Spitfire Mk IX

[silverkite211]

This is the 1/32 scale Spitfire that I'm reworking, as I mentioned in another thread.

It started life as a Hasegawa Mk VI, with a High Flight Mk IX conversion, the conversion consisted of a replacement nose, radiator and late style rudder. I sanded off the cannon breech bulges form the top and bottom of the wing, made a couple of thinner style breech bulges from 1/72 scale bomb bodies, reshaped the Mk VI wingtips from the kit as well as the cannon (and added the second stub cannon fairing) and called it good.

I was never happy with how the paintjob came out, I tried hand brushing the camo, however the paint was sort of old, it was really too thick to be trying to do that, especially on that large of an airplane, but I soldiered on. To make matters worse, for some reason the flat coat that I used made the colors come out much darker than they should've been, so I hid it from view and there it languished for years until I decided to try to salvage it.

After asking here at BM, I found out some things that needed to be done that I hadn't originally. I deleted and filled the heat vents on the underside of the wings, as well as the shell collectors just behind the wheelwells and the retractable landing lights. New breech bulges were added, made from a couple of 1/144 scale bomb bodies, and I made a new pitot tube, to replace the original that had disappeared long ago. I had to make a new radio aerial as well, the original didn't survive the paint stripping work. I also added the IFF aerial under the right wing. Hasegawa's landing gear is kind of fragile, one gear leg broke off at the top of the oleo strut many years ago and was repaired, using a piece of wire inserted in a hole drilled in the gear leg for strength, the other gear leg decided to break off, in the same location while I was cleaning off the paint, it will be fixed in the same way, I'll reattach them both after I have painted the underside. It also gives me the chance to repaint the tires and then add on the solid wheel covers that I made up simple copies of.

I'm going to try to add some PE harnesses/seatbelts, as soon as I can figure out where the end of the shoulder straps attach to, after it has been threaded through the seat bulkhead.

[spitfire]

That's looking good, I'm doing a similar conversion on the same kit but into a Mk VIII for the SEAC group build see link below

Cheers

Den

http://www.britmodeler.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10067

[silverkite211]

Boy, where was Paragon, when I decided to do my Mk IX?

I forgot to mention that I also cut ejection slots for the cannon, I'm going to figure out what to back them with before I'm through, so there aren't just holes in the wing that you can see into.

I might have to look into a Mk XVI conversion, it might be kind of neat to have a clipped wing Mk XVI, in the markings of 74 Squadron.

[Smiffy]

Great job there so far.

The MkIX is my favourite mark of Spit.

What markings are you gonna go for?.

[silverkite211]

Great job there so far.

The MkIX is my favourite mark of Spit.

What markings are you gonna go for?.

I'm not really sure yet what markings will be on this, I haven't found many photos of late Mk IXs to go by. There was a Canadian squadron (433?) that flew them, they have a squadron code of '21' and I believe that 124 Squadron flew them, but that's all I found so far. It appears that, if I had left the narrow chord rudder on it, I would've had more squadorns to choose from. But, I like that pointy, late style rudder, so whaddya gonna do?