Hello, everyone. Been awhile since I’ve done a WIP so here goes. This will take awhile…the Aifix Spitfire Mk.IXc in 1/24 is a big beast.
The kit is very well detailed - not much needed to add. But of course, we ALWAYS add something, don’t we? Wait…right, we do don’t we?
I’m a big fan of fabric seat belts, especially in the bigger scales, so I’m adding in a set of HGW belts. And, since I’m inherently lazy, I’m using a set of resin exhaust stacks to avoid sanding awkward seams on the two-piece kit items (12 times…). I also dislike sanding seams on round things, so…yup - I “need” a set of cannons. And that’s all…except I will be painting all the markings and stencils. RAF Desert Camo anyone?..
And finally, here are the masks. The stencil masks from 1ManArmy are AMAZING. I hope I’m up to the challenge…but I think it’ll be fun! That’s all for now…more to come soon I hope!
This is going to be a great build. I haven’t seen a lot of these on the contest tables yet. The Spitfire is such a gorgeous plane. One of my favorite WWII war birds.
Hey all…a quick update. I decided to start work on the engine for the Spitfire, since I was busy with other builds and I figured that was a safe way to get some “bits and pieces” progress done. Airfix has a fully loaded Merlin included in the kit, so there’s a lot to cut out, clean up, and assemble. After awhile, an engine appears.
My build plan will be to keep the left hand cowling off to show off a decent amount of the engine, but keep the rest of the cowlings in place to not impact he lovely lines of the Spitfire. The kit really is designed for all cowlings on - and they have you build a “core” of an engine to mount parts - or all cowlings off. We’ll see how well my plan survives
I’ve been looking at pictures online, both restored and wartime engines, and it seems there were a number of ways a Merlin could be painted…so, I can relax and have fun, right? I plan to stick with basic black with highlights. But I’ll start with a dark grey and mess it up with washes etc. from there. Should be fun. One constant seems to be the red “Rolls Royce” titling on the covers.
The engine mount was executed very well by Airfix. They suggest using the engine as a jig to assemble the mount, and it works perfectly. While working on the engine, I also cleaned up and prepared the cowlings. Unfortunately, they have some ejector pin marks that must be filled in if you wish to have the panels off. I added the internal framework to the left engine cowl, as it may be seen in the engine bay through the other side.
Here’s what the prepped cowls and fully assembled, unpainted engine looks like (with an ubiquitous #11 blade for scale):
