmatch for Humbroll 90 or "Sky". Which wasn't that easy..



But this should work. (And i have to say. I love working with those Vallejo paints.) I wanted to spray the sky band around the fuselage, instead of using the decal. I thought that would look better..





Second job was preparing the cockpit with interior green..Before adding the black outer layer..



But i wasn't really convinced by the gaps i didn't spot before..A bit sloppy actually. So some gatorglue was used as filler..



Talking about sloppy. Now how did i miss that excess plastic..



But anyway. Moving on. The spitfire should be coated with flat black. But i was afraid that, using the black straight away, would make the colour dull and liveless., So instead i tried a undercoat of Vallejo Dark grey.





Followed by two coats of Tamiya flat black. building up the intencity. Which i thought looked nicer..



I'm still amazed how much detail you see, thinking back on the result with a brush..Ok. let's remove the tape again..



I also still am amazed how easily you damage the airbrush layers, compared to the brushed one's. But that just takes getting use too ...LOL



I was doubting if to go for either interior green wheelbay's, or sky ones. After checking airfix's advice on their new Mk1/II kit. I went for sky..
I repaired the damage on the band and on the wheelbay. And then protected it all with a coat of gloss paint.



Which ment i was ready for decalling. Most of the decals come from the Revell sheet. Only for the letter code I bought an aftermarket sheet.



It's from Unlimited air models. didn't know the brand. But it looks good and works fine too...
Now back to the original colourscheme..



I did mention somewhere before, that they painted the trail spitfires black. But the original roundels were left. And painted around. Well that wasn't totally true. For some reason they did paint over the roundel between the letters. And repainted a smaller version. Don't ask me why they did that. But i did find it a nice touch. So i gave it a go, trying to replicate that..







But i didn;t like the end result. The cutting i did was to rough..and the roundel was still to big anyway. So i almost gave up on the idea. Almost..Cause didn't i buy a 1/144 hurricane last saterday?...And could it be that there was a set of roundels in there...?? And if so would they possibly fit??



jeeeuhhh...:-)





Only thing left to do now was to add a splash of Sol..and everything was done..But YIAAKS..





I knew from other builders that this could happen. And that you should leave it alone. But i never actually SAW it happen. So i was a bit startled..Would it really work?
(All experienced modellers looking now will say.."of course it did." And they would be right. Brilliant stuff.)



In between drying times i entertained myself with painting the small bits..



I'm not gonna show everything. But i AM happy how the wheels and prop turned out..so i'll show those..







And with the sol dry. I added another layer of Gloss, in preperation of the next stage..totally satisfied. I learned a lot today. Always a good thing.





To finish it off a picture of a guy doing decals..scale 1 on 1..
I'm not sure who has the tougher job thou..

[img]http://modelbrouwers.nl/media/albums/302/9553/mini-spitfire%20(154).jpg[/img

Sweet build Cliff! The effort you put into it really shows in the finished product.

Ernest

Not anymore Ernest..Not anymore..

Sometimes you have to take on on the chin. In this case one from Mr Murphy.

The modellimg day started out nice enough. Adding a bit of wear and tear on the wings...






Bit of dirt in teh wheelbay....



And then i decided to do some repairwork. I failed to properly clean up the Sol residu yesterday. And especially in matt finish it showed. So i decided a bit of a touch up would be needed..



Which i pushed a bit too far. So overspray on the Sky band..Well tape it off and easy fix right..??





TMaybe not. And then Mr Murphy took his chance. Blocked airbrush tips, spiders, Paint that was to grainy for the size needle i choose. Finish coats that didn't turn out right because of all the troubles i was geting...

So to make a long frustration short



back to the drawing board...



And can somebody accompany Mr Murphy to the door please??

too bad. you had overcome everything to that point.

look forward to how you redo it.



joe

It was looking great, shame the paint let you down at the end. I had a recent disaster myself that needed a repaint.
I did make a start at building the old Airfix Mk.V as the all black JU-H until I got side tracked with some campaign builds. I've only got the add the decals and matt varnish it and I'm done. Seeing yours has reminded me that I should dig it out and finish it!
Best of luck with the repaint, looking forward to seeing the finished kit. Its nice to know I'm not the only mad enough to want a black Spitfire!

Thanks guys.

Oh well, it's the nature of learning modelling. You know, especially in the beginning, that when you learn techniques. You are gonna make mistakes.
It's a wee bit annoying when it happens in the very last stages..but ok.
Same thing happened with the Hurricane. I wanted to make one final exhaust fume thingy..and right there i lost control over the trigger.



what it should have been..you can see on the other side,..



The only way for me to get a hang at this airbrushing..is by doing it again and again.. So by now the plane is stripped of it's paint..


...leaving a very impressive preshade

But what went wrong. Well first of i cleaned up the Sol residue with water. But didn't remove all of that. So you get those odd whitish borders. I discovered i can prevent these by blow-drying the plane. But are there other ways to prevent those water stains?
Second the Vallejo Sky was acting up while used in my 2.0 needle. I have been told that metal colours and white should be used in 4.0 needles, because the particles are a bit bigger. It almost seemed that this was the case with this sky too. Can that be? Is is that something i can expect from more lighter colours?

LUCTOR ET EMERGO !!!

That's the slogan of one of the dutch provences. And it means as much as..'I struggle yet i emerge victorious'.

And i found it a fitting way to start this update. because it totally summons up my build today. It all started out really nice and easy on Friday. With a stripped Spitfire.
I decided if i had it stripped down anyway. I could just as well fix some small holes i forgot in the nose the first time around..



After that, it was off to the modelling shop again. First buy. Another 1/144 kit. I needed another one to rob the decals from. This time the Tempest. You can see that the roundel has a lesser thick yellow band. Which will fit better with the original paint scheme.



The second buy was some Primers. Much more used here on this forum then on the dutch forum iam on. But after seeing how easy the paint coat damages without it. I understand why you guys do it. (there are also a lot of younger kids in the dutch forum. So that kinda explains why they don't. )



A wise decision in retrospective, But before we come to that. I first wanted to get all the small bits finished yesterday. First masking the canopy. In two stages, as i promised myself..(And i also remembered the 'against-the-light'trick. To make it even more easy on myself..







I'm now on the lookout for a cheap second hand light box
. But this will do me fine for now. The black lines on the tape are the lines i wanna do in phase 2.





And phase two it is....



It saved me about 1 hour and a lot of frustration. Straight away in the dutch equivellant of future..





And a job done..Next up aging the props..





Landing gear..







Wheels also, while i was at it..



exhausts...









I also decided to change the way i protected my wheelbays. Tack didn't work that well last time around. And there must be a good reason why so many modellers use a sponge.



As promised..first primer this time..



And we are off again..[airbrush mode on]





I used some left over paint for the eyes of a blue tit my girlfriend made



And there i already questioned the quality of the finish. But yet i carried on. With a final layer of gloss [/airbrush mode out]



But..&*^^*$$#&%&%&^$$##... (fill in your favorite four letter words, a lot of them...)





It went wrong again. But why?
Nevermind. First how to fix this..Polish it with toothpaste maybe.?



nope to rough a survice. I needed a 3000 sandpaper to do the trick.



In the meantime i was questioning if it really WAS the Gloss. Or if it even was a mistake i made myself.
Just one way to find out. Do a test. On the left the Tamiya Flat black. On the right Vallejo black.





left rough again. Right smooth service. And on a old plane i had lying around..???





Same result. The flat black just dries up rough. It probably should. But it's not something you want on a 1/72 airplane. Because i didn't know that. I kept running in to the same problem over and over again..

Ok. Now that we have that sorted.. Attempt number 3. [airbrush mode on again.] This time with Vallejo black. (But first to fix the sky (again))..



sproei..(In the meantime i also learned that it makes a lot of difference if you spray Vallejo black with a 0.2 or a 0.4 mm needle. The 0.2 being the better choice.) [/airbrush mode off again]



Hmmm maybe pay more attention to how i mask next time.. :roll: ..



But that was an easy brush fix..More importantly..Look at the coat of paint. Now, That's more like it..







As i said in the beginning. Luctor et emergo.
(Now i only hope the Gloss won't pull a trick on me. Fingers crossed....)


later edit Nope the Gloss didn't play tricks on me no more. paint roblem solved. (well this time anyway.) I also again felt i had a lot more control using the 0.2 needle over the 0.4. Guess the more fluid a mixture is the thinner the needle should be.

After decalwork i put on a last layer of Gloss to protect it al. And start the aging proses. But after looking at a lot of reference pictures....





I noticed how little dirt, damage, smoke and such there actually was on those spitfires..So considering that "less most of the times is more.." I only did this..



I still wanted to add a wee splash of colour and interest. Which meant sanding some styreen in triangleshapes..



a drop of yellow..



Again weee bit more styreen..



Because the mirror on top of the canopy is an obvious thing on all spitfires..



And after adding all those items. And all the loose bits that were lying around in the drying box..I had this in front of me.



The point where you ask yourself. Am i gonna make it better when i tweak another thing. Or should i leave it?
...Well in this case i think leave it is the wisest thing to do. So out we went into the sun. For a nice 'end of build' shoot..
Here it goes.





















Overall i am happy. I need to get a couple of builds under my belt. To get comfortable with all stages of modelling. And i did that. I am happy with the paintwork. The cockpit. The aging on the props, exhaust and wing roots.

I still need to get more precise on sanding, be more precise with glue and fixing stuff.
And the moment of putting on the small bits backfired when the first paintjob went wrong.
Oh and i got the lettering wrong on one side. I even checked the lettering order on the Revell Tangmere version. And copied that using the lettercode EB/O. Wich said make it O/EB. I thought that would be a generally done thing then. But no. It should have been EB/O. Oh well. I can live with that.

Main thing is that i learned a lot. Especially working with the airbrush and paint. And i had lots of fun in the proses. (yes even when it went wrong). That's th most important thing.
I hope you guys enjoyed reading it all.

Oh and all the dust particles on the finished Spitfire? I have to blame these three critters here..,



...the rabbit already shamefully hiding here, ..



and the Nine rats sleeping their sleep of innocence here..



In our household dust is a given. Nothing i can do about that. It's not stuck on the paintjob. Thats the 'best i can do.

End on that bombshell...



It's time to go on to the next build. Hope to see you there again.

You've triumphed in spite of the problems which might have caused many of us to give the model a last brief flight against the nearest wall. Congratulations! You have a Spitfire which looks very much different from the regular all too common camouflage

Thanks Jessie.

I have to admit. There were one or two moments when i wanted to use the "fly to the wall' method. But in the end i wanted to learn to airbruah a model. Not learn to make a puzzle.
So i decided it would be wiser to cary on.

Great to see it finished Cliff!
I hope your cats stay away from them. I have a cat who several years ago took an immense dislike to a Phantom I had on a shelf. He would carefully tip-toe around every other model and push off just that one. Repaired several times, but he would do it all over again. Sadly the landing gear was completely broken the last time he did it. My sister once had a hamster that pulled apart a Tiger Moth before savagely attacking a Panther tank. It was almost like a scene from a 1950's monster movie!

Looking forward to seeing more builds.
Stephen