Another one to put in the case, after a little over two weeks work. This is the Revell Germany boxing of the Hasegawa Mk.IX kit, built as an Australian Mk.VIII. Ultracast supplied the seat with Q-type harness and the cockpit access door, and Aeromaster decals were used for the major markings. Stencils are from the kit decal sheet.

Paints were Tamiya and Gunze acrylics, followed by an oil wash and Tamiya powders.

I won't comment on the dimensional accuracy, as that horse is dead and buried. Other than the lower cowl, fit was excellent, and I still say the kit cockpit is one of the best styrene cockpits I have seen. In summary, I'd happily build another one.






Constructive criticism welcomed. Thanks for looking.

Just wanted to say great Spitfire. It is hard to build a bad one, they are such good looking birds.
Really like the mouth on the front. Looks great!
I am thinking of building an RCAF no.417 squadron Spit in 1/72 scale. I've got a poster on my wall of a flight of four taken in May of '43 over North Africa. They are flying with their canopies open.
Tamiya is the kit I am looking at getting. I think they have the mark V which is the airplane in my poster.
Again, great work and hope to see more from you. Russell

One more question for you, did you free hand the camoflauge or hard mask it. I have seen references that say the Spitfire was painted both ways. Take care. Russell

Thanks Russel. I have a PDF Spitfire camo mask, but I ended up freehanding it. I used the mask a rough guide, and traced a faint outline with pencil. Then all I had to do was color without worrying about staying inside the lines. :-) :-) :-)

Here's the camo mask if you want it:

Linky

Great spit. I have never seen a Spitfire before with sharks teeth.

It looks like it has two eyes on each side? One "extra" faint eye a little further back on the fuselage. Is that correct or is it some kind of camera reflection thing?

Hi Kevin, a fantastic build, congratulations. As you say the dimensions may be slightly out on the Hasegawa kit but it is a well engineered kit.

To be honest when I built one the only thing that looked "odd" to me was that the propeller spinner looked a bit on the large side. The white base plate and red spinner on yours seems to lessen this. Well done on an excellent kit.

I went against the instructions on this one. They would have had me paint the whole thing red. Considering a lot of RAAF Spits were acquired through the RAF, I figured they would have simply been repainted. I don't imagine the whole prop assembly would been removed in order to paint it red, so I only painted the spinner red, and left the base plate in Sky.

As luck would have it, I found a photograph (below) to support my decision.





100% correct. Reason for this is that there were two different sharkmouth designs applied to the nose. The earlier, smaller version had the eyes set further back. The later version that covered the whole cowl had the eyes more forward. When the new sharkmouth was applied, the old eyes were simply left to fade away.

But then again, a picture is worth a thousand words.........




As an aside, the Aeromaster instructions only have you use one set of eyes, but I like to be a bit different.

I can only agree on that one

Very nice work Kevin. Funny how the P-40 and Spitfire seem designed to have a sharks mouth.

Congratulations Kevin. Very nice looking Spitfire. The shark mouth makes it impresive.

Kevin,

Great job!