Hobbyboss Spitfire Vb

[spitfire]

Way back in September after finishing the MiG-3 and struggling with the two Resin Yak-1's I decided that I wanted something simpler and easier to build so I decided to build three Spitfires, two Hobbyboss Spitfires (Mk Vb and Mk V Trop) and the Revell Mk I/II.

Cheap and cheerful kits that would not tax my brain too much I thought and so far I have been correct, as usual I wait until I have have a good head start on a kit before I start a build thread so I am quite a way into the first kit already, any lessons learned will be applied to the rest.

First up is the Mk Vb, and this was the late lamented Edgars summing up of the kit

At last, I have a (paid for by me) sample, and a deeper appraisal will follow, but I've checked the main parts against the Cox drawings of the Mk.I (same basic dimensions as the V, remember,) and the fuselage, in width, length, and height, matches the drawings exactly. The wings are 1-2mm over-wide on the chord, and the span comes to within a (minute) fraction of 36'10". Tailplanes are 1-2mm undersized, while the elevators and rudder match the drawings within the thickness of a line in places. While the kit shows that it comes from the same source as the Trumpeter kit, the rivet detail is far more restrained, though the cross-section, at frame 5, is too angular at the "corners," so some judicious sanding there will be needed. Sure to infuriate some, the cross-section of the fuselage is curved at the sides, not slab-sided like the Hasegawa kit.
Edgar

And compared to the Hasagawa kit

This was my appraisal, on another thread, which asked for a comparison with the Hasegawa kit:-
Hasegawa all raised panel lines; Hobbyboss engraved.
Hasegawa cockpit (apart from too-wide seat) a pleasure to work with; Hobbyboss, unfortunately, somewhat fictional, plus a seat too short front-to-back.
Hasegawa fuselage slab-sided at fuel tanks; Hobbyboss slightly curved; both have a too-square cross-section at the firewall.
Hasegawa has no engine; Hobbyboss has an engine which doesn't resemble any Merlin I've seen.
Hasegawa wheel wells like frying pans; Hobbyboss straightsided; both kits have wrongly-shaped underside cannon blisters, with Hobbyboss worse of the two.
Hasegawa fuselage slightly narrow aft of cockpit; Hobbyboss fuselage matches Cox's drawings in length, height & width.
Hasegawa has no armament; Hobbyboss has full gun complement, and an under-fuselage bomb, which would be better dropped.
Hasegawa no radio; Hobbyboss radio + tray + poseable hatch.
Hasegawa fixed control surfaces & flaps; Hobbyboss has separate surfaces & flaps.
Hasegawa choice of internal, or external, armoured windscreen; Hobbyboss external only, and the (separate) armour appears to thin, and wrongly-shaped.
Hasegawa's propellor (choice of blades & spinners) looks more realistic than the Hobbyboss effort.
Hobbyboss has fictional "ribbing" on the tailplane upper surfaces, but they're nowhere near as prominent as on the 1/24 Trumpeter kit, so can be sanded smooth quite easily.
Hobbyboss has finely-done rivet detail, all engraved, when the V had raised rivet heads aft of the cockpit.
Difficult to choose between decal sheets; Hobbyboss's red appears over-bright, but their Sky is closer than most other companies' efforts.
Edgar

At the time this was enough to persuade me to buy both of the Hobbyboss kits despite having quite a few Hasegawa kits in the loft.

So now on to the kit, this is what you get.

To be continued

Cheers

Dennis

Edited August 7, 2021 by spitfire
Replaced Photobucket photos

[spitfire]

And to continue

The instructions these are pretty straightforward

Decals, though I'm not planning to use them at the moment

Kit marking options

This is what I am going to use

Specifically this one

And these came from eBay to replace the inaccurate kit parts,the kit horizontal stabilizers have a ribbed / fabric effect for the upper side and the spinner and prop blades look very dodgy

More soon

Cheers

Dennis

Edited August 7, 2021 by spitfire
Replaced Photobucket photos

[spitfire]

As usual for me the first thing to do was to snip all the parts from the sprues, I do leave the little tags on the parts so I can look them up on the instructions and see where they belong, then lots of little clamps and some mass painting sessions. As usual I started the cockpit first, but as I reached for the interior paint (Humbrol 78) I was stopped in my tracks by a very lively discussion here on Britmodeller about Spitfire interior colours, this made me dig out my copy of British Aviation Colours the RAFM bible with it's colour chips in the back http://www.britmodel...-info-on-bs381/.

I was astonished to find that my usual old faithful Humbrol paint was not a close match for the colour chip but Humbrol 120 was closer, so I rejected my usual 78 and went with 120 even though it did not answer all the questions the discussion raised.

And the paint samples, my camera hates greens so do not read too much into them, the 120 is probably a bit light but it looks good to me

Looking through the kit parts I decided that I needed some reinforcements apart from the Exito resin replacement parts so the following goodies were added to the mix

Here is the kit seat with it's replacement Barracuda item, a massive improvement to my eyes.

Reading through my collected "Edgar files" the following words of wisdom were extracted:

"Air bottles, the two big ones on the port side, silver or grey.

Oxygen bottle, black.

Seat, red brown

Interior of engine covers silver

Fuselage and cockpit, grey green and aluminium paint.

“Oleo legs and door interiors started life painted silver (over the grey undercoat, as far as the doors are concerned.) Wheel wells are anyone's guess, since Supermarine drawings don't mention them; the areas into which the oleos fitted were likely to have been silver, since that was the standard colour for interior areas, except (obviously) for the cockpit, engine bearers and firewall, which were cockpit grey-green. I've seen silver, green, and underside colour wheel wells, so it's really your choice, and no-one can say that you're wrong”.

Head rest was brown leather; harness was light(ish) tan (do not feed it through the hole in the backrest.) There was no crowbar before 1941. The knurled wheels, on the port wall, were trim wheels, and painted black."

So I set to it,

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

My desk lamp broke so I got out my spare one this has been sitting under my desk in a box since last Christmas (a present from my daughter) I did not think that I needed it but I was astonished to find out how much I really did, the amount of mistakes it revealed was scary, and for putting together the dreaded seat harnesses it was a great help.

The kit instrument panel was sanded flat and the Yahu etched one attached, it only needed a small amount of fettling to get a snug fit in the fuselage, it is certainly a vast improvement on the kit parts, the duff green painting in the photo was fixed after the photo pointed it out to me another thing that the magnifier/light is good at.

I started out painting and bending some Eduard etched seat belts which is a job that I do not like a lot but in the end I gave up and bought some RB fabric belts at Telford, these were a revelation for me, I needed the magnifier to help me put them together though, I used the recommended Formula 360 for these and it worked great another new thing for me.

And here is the result, not perfect by any means but better than my PE efforts and hopefully I will improve with practice, for the seat I used Humbrol 160 German camo red brown rather than my normal reddish colour.

Cheers

Dennis

[Blitz23]

Beautiful work so far!

[rob85]

Looks like you have all the right kit there! Looks like this will be a cracker, good work with the seat belts

Rob

[spitfire]

Beautiful work so far!

Thank you very much.

Looks like you have all the right kit there! Looks like this will be a cracker, good work with the seat belts

Rob

Thank you for that, the AM bits that I am using certainly improve the kit, and the seat belts are a vast improvement on the normal PE stuff, I wish I had started using them before but like a lot of people I am quite resistant to change.

Cheers

Dennis

[hacker]

I have the same kit in my stash and there it will sit. I got excited to get a new Mk V but got disappointed with the shape and detail issues. It does build into a nice Spitfire but for me;and l am not picky; it just doesn't look right in my mind's eye

Still you are doing a terrific job on it. Keep up the good work

Edited December 13, 2015 by hacker

[polkenti]

Hi Dennis,

I've never seen the sprues, but the finished kit yes and something is really weard with the angle of the windshield. That's for me the most important feature to correct if you want.

Anis

[spitfire]

Some more progress, my first attempt at cockpit painting went horribly wrong when I tried out a dark wash so the fuselage halves were stripped of paint and airbrushed with H120 again. At this point my brain must have been in neutral as I painted the area behind the pilot’s seat green instead of Aluminium. This was duly rectified with some Humbrol 56 which came out very rough for some reason, so I had to use an old tin of Polished Aluminium (Metalcote) which went on a lot smoother.

The engine and engine bearers were then assembled and painted, this was for fun only as they will be covered up when I put the fuselage together as I do not like open panels, and the camera has spotted some touch up again.

I was very impressed with the Barracuda resin parts and they came with some great illustrated instructions, in the past I have bought some very nice resin detail parts but they arrived with no painting guides or instructions which I found very disappointing. The Barracuda items are highly recommended by me.

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

I have the same kit in my stash and there it will sit. I got excited to get a new Mk V but got disappointed with the shape and detail issues. It does build into a nice Spitfire but for me;and l am not picky; it just doesn't look right in my mind's eye

Still you are doing a terrific job on it. Keep up the good work

Thank you for that, the kit is nice and easy to build and so far I am finding it a nice relaxing build which for me is important, as normal within reason and my limited skills I will try to make it as accurate as possible.

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

Hi Dennis,

I've never seen the sprues, but the finished kit yes and something is really weard with the angle of the windshield. That's for me the most important feature to correct if you want.

Anis

As above I am finding the kit nice and relaxing to build, but I have to admit that the clear parts do not look right to me, I do have some spare Hasegawa parts that I may try out but I am not going to get too excited about it, I am going to try the Hasegawa parts out on the Trop version though as the windscreen on that kit is completely wrong.

Cheers

Dennis

[Biggles87]

I also have one of these in my stash ( Vb trop ) which I started a couple of years ago and lost impetus after joining the wings, don't ask me why. I will be watching yours with interest, and who knows I might even re-start mine.

Good luck

John

[hacker]

l wonder if Revell will give us a decent Mk V?

[spitfire]

I also have one of these in my stash ( Vb trop ) which I started a couple of years ago and lost impetus after joining the wings, don't ask me why. I will be watching yours with interest, and who knows I might even re-start mine.

Good luck

John

Lets see how I get on first, I might make a right mess of it.

Cheers

Dennis

l wonder if Revell will give us a decent Mk V?

I hope so, though the old Has kit with some TLC ( lots of AM) scrubs up well.

Cheers

Dennis

[tonyot]

This is coming on really well Dennis,.......I have one too but the fact that the windscreen was totally rubbish and nothing like the later type used on the later Spits including all of those that were tropicalised just made me put it back in the box! That and the `fabric' undersides of the taiplanes! Even fitting the `correct' windscreens from a Hasegawa kit is easier said than done.

Good luck with yours,

Cheers

Tony

[spitfire]

I like to build sub assemblies and finish off parts before I really start assembling the airframe, here are some of the parts that I am making ready.

While I was waiting for paint to dry on the fuselage halves I decided to start on the wings, as with the engine this is purely for fun as all the panels will be closed on the finished wings.

The flaps will not be left deployed as they were normally tucked up to prevent damage once the aircraft had landed, if I remember correctly there was a fine for leaving them lowered, so the covers on the wings have been glued in the closed position.

.

Here's a nice thread on the subject of the flaps

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/19617-spitfire-mkix-flaps/

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

More progress, I'm still a bit wary of gluing the seat belts to the seat to make they lie down a bit more, and I should have been a bit neater with the seat mount and armour plate, but that will be a lesson learned for the V Trop kit that will follow.

I should have drilled a hole in the Yahu instrument panel before assembling this section to allow me to fit the Barracuda gun sight, it's done now but it would have been easier to do before assembly.

The Barracuda decals really make a difference, though I had to use my magnifier to fit them !!

Cheers

Dennis

[woody37]

This is looking great

[spitfire]

This is looking great

Thank you very much for that hopefully I'll have more progress to show soon

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

Well I have been progressing at my usual glacial pace, but there has been some progress, I have been fitting the various components into the fuselage halves and I'm glad to say that they all fit fine, the engine firewall needed a small amount of sanding to get a snug fit but that was all that was required.

All that I am waiting for is the gun sight, the Barracuda one needed some brackets to fit the clear part, so these have been bodged and painted, as soon as the paint is dry I will be able to fit it and close the fuselage.

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

Well at last I can close the fuselage, the gun sight is assembled, and everything fits, the tail wheel was a bit fiddley but in the end it fitted fine.

Final pictures before the CA is applied.

And all buttoned up and left for the CA to cure

I even assembled the wings and started to sand and polish the seams

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

Sanding and polishing seams, as usual it's not my favourite, sand, polish, spot flaws, fill with CA, apply kicker and repeat, with some nice music on though it soon gets done.

Before joining the wings and fuselage I decided to sort out the nose panels, but where to start ?? I also test fitted the resin exhausts (Quickboost), and they fitted a treat.

I decided to fit the "lid" first, then the sides and lastly the bottom, first a test fit, and it all seems to fit very well.

so out with the CA and away we go.

All fitted, and the resultant (small) gaps were filled with Mr Surfacer 1200 using a cocktail stick, then I removed the excess with a cotton bud dipped in Mr Color thinner.

Cheers

Dennis

[spitfire]

No excuses now, for me this is always the crunch part of a build, if it goes wrong there will be lots of sanding and filling, get it right and it is plain sailing, so here we go.

The test fit and the final fitting looked good, so fingers crossed

Cheers

Dennis

[Parabat]

Coming on strong, nice work so far.