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Airfix Spitfire IX Vignette


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Hi all,

Over the summer I did a lot of reading as I was recovering from an operation, one of the books I read was Tom Neil's - The Silver Spitfire. It tells the story of Neil working with the US and how he came to own the Silver Spitfire as well as how it became silver. Without giving any more away, this diorama is of an incident that occurred upon arrival in France.

A bit about the diorama before pics. I was originally going to do a usual diorama with the pilot stood outside looking at the mess he made. However, I liked the look of the slate that is the base so much I thought it'd look just as nice without the grass.

I tried my hand at scratch building the flaps, open canopy and cockpit detail. The flaps are made out of plastic and thin bits of wire. Overall I'm pleased as I got this model for only the price of the P&P because I used Airfix Flying Hours. Furthermore I started building this at 10 last night and finished at miday today. So I only spent a few hours on it.

Anyway, enough of my rambling...

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Comments and criticism welcome as always :)

Ben.

Edited by wellsprop
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A great idea and very well done. Would the tail wheel not have pivoted around due to the angle?? Just an observation, not a criticism.

Marc

Good point. To be honest, I haven't got a clue how the tail wheel would act in this situation. The tail wheel had a free castor so could end up in any position. When Tom Neil crashed this Spit he was taxiing straight and at low speed then whet over almost instantly. Who knows, coulda gone any way tbh. Sometimes they stayed straight http://brew.clients.ch/webstercrash1.jpg sometimes they didnt.Got me thinking though hahah. Cheers :)

There is a lot more work in this one than you are taking credit for Ben. Very nice & a different scene well executed.

Thanks Col! I don't want to sound like I'm showing off but I will list all the corrections/mods I did;

Sanded the wing bulges flat,

Added a control column,

Added a decent seat,

Made a harness out of Tamiya tape,

Got rid of the armour plate-fuselage strut and scratch built a decent one,

Sanded off the flaps,

Cut of the elevators and rudder before angling them and replacing,

Cut up the prop,

Cut the canopy and used spares too,

Made the flaps out of plasticard and wire.

I hope this helps anyone else who wants to improve the Airfix Spit.

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Still, its a great depiction and I love what you've done with the props.

Very cool, the smashed props look ace!

The prop looks much better than I thought it would! All I did was attack it with a knife before using pliers to squeeze it and flatten it.

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The prop looks much better than I thought it would! All I did was attack it with a knife before using pliers to squeeze it and flatten it.

It worked a treat mate, look exactly as I would imagine them to be like.

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Nice build and an excellent, original display idea!

The only thing that you may have forgotten to correct is the colour of the crowbar, which shouldn't be red… ;-)

Great and inventive modelling!

Kind regards,

Joachim

Ah-ha! I KNEW someone would pick me up on that. I know they weren't really red I just always paint them red as its kind of the done thing now haha! I might repaint it bare metal though!

Thanks :)

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Nice build and great idea to pose it like that, I have a picky of a gannet landing wheels up on a carrier and chopping up the large rubber type safety net with bits flying every where and would love to have the skills necessary to model that.

Hope you have recovered from your op okay

All the best
Chris

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Nice build and great idea to pose it like that, I have a picky of a gannet landing wheels up on a carrier and chopping up the large rubber type safety net with bits flying every where and would love to have the skills necessary to model that.

Hope you have recovered from your op okay

All the best

Chris

You should give it a go making a Gannet crashed! Checked out your P-40 and it's impressive, all you'd have to do is a little scratch building.

And I've recovered very well thanks :)

Ben

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