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Here's my rendition of Eduard's 1/48 Spitifire Mk1a Profipack edition depicted as a somewhat war weary R6835 XT-W of RAF 603 “City of Edinburgh” Sqn based at Hornchurch aerodrome in Essex as I imagine it looked relatively late on in the Battle of Britain in early September 1940 . You can view a short video of it on Youtube here https://youtu.be/pNsTsed2qfc and read a more detailed build log on Britmodeller here. Updated 18/08/23. Added some new pics of R6835 including some with recently finished ICM RAF Personnel plus an Airfix Albion 3-Point Refueller that I completed some time ago. The boarding pilot figure has been slightly modified. I removed ICM's head modelled with the facemask on and replaced it with the head from an Airfix pilot figure sans mask. The Pilot is also somewhat over dressed for summer 1940, so it would be great if ICM should release a version more suitably attired for July - August 1940? Ground crew in shirt sleeves would also be cool!

At the risk of over sharing, here’s my fulsome account of building R6835 from Eduard’s excellent 1/48 Spitfire Mk 1a kit. Paints used were the A.Mig 7215 Air Set RAF WWII Early Colo(u)rs acrylics for the Camo and Tamiya acrylics for everything else. I visited Duxford earlier this year to see the temporary Spitfire exhibit, which featured several of the major Spitfire variants and this is what prompted me to finally dig this kit out of my stash. This was my first ever Eduard kit and I was looking forward to realising the fine exterior surface detailing together with the plethora of detailed small plastic and colour photoetched internal parts which promised to result in a very detailed and accurate model of this famous aircraft. However, construction was not without its frustrations. There was flash present on some of the mouldings and a few parts had pronounced sink marks which needed filling, such as the engine exhaust manifolds shown below. Also, in my opinion some of the parts assembly proved to be more complex than it needed to be. For example, the detailed wheel well side walls could have been constructed from fewer parts. I also ended up with relatively large gaps either side on both wing root joints that needed filling, so risking damage to all that fine surface rivet detail on the wing root upper surface. Careful application of Mr Surfacer 1000 filled these gaps and paring back/levelling of the fill, together with somewhat more wing root paint chipping than I had originally intended helped to cover this up. I should probably give Eduard the benefit of the doubt until I’ve tried another of their offerings, but first impressions are that one shouldn’t expect Tamiya levels of fit from them. However, let’s face it, overcoming construction challenges is a major part of our hobby and in skilled hands with care this kit can no doubt result in an impressive model, if not in my attempt. I also had issues with some of the Eduard decals, which proved overly thick such that they didn’t conform or settle into all that fine surface detail. In my opinion, the roundels were especially bad in this respect. I was raised in Essex just up the road from Hornchurch and wanted to build an aircraft that flew from here during the BoB, so I chose to build the kit as P6385 XT-W, the mount of kiwi pilot Brian Carbury of 603 Sqn when he became ace in a day on Aug 31st 1940. 603 “City of Edinburgh” Sqn was based at Hornchurch from Aug 27th through to Dec 3rd 1940 and under 11 Group was heavily involved throughout the battle over Southern England. I wanted to depict this aircraft in a somewhat war worn state as it might have appeared in late summer. I tried to find out the fate of P6835 to make sure it survived long enough to justify the war worn look, but all I could find on-line was that Mk IIa Spitfire P7350 carried the XT-W code in 603 Sqn from October 1940, so presumably P6385 was either lost or written off sometime just before this. In the main I followed the construction sequence recommended by Eduard. This is relatively easy to follow, but there are some potential pit falls. For example, the instructions appear to show that 2x PE30 parts should be used when assembling the radiator, when in fact part PE3 should be used for the rear grill because it has the mounting holes for the pipework. I began by drilling out the weight reducing punch-outs in the cockpit fuselage frames. I somehow knew these wouldn’t be that visible in the final build, but hey-ho I know they’re there. When first assembling the seat, I managed to select the incorrect side parts and had to un-glue it all and attach the correct parts. Unfortunately, this resulted in a slightly warped seat. If you’re impatient like me, always keep in mind to double check that you are using the correct parts for your build! I used the PE part for the seat flare holder, which looks more convincing than the styrene part, but I don’t yet have a PE folding tool, so folding this and all the other PE parts into shape required careful use of fine forceps, the straight edge of scalpel blade and most importantly at my age, reading glasses! Once assembled, the seat needs to be handled with care because the attachment lugs which pass through the PE armour back plate on to the seat support frame are quite delicate. I managed to break one off and had to carefully re-attach it with cyano. Eduard indicate that you can select either the seat back with leather back rest or the bare metal version. I tried to find out which version was likely to have been fitted to P6385 but couldn’t find any info on-line, so chose the padded version. This seat padding appeared to be black leather in some images seen on-line, so I brush painted this in matt black and highlighted raised areas with a semi-gloss clear coat. I applied a little chipping to the cockpit green painted seat using Tamiya matt aluminium and attached the colour PE seat belts with jeweller’s adhesive. The belts look too light a shade of tan to my eyes, but I decided not to risk painting them a darker shade. The buckles are also too silvered and should probably have more of a bronzed look, but I also decided these would be too risky to try and correct. I used the PE armoured back plate and omitted the head armour plate as per Eduard’s instructions. However, I do wonder if head armour might have been retrofitted by late summer 1940 along with a rear-view mirror? BTW, the Eduard colour side profile for XT-W shows a rear-view mirror is fitted, but the accompanying written description clearly states that there wasn’t one. The colour PE Control Panel and compass certainly add a degree of truthiness to the cockpit, although I understand from comments elsewhere that these may not be 100% accurate. I was reasonably happy with my final cockpit assembly. I managed to get the tiny PE handbrake lever attached to the control column spade grip OK and a reasonably realistic paint job on the trigger button. I added some fine wire to the control column to replicate the missing hydraulic (?) lines and the 3 cables that feed through the hole in the forward port cockpit framing. These are all visible in the final build, but unfortunately, I forgot to apply two of the cockpit sidewall placard decals before closing the fuselage☹ However, I do think I corrected an error on Eduard’s suggested rudder pedal assembly. It’s my understanding that by the BoB all Spitfires had two-step rudder pedals, with the upper step intended to supply a higher G tolerance for the pilot by raising their legs. Eduard’s instructions appear to suggest cutting off the styrene step and replacing it with the PE part, but I retained the styrene step and added the PE part on top. It doesn’t really matter because you can’t really see these when the fuselage is closed up, but as with the drilled-out frames, at least I know they are there. I initially misunderstood how the PE shoulder straps should be assembled. I used cyano to stick the two-part shoulder belts together and then realised that the elements that fold back behind the seat were attached the wrong way round, so that the bare metal side of the PE part ended up being visible instead of the coloured side. In my attempt to remove and reattach these correctly, I managed to break off and lose the tiny shoulder strap buckles☹. I then realised that I should have attached the shoulder straps to the seat before attaching the seat to the armoured back plate because folding these relatively thick PE straps back realistically to attach behind the seat with the armour plate in place proved to be beyond me. In the end I decided to bodge it and leave off the rear straps. If I ever build this kit again at least I’ll know to attach these straps before attaching the seat to the support frame, but I can’t help thinking that aftermarket cloth or decal straps might also be a better way to go at this scale. Closing up the fuselage sides resulted in a slight step on the upper forward fuselage which had to be pared and sanded back. I think I’ve seen others comment on this being a drawback of Eduard’s decision not to provide a one-piece upper cowling which would avoid a prominent seamline here. You’re left having to remove quite a lot of plastic to obtain a seamless joint at the risk of losing both surface detail and the correct fuselage profile whilst still having a hint of joint line. I managed to retain the panel lines across the top of the forward fuselage when removing the excess styrene. Otherwise, the requirement for gap filling on the fuselage is minimal and only a smidgen of Mr. Surfacer 1000 was required in a few places. I applied some masking tape to protect the fuselage sides when removing the excess Mr. Surfacer applied to the wing root gaps. As well as the gap, some styrene had to be pared away with a sharp chisel blade and sanded back to remove a step-up on the forward starboard wing root. At this stage I attached the ailerons in a deflected position in line with the control column spade grip’s deflection to starboard, although the starboard aileron needed repositioning after the shot below was taken because its inboard end was sitting proud of the upper wing surface, as seen here. It's important to note that although all the main control surfaces look as if they should be poseable, if you want them deflected some fettling is required to make them sit well. Rudder and elevators were only push fit at this stage of the build. Next up I sprayed the wheel wells with Tamiya matt aluminium, then painted and assembled both the oil cooler and radiator. The colour PE radiator grills are certainly worth using, but the PE grills for the oil cooler can’t be seen when the oil cooler is finished and although I did use them, I wouldn’t bother with them on any subsequent build. In my opinion, the radiator assembly is another example of unnecessary part complexity. It’s quite tricky to get its multiple components aligned correctly so that they fit the wing location perfectly and it should have been possible to mould the radiator main body in one, rather than as three separate parts. The radiator bay also has one of the smallest kit parts I have ever seen provided in plastic form. I’m not sure what it is exactly but it may be a pressure or temperature sensor tube mounted just ahead of the radiator grill that you can just about see in the shot below? The small PE struts for the radiator flap were also a fiddle to fit, but necessary because I planned having this in the open position and they would therefore be visible. I’m glad I’d decided before starting this build that I wouldn’t try and model the flaps in the down position. This would have meant purchasing the Eduard flap set and involved a lot of fettling, but I also remember reading somewhere that Spitfire flaps were usually retracted quickly on landing because they interfered with airflow through the radiator during taxiing, which could result in engine overheating? This was apparently exacerbated by the fact that when extended the main undercarriage olio also partially occluded radiator airflow! I moved on next to painting the gunsight. I first painted the outer surface and base of the lens glass in matt aluminium, before overpainting this with cockpit green and some matt black detailing. This was so the lens glass would have a mirror finish and hopefully reflect nicely in the reflector glass. However, when I painted in the side supports on the reflector glass, I unfortunately forgot to check if there was any residue left behind from the supplied die cut tape mask. Sure enough there was, but by the time I spotted it the assembled gunsight and windscreen had already been cemented in place. Subsequently, I tried to remove residue with the end of a cocktail stick, but I’m afraid it still looks a bit cloudy. So much for silvering the lens😊.A small amount of Mr. Surfacer was needed around the front of the windscreen, and I trimmed one of the closed canopies to fit before attaching it and the side hatch temporarily with PVA so that they would completely mask the cockpit interior for spraying. You can see here that at least I didn’t forget to fill in the repositioned electrical connector access hatch on the wing root below the canopy provided to depict later spitfire marks. The die cut windscreen masking was straight forward to apply and an all over coat of Tamiya rattle can grey primer followed. I never cease to be amazed at how well this settles and flattens without obscuring fine surface detail. I then realised that I hadn’t sprayed the windscreen framing interior green before priming. This led to some nervous anticipation during the rest of the build as I thought this would result in grey internal windscreen framing when viewed through the open cockpit, but I needn’t have worried. An external coat of dark green over the grey primer resulted in the desired light grey green hue when the masking was removed later.😊 After applying the PE and styrene parts for the underside wing tip ducts, I airbrushed the underside with Sky Type S from the Mig Air set. After masking off the fuselage undersides, a light coat of Mig RAF Dark Green followed for the upper surfaces and this highlighted the fact that more filling work was required on the wing roots, so out came the Mr. Surfacer again, which I applied with a fine line brush. While I waited for this to cure, I started to prepare masks for the B type Camouflage pattern applied to XT-W. After carefully measuring the ratio between the wingspan of the model and the colour profiles provided by Eduard, I used my A3 printer’s copier scaling function to make accurate scale colour copies of the side and plan profiles. I then cut out one each of the dark green sections from one of the copies to act as mask templates. The Camo masking method I used on my 1/48 Airfix Hurricane Mk1 build involved applying rolls of curved blue tack (or preferably white tack which potentially leaves less residue) by eye directly on to the model and applying tape over the areas that require blanking off. For the Spitfire I used a combination of the cut out dark green camouflage sections and some masking tape to cover the more curved sections of the model. Blue tack was applied first to the back of the cut- out sections and these were pushed gently onto the model, which had already had a final coat of Dark Green applied. Once masked a couple of coats of Mig Medium Brown Dark Earth completed the camo pattern. The result was a very close match to Eduard’s take on the B type pattern, if not the pattern applied to the real aircraft. Once I was happy with the colour coats, I sprayed a gloss coat of future on ready for decaling. I started with the wing walk markings but made a couple of errors. One of these was to apply the fore-aft markings the wrong way round, with the walk inboard placards on the outside of the line! By the time I realised what I’d done, Microsol had done its job and they were firmly attached. I decided to live with it. Perhaps an overworked Supermarine, or RAF painter misapplied the stencils?😊 The second error was to follow Eduard’s guidance on the starboard walkway. I’d failed to spot that this disagreed with what I’d learnt a few years back when I built my 1/32 Tamiya Mk IXc and this is that in all Spitfire versions prior to those with dual radiators (and maybe even Mk Vs?), the upper starboard wing root above the radiator wasn’t marked as a walkway because the wing skin here was considered too thin to support much weight and so there was no fore-aft walkway on the starboard side. The wing walkway markings only became symmetrical when the starboard wing root skin was strengthened in later marks. This meant I had to carefully overspray this spurious decal before moving on to applying the remaining decals. Funnily enough, if you look at certain Spitfire photos from the BoB, you can clearly see that even without a marked walkway, some aircraft had wear on the rear starboard wing root. With the need to turn around aircraft as quickly as possible between sorties, it’s perhaps not surprising that ground crew appear to have ignored the rules. As already mentioned, the Eduard decals are quite thick. The tail flashes and the wing roundels especially. It took multiple applications of Microsol to get these to lay down properly and they never appeared to conform completely, being so thick they partially obscured some of the panel lines and other surface details on the wings and tailfin. The roundels on the top surface also ended up with a narrow but visible carrier film around their edge. This wasn’t ‘silvering’ as such and faded after application of a semi gloss sealing coat. I’ve seen Youtube videos showing it is possible to remove the upper carrier film on these new style Eduard decals, but I didn’t fancy making things worse by ending up partially removing the decal itself, so decided to leave well alone. However, a small piece of the film did come away accidentally when I removed the temporarily closed side hatch, which had part of the X from the squadron code attached, so perhaps it would be relatively easy to remove the film from all the decals. I might have a practice for the future by using some of the left-over decals. I’ve never yet tried paint masks instead of decals, but if I were to build this kit again, I might also either invest in some masks, or at least a more traditional set of aftermarket decals. I now had to decide which A type sized roundels to use on the underside. Eduard’s colour profile shows XT-W carrying the larger 50” A-Type roundels centred mid-aileron. However, the colour profiles of other 603 Sqn Spitfire Mk1a in the Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 12 book show a smaller 40” A-Type roundel applied further out toward the wingtip. Eduard point out that underwing roundels were applied when the Air Ministry ordered they be present from Aug 11th 1940 onward. It seems reasonable to assume that all 603 Sqn aircraft had the same size underwing roundels applied in the field at that time and so based on the Osprey reference I was planning on using the smaller roundels supplied by Eduard for R9386, but an on-line search for photographic confirmation of this uncovered a grainy black and white photo of aircraft at Hornchurch in summer 1940 which included a distant W coded aircraft. Enlargement and contrast enhancement of this image appears to show a faint outline of the larger format roundel inboard of the pitot tube under the port wing (Outlined with a dashed line below). It’s by no means conclusive evidence because this could be a W coded aircraft from another Sqn (The Sqn code is hidden behind the port wing), or purely an artifact of image processing, but for me it tipped the balance in favour of using the larger roundel as depicted in the Eduard profile. This aircraft also looks as if it might have carried a cartoon or other marking on the port fuselage side ahead of the canopy based on the light coloured spot seen here? This seems to have been the favoured location for any nose art applied to Spitfires. Use of the smaller roundel would in fact have been less problematic, because the rather thick Eduard decal proved difficult to lay over the ducts and fairings at the mid aileron location, but multiple applications of Microsol plus a little retouching of some small tears with white and blue paint after this shot was taken eventually produced a reasonable result. I applied a sealing coat of Tamiya semi-gloss clear acrylic on completion of the decaling and took some pictures as a record of the pristine paint job before moving on to the weathering. I used an old Revell 1/72 Hunter kit from years ago that I never completed as a weathering mule and tried out two chipping techniques using a silver Uni Paint marker pen and Tamiya flat aluminium acrylic paint applied with a piece of packaging foam. The pen technique worked out OK initially, but when I tried a wash over with a Mig enamel wash, the enamel solvent just smeared it all out, so I switched to using the foam to lightly dab on the Tamiya aluminium, which being acrylic was not affected by enamel solvent. After applying the same chipping technique to the Spit around the wing root, wing walkways and gun access ports, further weathering effects were added using the A.Mig 7416 Air weathering set for Early RAF Fighters and Bombers, Oil Stain from Tamiya Item 87088 Weathering Master Set for the exhaust staining and Tamiya Smoke acrylic paint applied by brush for gun smoke streaking. The Mig Storm Grey pin wash was good at highlighting the panel lines on the underside, but the Mig Neutral Brown pin wash on the topside turned out to be somewhat subtler. Finally I recreated the radio aerial wire using Mig elastic rigging thread applied with a few spots of cyano. I'll post up further pictures of the finished article in the ready for inspection - aircraft forum and try and get a better colour balance than the shots above. Hope this was of interest.

Evening everyone, I decided my next model had to be a Spitfire. I love this aircraft - it was the first plastic kit that I built with my dad when I was eight or nine and seeing them fly over from Duxford every weekend reminded me how much I enjoyed making model kits when I was growing up. I'm sticking to 1/72 for now (though might treat myself to an Eduard 1/48 Spit for Christmas) and couldn't decide between the Airfix mk1a or mk22, so decided to do both, which I thought would nicely bookend the development of this amazing plane. I'm going to build them pretty much ootb but will try to make them a bit "crisper", with better joins and filling, clearer canopies, etc, than the p51 and b17 I returned to modelling with here: So far I've got the cockpits painted up, fuselage halves and wings joined, gaps filled (sort of) and undercoat sprayed on. The mk1a (newer kit i think) had a bit more detail in the cockpit and fit together better than mk22, though no major problems with either. I tried to fill the seams with Vallejo plastic putty which has a really fine nozzle and goes on nicely. However, on sanding it back it sort of chips rather than going smooth and flat. I kept going at it (before and after spraying the undercoat) and reasonably happy with the finish now - it feels smoother than it looks in the photos so I'm hoping the first color coat will leave no visible line - we'll see! Any pointers on this would be great, thanks!