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Hasegawa Spitfire 1/48


cocky05d

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Fuselage is short, don't remember the exact length but recall somewhere around 5mm. 2mm I front of the cockpit and the rest in they rear fuselage (two places iirc). There are (were?) replacement fuselages available to rectify this issue

 

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The main problem with it it is the fuselage is a bit undersized. Now some people are not to worried about, including me, I just built it as it was as fixing it is not easy - some people have done fixes and Aero Club and Loon Models (?) did a new fuselage, but as I understanding is none of these completely fix the problem as they don't change the area above the wing, but they do make it look a bit better, though it's cheaper just to buy the more accurate Eduard kit than buying a new fuselage.

 

Hasegawa tried to make up some of the length by making the spinner longer, so that's worth replacing.

 

 

This is my un-correct Hasegawa kit, it'll do me ( click on the photo to get the proper size ).

 

33791852820_a0801fbd47_o.jpg

 

Edited by Tbolt
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9 minutes ago, Charlie Hugo said:

Fuselage is short, don't remember the exact length but recall somewhere around 5mm. 2mm I front of the cockpit and the rest in they rear fuselage (two places iirc). There are (were?) replacement fuselages available to rectify this issue

 

Some of it's in the cockpit area as well which makes it a lot of work to modify accurately.

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Hi ,thanks for the prompt replies ,bought it on ebay £19+£2 p&p .Tbolt your model looks ok to me  are the markings with the kit ?. .I bought the Eduard ME109G kit ,you know the one i mean

(i understand the comments on it melted the interweb ) so i am a used to buying out of scale kits ,too be honest not too bothered about it.

Thanks again for the replies.

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9 minutes ago, cocky05d said:

Hi ,thanks for the prompt replies ,bought it on ebay £19+£2 p&p .Tbolt your model looks ok to me  are the markings with the kit ?. .I bought the Eduard ME109G kit ,you know the one i mean

(i understand the comments on it melted the interweb ) so i am a used to buying out of scale kits ,too be honest not too bothered about it.

Thanks again for the replies.

No those decals are from Rising Decals. £19 is a good price for the Hasegawa kit, as they are expensive nowdays but you can buy the much more accurate Eduard Weekend kit for that and possible less if you look around. But now you have got the Hasegawa kit I would just building it as it is with a new spinner.

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22 minutes ago, cocky05d said:

Hi Tbolt ,the Hasegawa cockpit is said to be so good you don't need any after market stuff ,with the weekend kit i would at least have to buy some seat belts and a IP .

The Eduard weekend cockpit is better detailed than the Hasegawa cockpit, though the Hasegawa cockpit is fairly good. You need seatbelts for both kits and as for the IP Hasegawa has molded instrument details but Eduard supply a decal, which if you punch out the instruments separately give a better looking IP.

Edited by Tbolt
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3 hours ago, cocky05d said:

Hi ,thanks for the prompt replies ,bought it on ebay £19+£2 p&p .Tbolt your model looks ok to me  are the markings with the kit ?. .I bought the Eduard ME109G kit ,you know the one i mean

(i understand the comments on it melted the interweb ) so i am a used to buying out of scale kits ,too be honest not too bothered about it.

Thanks again for the replies.

What T-bolt and others have said about the kit is correct, from what I have read. You can add the 3mm to the rear fuselage easily by cutting at the rear angled transport joint just in front of the stabilizers and putting in a 3mm spacer; the other length issue is almost impossible to correct, which is why I think many modelers have opted for one of the replacement fuselages. If you do the 3mm splice, your Spit will look pretty good- really only apparent if you put the finished model next to a more accurate kit. The Eduard overtrees or  week end editions would be another alternative, and if you order a couple or go in with another builder, the cost is pretty decent, plus you won't have to make any corrections or rob another kit for a correct spinner.

Mike

Edited by 72modeler
corrected grammar
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FWIW, the markings on the plane in Tbolt's photo are also available from Barracuda. It may be worth pointing out that the black panther was only on the port side, contrary to the Barracuda instructions -- this is clearly borne out by photos.

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1 hour ago, Seawinder said:

FWIW, the markings on the plane in Tbolt's photo are also available from Barracuda. It may be worth pointing out that the black panther was only on the port side, contrary to the Barracuda instructions -- this is clearly borne out by photos.

That's what I've got.

 

34135859906_96a01c3f58_o.jpg

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10 hours ago, Tbolt said:

Hasegawa tried to make up some of the length by making the spinner longer, so that's worth replacing

 

1 hour ago, cocky05d said:

Forgot to ask what is the problem with the spinner in the Hasegawa kit?.

was already mentioned

 

10 hours ago, cocky05d said:

Hi ,just bought the Hasegawa Spitfire viii against Japan ,had a look on some review sites where they say it is not very accurate ,anyone out there

got any views on the subject?.

 

Yes, do some research before buying a kit?

 

smart alec comments aside....

 

I googled "Hasegawa Spitfire IX" 

 

 this should illustrate the shape problem, not just too short, but too slim as well.

from

http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/correctingspitfireix_1.htm

 

Quote

 

Correcting Hasegawa's 1/48 Spitfire IX

 

spitfireixcorrection_1.jpg

Bruce Archer's article comparing the available kits of the Spitfire Mk. IX in the reference section of HyperScale is very informative and outlines the major problems that affect the overall accuracy.

The 1/48 scale Hasegawa Spitfire VIII and IX kits are especially plagued with outline problems as is clearly visible in the photos. Bruce mentions, however that, the Hasegawa kit is "very hard if not impossible to fix".

Having bought the kit prior to reading his article, I was very disappointed with these errors. I thought to myself that it must be possible to save this otherwise nicely detailed kit. After all, the Hasegawa kit does have the best detail and it would be a shame to discard simply because of an outline shape error. So I enlarged the scale plans mentioned in the article and set out to correct the kit.

The photo above shows the final result.

The correction itself is not difficult but rather time time consuming. I would say that if you have the kit already in your collection, then it probably is worth a try at correcting. If you don't have the kit, well, that's up to the individual.

Hope this helps out and if anyone has any questions, just let me know.

Happy modeling!

 

 

I've seen Eduard profipacks for under £20,   and unless it's a more recent Hase kit the decals are liable to have 'Ivory' whites.

 

Final point

the Hase kit looks OK built, as T-bolt model shows,  but can look odd next to an accurate kit.

 

HTH

 

 

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2 hours ago, cocky05d said:

Starting to like SEAC Aircraft ,there used to be a P47 in SEAC colours at Cosford ,but they shipped it to Hendon.

Forgot to ask what is the problem with the spinner in the Hasegawa kit?.

It's too long and bulbous. When I built the Hasegawa kit with Aeroclub replacement fuselage a few years ago, I thought it would be simple to use a substitute spinner, but all the ones I tried (Ultracast, Quickboost and ICM) were smaller in diameter than the fuselage nose and so didn't look right. I ended up chopping about 1.5 mm off the tip of the kit spinner and then reshaping it. Worked out pretty well.

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7 hours ago, Tbolt said:

That's what I've got.

 

34135859906_96a01c3f58_o.jpg

Hi Tbolt. Didn't mean to imply that you had gotten it wrong, just a word of warning for anyone who buys the (very nice) Barracuda sheet. The model looks very nice BTW.

Cheers, Pip

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5 hours ago, Seawinder said:

Hi Tbolt. Didn't mean to imply that you had gotten it wrong, just a word of warning for anyone who buys the (very nice) Barracuda sheet. The model looks very nice BTW.

Cheers, Pip

I know I was just pointing out that the Rising Decals sheet matches the photos.

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Others have explained on the accuracy problems of this kit, so no need to add anything on this from me. What I believe thous is that, while I'm a Spit fanatic and like to have accurate kits of Supermarine's finest, trying to correct the fuselage is an exercise that makes little sense today. If you want an accurate Spitfire, then the best option is to sell the kit (you could even sell it for more than you paid for it...) and buy an Eduard kit instead. At the same time if you want a good kit that in the end looks like a Spitfire (I know, I hate the "looks like" thing but sometime it makes sense), you could simply accept the short fuselage, maybe replace the spinner and build it.

A word of warning though if you're using aftermarket decals: unless these are specifically sized for this kit, they will end up looking strange !  I've had this problem before using correctly sized decals (where correct means with roundels and letters scaled down from the prescribed sizes used on real Spitfires), where I've had to squeeze all bits together to make them fit on the shorter fuselage, so looking very different from what they were on the real aircraft.

Of course if then you want to chop the fuselage and try correcting it, I'll raise my hat to you! I'm always happy to see this kind of work done and I'm guilty myself of having chopped an Academy 1/72 Spit XIV fuselage even if I could have simply bought the Fujimi kit (there were no AZ or Sword back then)

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6 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

 

was already mentioned

 

 

Yes, do some research before buying a kit?

 

smart alec comments aside....

 

I googled "Hasegawa Spitfire IX" 

 

 this should illustrate the shape problem, not just too short, but too slim as well.

from

http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/correctingspitfireix_1.htm

 

 

 

I've seen Eduard profipacks for under £20,   and unless it's a more recent Hase kit the decals are liable to have 'Ivory' whites.

 

Final point

the Hase kit looks OK built, as T-bolt model shows,  but can look odd next to an accurate kit.

 

HTH

 

 

As I mentioned none of the corrections I've seen are accurate - that article you link to, it may improve the look a bit but the missing length is all the way along. The nose foward of the firewall is short, behind the firewall, the cockpit area, tail and fin are all short so just adding a couple of plugs doesn't give an accurate Spitfire.

 

I haven't seen the two replacement fuselage but from what I've heard they don't fully correct the problem. So what you end up with all of these corrections is a Spitfire with the proportions all out compared to one that is just short all round, to me there was no point trying to do anything about it.

Edited by Tbolt
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Hi ,the kit came today ,compared it with an Italeri spitfire Vc (made in the Czech Republic ) .

The panel lines at the rear are a near match ,it is at the front where you can see how short the Hasegawa kit is .

Anyway ,going to build oob ,might get a replacment spinner from somewhere .

Once again thanks for all the advice and replies .

David.

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3 hours ago, cocky05d said:

compared it with an Italeri spitfire Vc

the Italeri Spit Vc is a rebox of the Special Hobby/Classic Airframes/Revell kit.

 

this is also too short,  and needs a splice in the tail and one if the fuel tank to make it the right length.

 

If you are happy with "it looks about right"  then I'd not worry.   For those who desire accuracy,  at the moment the best 1/48 VIII/IX/XVI are Eduard,  the best I/II/Vb are new tool Airfix.

 

One  common comment on the SH Vc is "it's based on the Tamiya I/V kit"   

It isn't,  I suspect it's based on the Hase Vb kit,  I've not pulled out the "Spitfire box"  since I got a Hase V,  to make sure,   but It certainly is not based on the Tamiya kit...

(there have been some bunfights on this which have been photobucketed though the embed fix is working for me)

 

this is the SH fuselage corrected (note splices)  compared with an Airifx V

AF_vs_SH_align_on_mat_IMG_0451.jpg

 

HTH

T

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Thanks ,got a couple of Eduard Spitfire 9s ,2 Revell  9s,a few Vs .And maybe a new Airfix 5

Only been back modelling since early 2011 ,didn't realise how incestuous,the modelling game had become .

People selling other makers kits under their own brand name ,all smacks of insanity gone mad.

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On 10/16/2017 at 11:56 AM, cocky05d said:

Hi ,just bought the Hasegawa Spitfire viii against Japan ,had a look on some review sites where they say it is not very accurate ,anyone out there

got any views on the subject?.

Thanks .

Hi!

   I wrote an article comparing the Hasegawa kit to both the Ocidental and ICM kits. This was before the fabulous Edward Mk.IX kit was released.

   Without a doubt the best kit is the Eduard, but we are not talking of that kit.

   The Hasegawa's faults are very hard, if not impossible to fix. Even if you lengthen the fuselage, the taper of the upper fuselage and the lower fuselage is now off, and they need to be redone. Plus for a WWII variant the wheel bulges need to be removed, the prop is short on diameter, and the spinner is too big and bulbous. The best fuselage correction is Aeroclub's, and does make the Hasegawa kit look normal.

    But nobody has mentioned the ICM kit. It is shaped MUCH better than the Hasegawa and Ocidental kits. The upper fuselage  needs to be widened a bit. It also could use some resin bits. The ICM kits can be had for cheap and may be an alternate to the more expensive Eduard.

     If you do decide to build the Hasegawa kit from the box, the only Spitfire kit it can be placed next to are the short Special Hobby Kits.

 

Bruce

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Hi ,i have built a couple of ICM spit 9s ,still got one in the stash ,been looking  on the Modellingmadness review site ,it seems all Hasegawa spits share the same fault .

Why don't kit makers make replacement plastic parts when they make a boo boo .

Is there a replacement control column for the ICM kit?.

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8 hours ago, cocky05d said:

Why don't kit makers make replacement plastic parts when they make a boo boo .

Because they're in the business of selling plastic model kits, not making replacement bits or making "perfectly accurate replicas".  Some of us find it a little grating to buy, for example, an Eduard kit and then "have to" buy an Eduard replacement part for said kit.  I suppose what you meant was "correct the tooling" to include it in the kit?  Some do occasionally fix problems in the tooling, but that's an undersirable complication/expense after the tooling is already done.  They'd usually rather just pop off a thousand imperfect ones, if people will still buy them.  Not to mention that some of them really hate to admit that they goofed!  (None of this is meant to sound rude, aggressive, or what-have-you.)

 

bob

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