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Spitfire Mk IX MH434


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I hope you'll forgive me for a slight thread drift, but I have a story for you.

Last night we went to some friends for supper and a game of Canasta, and during a break in the game they presented me with something they had bought at a  ' vide grenier ' the French equivalent of a car boot sale,  a few days ago. I was surprised to see an Academy 1/48 Spitfie XIV E box and thanked them profusely, " look inside " they said , so I did , expecting to find perhaps a different kit but in fact inside were  all the correct Academy spruces with all the actual parts missing!  Also in the box was a brush, tin of paint, some liquid cement and complete decal sheet, which contained some nice markings including the post war Indian roundels which I always think looked like spoked wheels , which will do nicely for an Eduard Tempest II if it materialise.

I guess the moral of the story is ' Look before you buy ', it's actually not unusual to see people selling empty containers and other unusual items at country vide greniers here.

We all had a good laugh about it, and at least I will be able to find a use for a couple of the items.

 

Cheers

 

John

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22 Oct.

I've started the job of filling the slots in the underside of the wings by cementing some thin plasticard on the inside for the outer pairs and cementing some more through the cannon slots. It looks from photographs that the entire panels with the outer slots may have been replaced as I cannot see any signs of just plating over them ( as on some other restored warbirds ) so I will attempt to eradicate any signs of the slots. The blisters behind the cannon slots and the outer machine guns have also been removed but there is a small round blister on each inner machine gun panel and these will be replace at a later stage as it is impossible not to erase them while filling and sanding the slots. 

Below, before (above ) and after ( below ) initial filling and sanding, which will be followed by Mr Surfacer 500.

IMG_1141IMG_1129

I have made a start on the cockpit sidewall painting, but I cannot find any photographs of the area under the rear fixed canopy so cannot determine wether the Oxygen and CO2 bottles were present in the period I intend to represent ( mid 1990s after being repainted in 222sqdn colours ) but as the items are already moulded onto the sidewalls I have left them on for the moment. The seat supplied in the Aires set has the rear armour plate attached but as this cannot be seen in photos from that period I will use the Aires frame and seat and mountings supplied in the kit, and I have seen pictures of her with and without headrest during the same period, so either could be correct. 

IMG_1130

I still have a few spots of colour and some black wiring to add to the cockpit and I will try to remove the entry door neatly as the crowbar and latch details are really good.  

I am undecided about which instrument panel to use, I have the panel from an Eduard pre-coloured etched cockpit set as well as the Aires panel which is un-painted so I will compare both with the size of the resin frame/panel in the Aires set before my final decision.   

I have also prepared the fuselage halves for joining by rubbing them both on a piece of wet'n dry fixed to my desk to smooth out the joining surfaces as you do with vac-form kits, and smoothed and thinned the inner surfaces of the fin with my sihrsc file to match the leading edge of the rudder.  

 

Cheers

 

John   

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Thanks guys, you're very kind. 

I'm not happy with the grey on the Co2 tanks, it's gone frothy so I'll take it off and try again with some other paint. I've been using mainly Xtracylix on the cockpit and it happened in places with the grey/green also, even though I washed the resin parts  and rinsed them under running water before painting.

 

Cheers

 

John

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On 10/17/2017 at 5:15 PM, Biggles87 said:

  all the correct Academy sprues with all the actual parts missing! 

 

You had a lucky escape there. Nice kit, looks nothing like a Griffon Spitfire.

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Thanks Ced but I will repainted them as they'll  be visible through the gap left by the missing back armour.

I think you might well be right Rob, I would have had to build it and try to do something about the nose shape.

 

Cheers

 

John

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  • 3 months later...

Wow! 3 months since I last posted anything on this. I had intended to do some more while confined to barracks after my knee operation but just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for any modelling, mostly because my sleep patterns are all to pot , awake half the night and ( even more than usual )dozy all day. Today I actually opened the box and struck a few small pieces together so I think I've turned a corner. It also helps that it's stopped raining after about 10 days and we've actually seen the sun.

More soon

 

John

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  • 2 weeks later...

05 Feb 1018

Time for a (very ) small update on this. 

One of the side effects of knee/leg surgery can be sciatica which I now have (deep joy ), meaning that I can't sit in an upright chair for more than about 25 mins. :angry: Below is the result of four short sessions last week.

IMG_1206

I started by joining the upper and lower wings then adding the wing tips and the radiator flaps then moved on to the fuselage. Aeroclub provide the inserts for either fixed or retractable tail wheel but as they require quite a lot of cleaning up I decided to use the Hasegawa parts and just clean up the lower fuselage cutouts to match.

IMG_1208

 Lower nose cowling parts are supplied with both the long and short carburettor intakes, that with the longer intake being in two parts, which I cemented together after taping them to the fuselage. I'm not entirely satisfied with the result so I will also try to fit a long intake from my Spitfire spares box onto the other cowling part which is supplied as a single piece. 

IMG_1207

I have decided to use the unpainted Aires IP and have cemented the two elements together with Gator Grip and painted the rear of the instrument film white, in readiness for sticking it to the resin frame.

That's all there is for now I'm afraid, feel free to comment

Cheers

 

John  :pilot:

 

   

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2 minutes ago, keefr22 said:

The 'like' was for the Spit progress John, not the sciatica! Hope that clears up very soon.

 

Keith

Same here, of course. 

 

Ciao

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On 14.10.2017 at 7:59 PM, Biggles87 said:

It's actually a manicure/pedicure set but is more controllable in speed than my Dremel and it rotates in both directions if you should need to. My new tool tool proved to be ideal for the job so I'll keep it. I wonder what she'll want in return!

There should be a well organized nail care studio connection here on bm  (for all the ladies in the house),  I think:hmmm: Maybe we should ask Mike for a new topic here :whistle: Cheers

By the way a very good start.

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I’ll pull up a chair if I may. Got to love a Spitfire build.You’re doing a great job so far.

 

Obviously too early at the moment but when you come to applying the markings, you may want to have a look at the roundels and in particular the relative proportions of the rings.

 

This photo shows the correct proportions

 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/95/e7/5f/95e75f6f31ec7f1b1b852535a97e9736.jpg

 

However after a repaint, something appears to have gone wrong with the white ring and appears too large.

 

https://farm8.static.flickr.com/7333/27620883653_cb19f38a1a_b.jpg

 

At the same time? the upper wing roundel also went awry and the red centre appears too large

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Spitfire_LF_IXC_MH434_2a_(6111869702).jpg

 

There are some wartime photos of ‘434 which show the ‘correct’ proportions.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Trevor

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Thanks Keith, Giorgio and Ced for the good wishes, I 'm  getting there but more slowly than I had  hoped.

Welcome Bbudde, perhaps a virtual nail bar  is what we need!

Welcome Trevor, I had read somewhere, probably on BM, that the roundel proportions were a bit suspect. I  will need to determine if the markings from the Airfix Mk IX from a few years back have the correct wartime proportions or those actually worn after the repaint, which is when I wish to depict her. If this build follows my usual rate of progress I will have plenty of time to find out

 

Cheers

 

John.

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  • 1 month later...
2 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

Pull up a chair Rob and make yourself comfortable, you'll see from the spaces between updates that this is going to be a very slow build.

 

Cheers

 

John

 

Thanks John, I can cope with that seeing as most my builds of late have been stalled 3 years !, 

looking forward to it :) 

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  • 5 months later...

Time to get back to this one, although later than I had intended because when I took the box out a few weeks ago the cockpit parts were missing, after looking for a while without success I gave up, and of course they turned up a few days ago in a completely unrelated box so I am now ready to complete the cockpit. 

I'm not a huge fan of this type of Aires set which requires you to build a cockpit ' module ' to fit inside the fuselage, it's OK if everything fits like the newer Airfix Spitfires but as we all know this is not always the case with Aires. I have decided to install the side panels first then attach the instrument panel, and seat frame ( with seat ). The control column will be attached to the floor and fitted up through the fuselage when that is joined.  After several dry fits of the components in the taped up fuselage I came to the conclusion that neither the instrument panel or  frame 11 ( the one with the seat ) would fit within the side panels and inside the fuselage so I have removed a strip from the front of each panel, which has also removed the " wrap over " parts from the front, and the appropriate section from each side panel to allow frame 11 to fit, so the side panels are now each in two pieces. 

One of the first builds I read on BM was by " Tango 1' who built MH434 from the 1/32 Tamiya Spitfire IX as a tribute to the Hannas. I remember seeing a picture of her in the hangar with the seat removed and I recall that it was overall grey/green with a reddish brown back cushion. Unfortunately the photos have been removed by Photobucket but I discovered the same build on LSP, again minus photos, but there is a verbal description of the seat colour in answer to a query about it, 

 It's now time to stop faffing about and glue something, as Ced would say so here goes.

IMG_1390IMG_1400IMG_1396

I have used the rudder pedals supplied in the kit rather than the etched items which require folding ( something I try to avoid when possible ), but the resin control column.

I was about the join the fuselage halves when I noticed that I had not painted the retaining straps on the O2 and CO2 bottles, and the undercarriage selector is missing it's handle, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Not a huge update, but hopefully enough to keep some of you still interested.

 

Cheers

 

John :pilot:

  

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