Doodlebug tipper - 1/72 spitfire XIV vs V1

[lunarhighway]

When i got back into the hobby one of the models i bought of ebay was the eastern express spitfire mk xiv... wich is the old frog rebox, and it interestingly comes with a V1 flying bomb and a stand. overall the model is rather accurate in dimentions, but there are also some glaring errors, and what details are there all need refining.

Anyway, i started playing with the V1 and well once a few pieces are off the sprue there's no turning back.

so first the V1

in short, overall dimentions are ok, according to plans i found online (not the ones pictured as it later turned out) but the wings and horizontal stabilizes are to far forward, so these where cut and repositioned.

the pulsjet was slightly lenghtened with a bit of plastic tube. the front strut seems to reseble perhaps and interior structure of the v1 but not the swept back aerodynamic strut to this was replaced with plasticcard.

the intake was also beefed up with some miliput, although i think i overdid it a little.

gave it a shot of tamiya primer, the bottom was painted with a 50/50 mix of white and pru blue, and the top was a mixture or vallejo, revell, heller, and italeri paints along with some vallejo flow improver and airbrush thinner... they all play nice together, and considdering my airbrush skills and the size of the thing, i think it came out ok...

And with the buzz bomb done, it was time to build the thing that'll nock it out of the sky.

Because the models will be posed in flight cockpit detail will be kept to a bare minimum...

well i got a little carried away... i used scale drawings from the monforton spitfire mk xvi/ix (i know not xiv) pinted to 1/72 scale, wich is tiny, but it makes it real easy to correctly position all the ribs and bits and bobs... it's mostely just a few strips of styrene really

Later i realised the oxygen hose, wich is missing from most spitfire kits and wich i so cunningly added, would probably not be in stowed position, as the pilot would likely have his mask on.. maybe not as i don't think V1's came in very high, but again, i'm sure he could use it!

i modified the kit figure to look a bit more dynamic, fortunately the plastic played nice. so i cut the head and pinned it with a bit of metal wire... the arms where even cut off with sprue cutters... i cut the rudder pedals from the cockpit and stuck them the the gentleman's feet, that way they'll always line up... aha!

i was initially going to use the airfix mk ix or xix pilots wich actually look rather nice, but u guess having a backup takes the stress away from this kind of surgery so they have to wait their turn.

i'm actually surprised how well he fits in there, his stretches arm even reaches the throttle...

and this is what we're going for

one of the gravest errors on the frog kit is the wing fillets wich, don't look like the spitfire item from any angle (i think i have a picture of what they looked like somewhere but i wanted to get it over with), and i can only guess how these came about... also the gull wing is lacking, fortunately there is more plastic rather than not enough, so it's just a matter of chopping and sanding everything off that doesn't look like a spitfire.

since the kit radiators where to small i need to make new ones, and might just as well go all the way and represent the sunken radiators as per original

it's hard to see, but i actually bend the wing near the center to represent the gull wing.

and that's where we're with this one... wich reminds me i still need to finish my mkII

[lunarhighway]

On to the fun part... paint the cockpit and the brave gentleman that resides therein.

i first added some details to the hands and feet with vallejo filler, wich works quite well for adding tiny details. The legs still don't look quite right, but i wonder just how much can still be seen wiyh the canopy on...

Next sprayed everything in black and than misted white from the top to create shadown, next a few shades of interior green was applied... im not sure how well this all worked because in the end it all looked just green, but no harm done either.

so next i gave the interior a wash and than i could have some fin painting the figure, i think it came out ok for as much that will be seen of him.

[JasonC]

Nice touch with the mask, and the cockpit looks great considering the scale. In fact for any scale!

cheers,

Jason

[David Womby]

My goodness. That cockpit and pilot look fantastic. I love seeing classic Frog (and other) kits being well built.

David

[Martian]

These are looking good. I'm not so sure that you succeeded in your plan to keep detail to a minimum though.

Martin

[Grey Beema]

Great subject and great modelling. I like the level of detail.

You may want to consider how you set the finished models. I think when they were 'wing tipping' the technique was to put your wing under the V1 wing and slowly lift your wing. The air pressure over the wing would tumble the wing of the V1, force it to roll and de-stabalise the gyro. I don't think it was a physical contact...

[Beard]

I like the work you've done on the cockpit and the pilot (a word of warning about the Airfix Spitfire XIX pilot, he is very small and, IIRC, is wearing a modern helmet).

As Gary said, the 'trick' with toppling a V1 wasn't to use physical contact (although I'm sure it did happen) as a Spitfire wing is nowhere near as robust as a V1's.

[lunarhighway]

The airfix pilots do indeed look post war (interestingly the mk ix kit includes the same pilot as the xix, but it attaches differently to the sprue)... of course the majority of todays spitfire pilots, as in airshow displays, is likely to be mearing more modern kit, so strictly speaking it's not wrong. I'm sure these fine plastic gentlemen will find a suitable home in some 50 or 60's planes i'd like to do, perhaps a harvard or a fouga magister.

On this occasion i elected to risk the frog pilot, and for being in an enclosed cockpit i hink he'll do just fine (in fact making a clear enough cannopy will be tricky)

i'm doing some more google "research" into the matter to get the setup as correct as possible....

i have the crazy idea of supporting the V1 by a rod that will represent the exhaust gasses, comming out of the pulse jet, and attach the spitfire with just the wingtip to the v1.... given i've repositioned the v1's wing, and it's just glue on without reinforcement this is a bit of a suicide mission, but a rough test with clothpins suggested it might work, and it might capture the tention of this moment.

i might attempt to represent a stattic spinning prop, but i'm not sure i can come up with something good enough...

for now i've entered the wonderfull world of rescribing pannel lines.... fingers crossed

[Graham Boak]

This may be too late, but the Frog Spit has too high a thrust line as well as being too short. One way to "fix" both is to glue an appropriately sized wheel (or circle of plasticard - IIRC an Airfix Pz.VI Tiger wheel was recommended) to the nose, with the top of the wheel in line with the top of the cowling and the bottom slightly below the lower cowling. Then the lower cowling is filled and reshaped. The prop then fits through the wheel centre, and is therefore lowered.

[Greg in OK]

_{A word on that V-1. It is not as inaccurate as you my first think, it just isn't "the" V-1 you think it is.}

_{The V-1 in the kit represents the early V-1 builds and therefore has the "yoke" fitting to the pulsejet rather than the later, streamlined fairing that you added.}

_{The FROG V-1 makes a good pre-production model though, I built mine as the 91st prototype. Many of the prototypes sported high vis paint like No. 91 did.}

_{Greg in OK}

[CedB]

Great job on the internals and V1 - they're looking very nice

I like the surgery on the pilot too... nothing like a bit of 'reconstruction' IMHO!

How's your canopy? The one that came with my Frog was an awful mold...

[lunarhighway]

How's your canopy? The one that came with my Frog was an awful mold...

same thing here... a shame as i quite liked the idea frog had, molding the aft section and the sliding section as a single piece but with the illusion of two pieces overlapping... in theory that could have worked pretty well

i have some airfix canopies but they're thick and distorted and have hairlines in them, i also have a pavla vacform wich is better, but still a bit cloudy, so i might go the route of crash moulding something myself, i might make a reusable mold for it, seeing as this likely won't be the last spit i build , and than see what i like best.

[Graham Boak]

There are plenty of Spit canopies on offer. Falcon did a box with a set of different canopies for a wide range of Spitfire variants, so that should keep you happy for a long time, and same a considerable amount of time tooling up for crash-moulding different ones.

[lunarhighway]

This may be too late, but the Frog Spit has too high a thrust line as well as being too short. One way to "fix" both is to glue an appropriately sized wheel (or circle of plasticard - IIRC an Airfix Pz.VI Tiger wheel was recommended) to the nose, with the top of the wheel in line with the top of the cowling and the bottom slightly below the lower cowling. Then the lower cowling is filled and reshaped. The prop then fits through the wheel centre, and is therefore lowered

I might have come across someone mention this as well, however, comparing the kit to both plans and other kits of griphon spits i have i actually think frog might have the overall shape down quite well

i have fujimi's low back xiv and airfix's xix and from the spinner plate to the rudder hinge the airfix kit is about 1mm shorter, than the fujimi.. frog and fujimi seem to match quite well, with the fujimi rudder being a bit bigger... it would seem the frog cockpit area is a little more forward than on the other kits, using the door as a reference. and the aft fuselage is sperhaps a little more skinny than it should be.

I have SAM publication spitfire book but i honestly think there's something off about the plans, i also have the monforton mk ix plans wich i've heared are some of the most accurate out there, and the aft fuselage matches up quite well.. the cockopit is perhaps a little to long 0.3mm or so and the aft fusalge could be a fraction taller as well....

in short, from my reference i can't see something hugely wrong with this kit... not like the academy one, wich i still hope to tackle again someday

i did notice the frog spinner looked a little short, as if it was missing a backplate, so i added a ring to it's rear, i suppose it's things like that that could throw off the visual balance of the kit as well... i will also sand the spinner plate to give the downward thrust once the halver are together, and see it the nose needs some milliput over the engine bulges...

in short i probably not going to stick a tank to the nose

[lunarhighway]

a little update... I added some final details like the crowbar and door latch, to the cockpit and closed up the halves, wich fitted pretty nice almost no filler needed. as expected not much can still be seen in the cockpit an that's still with the canopy off, but i do think the pilot looks good in there... i might start adding more people to my planes.

next i started rescribing the wings, with is the first time i rescribe plastic....i made a few mistakes so some errors had to be filled with tamiya putty and scribed again. i cleaned the lines with tamiya extra thin cement.

i used dyno tape as a guide although i find sanding sponges work quite well as they curve to the surface and the sanding surface prevents it from moving.

Probably not the best rescribing effort, but i hope it will look ok under a few coats of paint, i gave it a shot of tamiya primer halfway trough, so that's most of the white stuff

[lunarhighway]

I've made a little more progres, rescribing most of the fuselage. and remade the carb intake scoop from miliput. i've also shortened the ailerons by rescribing and filling.

unfortunately one of the cannons broke off, so i removed them entirely, as they looked a little thin anyway... of course new i need to find a way to make new ones.

[lunarhighway]

Starting to look like a XIV

 

 

it needs a good clean, but it'll do i guess, the pilot needs a toch up as well 

 

the fuselage is rather wide though so i'm having a hard time finding a canopy that fits, for now i'm thinking of going with the unlikely candidate from an ok KP mk IX

 

To dress up the radiators i added grills made from broken headphone earbuds

 

 

 

[DennisTheBear]

Looking good!  I have the same kit from NOVO, so I'm following this with interest!

 

 

DennisTheBear

Edited September 16, 2016 by DennisTheBear

[lunarhighway]

14 hours ago, DennisTheBear said:

Looking good!  I have the same kit from NOVO, so I'm following this with interest!

 

 

DennisTheBear

so far it's been a very enjoyable kit to build... the only real flaws being the fictional rear wing to fuselage joints (i still can't get my head about how that came about) and perhaps the badly molded canopy, wich probably is best replaced, other than that you could do it oob and have a very nice spitfire xiv.

i like this sort of kit as i can really try to add as much detail as i can manage, but i don't really need to worry about destroying fine kit supplid details, or an expesive kit. that said, i wish i could slap the canopy on and paint the thing, but there's some fiddling with the radiators to do, and some missing pannels to add... i've also discovered the chin halves had a seem still, so i tried to weld these together with tamiya glue, and that will need sanding next

 

 

[lunarhighway]

After some more filling and sanding of some minor imperfections i turned my attention to the cannopy. The kp item was the best fit, and clarity wasn't to bad, but it had a rather large hole to fit a rear view mirror that was out of place, so i ended up turning it into a mold to trashform a new one... took about 3 attempts. To pervent it from metling and fusing with the clear sheet it was covered in metal tape. 

 

 

perhaps the pilot sits a little low, but not much than can be done about it now.

[Beard]

Nice work on the canopy.

Nice work on the canopy.

[CedB]

+1 great job.

[lunarhighway]

Hi everyone, 

 

Finally a long overdue update... i primered and painted the model valejo chrome overall and than applied liquid mask dots where chipping would occur and than painted with the cammo colors, i went over the original colors from italeri's RAF set with a slightly lighter shade mostely where hightlight would be, to make it look a bit more lively.

 

i think the paint chipping looks good but perhaps a bit to much... the real advantage of this technique is you can also scrape away the paint with a hobby knive makeing real scratches... the only problem is keeping it in scale and in proportion...

 

 

[lunarhighway]

After painting the model i realised all 350 squadron V1 kills where made post D-day, so the plane would have probably had invasion stripes as the time... fortunately the width of these in 1/72 seemed to match that of tamiya masking tape exactly..coincidence? 

 

i measured out the area and masked it, and painted int white, and next masked the white stripes and went over with black... at least that's what i though as on the fuselage i managed to invert the black and white..

 

next i masked the yellow leading edge stripes and first painted them white and than yellow to make sure the color stood out bright and even over the cammo...

 

i lost some of the chipping this way, wich is an advantage as i felt it to be a bit to heavy anyway, but i did apply some light chipping to the stripes again.

 

[TheBaron]

I've thoroughly enjoyed catching up on your excellent work. Inside and out an engaging piece of work!

Tony