Douglas Bader's Spitfire, Eduard 1:48 scale kit "the Few"

Hi all,

Amongst airbrush issues and paint incompatibilities, I’ve managed to finish this nice kit - throughout most of the build I was listening to the audiobook of Douglas Bader’s biography, which was completely fascinating and inspiring! I highly recommend it.

This kit wasn’t easy for my skill level, but I learned a lot. There where issues around the wing roots, and the wheel struts don’t sit quite right, which is something to do with the internal construction of the wings - even though I put a lot of effort into getting that right.

Given the endless airbrush issues I’ve had, I ended up using my 0.2 Sparmax for the whole job. I’m proud of the camoflage job, which I did freehand (with my heart in my mouth!). I had planned on using Vallejo model air for this, but the colours didn’t look right, so ended up using Tamiya instead.

I was fairly successful in removing the clear carrier film on the Eduard decals - a couple of tears here and there (lucky it’s a double kit, so there were spare decals to cannibalise). The ones I’ve not fixed add a touch of wear and tear!

Nice! I had the same wingroot issue and their kits are notorious for lousy landing gear attachments. I just left the “film” on my decals and it was invisible under a coat of gloss. Eduard said removal of the film is not necessary. Nice freehand camo too. Thanks for sharing.

That’s a mighty fine looking Spitfire. I haven’t assembled one yet but I’ll take care with the wing roots. Decals came out fine as well.

Ah, that’s interesting that you’ve had a similar issue. This kit has two of everything, so I will have another shot at better wingroot and landing gear construction.

Thank you!

Looks great. I have a couple of the Eduard Spitfires in the stash and will watch out for the wing root and landing gear issues.