David Valinsky

Thank you again for the further comments! Bob, I realised when I logged in to BM for the first time in 10 months (!) that I had a message from you — hope the post answered your question, I was deep in contract law at the time, a dark dank place — I'd advise against it!

Thank you Ali for providing such an excellent starting point, always a pleasure to put together one of your offerings. Just applying your cockpit canopy improvement to the Airfix Canberra, will be getting the Milliput out soon for that kit! David

Thank you all for your comments, glad you like it. I've remembered I had planned to photograph it next to the Mk24, back in the loft at the weekend for that one, only place I can set up the light tent! David

I always seem to return to the hobby after a hiatus with a Spitfire, often a Tamiya Mk1. In this case, after almost two years moving house and qualifying as an architect (that was a long one!), Alley Cat's new 1:48 Spitfire Prototype kit was pushed to the top of the pile. A beautiful resin kit, had of bit of filling to do around the wing roots but otherwise fitted together very nicely indeed. I mixed together my own version of the infamous mystery grey/green/blue colour and used Model Alliance roundels from their interwar set for a slightly less bright blue than the kit decals. Bare Metal Foil was used for the spinner and edges of the propeller blades. Weathering was intended to reflect the aircraft just after a flight based on a Google search of images a bit of exhaust staining and some highlighting of panel lines around the cowling panels. Hope you like it! [

Hi Simon, just flicking through britmodeller and saw that my tiger moth had been referenced, very exciting, thanks for your comments! Just to reinforce the comments made above, it is a very nice kit and builds well, as you would expect from Aeroclub. Best of luck with it! David

thanks for all your comments, glad you like it! Now I just have to dig out that Sopwith Baby...

I've been at this on and off since the start of the year though it got set aside for a couple of months after an over-zealous sanding of the wing trailing edge combined with a dip in hot water to resolve the banana-wing issue resulted in something even worse: a trailing edge that rippled nicely! After a couple of months I forced myself to address the problem and went with smothering the offending area in cyano, allowing it to dry hard and sanding thoroughly for some time. Turned out I could have addressed the banana-wing simply by giving it a good old-fashioned bend. It's not perfect but it allowed me to get on with my life! Otherwise I added some Archers raised decals for the stitching along the fuselage vertices and replaced most of the photo-etch struts with aerofoil-section material to avoid that 2D look. This wasn't without it's own little dramas, all that elastic is rather powerful stuff and crushed the struts a couple of times before I learnt my lesson and reinforced the junctions. Apart from that I think the kit is pretty much out of the box with a lot of sanding to refine those early Eduard short-run chunks, hope you enjoy!

oh wow! Hate to think what you could do with the Eduard kit! Very well done indeed. David

thanks Al! Just go nuts with pastels and a dry brush, I have few secrets!

Well, I was building up to this; three Aeroclub Siskins, Four Hasegawa Hurricanes so naturally five ICM Spits! (and a partridge in a pear tree as it's that time of year!) It wasn't too bad due to the variations in each marque though this did keep me on my toes. I stopped counting the number of times I attached the wrong rudder or the wrong undercarriage doors etc. It had the advantage that little corrections to the kit could be made all at once without having to remember them for next time. I did read about adding the fuselage wedge but, sod's law, only after sticking the fuselages together. I think I would have had to add more than a wedge to get them to match the Tamiya canopy parts in any case! Weathering wise, this was the most I've ever applied and in an effort to get a bit of variation of tone (especially on the all grey top-sides of the MkVII) I may have stretched reality a little. I also had my first go with using different tones of pastel rather than just black. Personally I like the weather-beaten look but I can understand it may be a bit much for others. Regarding the 'sit' of the aircraft, they look alright to my eye in the flesh. Indeed, having noticed elsewhere that these kits do sit too high I took 1mm out of each main gear leg and pinned them back together. Alright, that was tedious ten times over! There could, however, be a camera distortion involved as I'm using rather a wide-angle lens which does all sorts of peculiar things to distances and the like. I had difficulty taking a group shot due to the size of the group but I'll have another go in a few weeks. I'm on to a Sopwith Triplane and a Morane Saulnier L right now as I was getting a hankering for some rigging. After all those Spits I also needed a bit of variation. thanks for all the comments Bob! David

Thanks Andrew!

Thanks for all your comments! I do, however, agree that they look rather dirty and I think it may have had something to do with photographing them without natural light; such is the fate of the modeller who now has to work during the day and doesn't have a decent lightbox! So I took advantage of the few hours of sunshine today to take a few more shots. They're still dirty but I think that this time they don't look as though they escaped a fire! Let me know what you think, David

Well I've been at these five since September and very enjoyable they were. The ICM kit was used in all cases with a few aftermarket pieces and a few spares. I avoided using the kit engine (if you're building five a little diversion like this takes long time!) and simply pieced the cowling together around the fuselage sides and the circular plate at the front of the engine bay. One thing to watch for looking at other builds on the net was wing dihedral. I seem to have avoided the problem by not inserting the engine firewall (which by all accounts pushed the fuselage sides out) and by a bit of scraping of the wing roots just to make sure. Aftermarket was all from Ultracast and included wheels, chin intakes, gun bay covers and props and spinners. These were very worth while in my opinion though they more than doubled the price of each kit. Spares were mostly in the cockpit area. The ICM canopies are noticeably pinched at the top so while I had to use the rear elements to match the fuselage cross section the front two elements were taken from Tamiya MkI and MkV kits. These are helpfully supplied with the later type cockpit hoods! They all had to be open canopies of course so the change in cross-section wasn't too obvious. The MkVII canopy was from the Falcon vacform Spitfire Special set. I did my best to get the variations in each marque correct and also show a range of other changes over time though I'm not claiming any accuracy for particular aircraft! All the undercarriage covers were gently curved in boiling water as is correct for C and E wing Spits while the MkIXe and MkXVI covers had the smoothing fillet added at the front which was introduced towards the end of the war. The MkXVI also received some scratched bulges on top of the wings for the enlarged wheel wells that arose from the change in axle angle for concrete rather than grass surfaces. These were rare during the war but are very common now. The only variation I didn't attempt to model was the slightly more bulging engine cover common on MkXVIs. Markings were a real mixed bag and are intended to be representative of schemes rather than necessarily portray a particular aircraft. A Barracudacals set was used for the MkVII with roundels used on others while a Carpena set was used for the MkIXc and MkVIII in SEAC markings. This latter set were very think and matt and I ended up replacing all the RAF roundels with spares. The C1 roundels on the MkXVI wings are actually the fuselage roundels from a Tamiya Lancaster which just happened to be the correct size! Anyway, enough chat, here are the photos, comments and criticism welcome. They are all brush-painted with xtracylics and weathered with pastels - perhaps a little too much but the effect is more subtle to the eye than the camera. The MkVII The MkVIII The MkIXc The MkIXe The Mk XVI and a couple of parting shots...

I am VERY excited about this, when will be able to order? Thank you very much for persevering with this one John! David

Thanks for all the further comments, glad you like them!