John1ak 2

Hi. I have just purchased the Revell AEW2 and have noticed that there appears to be a moulding imperfection on one half of the main wheel (both sprues). Has anyone else noticed this?

I have a picture (painting) on page 89 of Ron Bellings "A portrait of Military Aviation in South Africa" Code is N P and serial is JT856. I can scan it in when I get back to work next week and send you if you send me your e mail. Mine is [email protected]. Ironically I am away from work on a business trip to London but I have no space for the book.

Alternately its big enough for you to put 2 into and go home after seemingly only having bought 1 kit on my recent trip to the US

I have 400 + unmade kits. I swore at the end of 2011 not to buy any more. Then came the Halifax.... and the Ventura..... and the Swordfish. When can I stop ????? Please!!!!!

To get the top of the nacelle off the wing I scribed around it repeatedly with a Tamiya scriber and after it was attached to the engine I scaped away the joint on the section of top wing under the motor to enable it to lower itself in the wing. This also means I did not have to recontour the forward part of the cowling where it joins the wing as you had to. Once in position I stuffed the gap with Pratleys putty, which is a two part epoxy mix and is very easy to work with. After I squeezed it in I flattened it with first a moist finger and then a moistened x acto blade. When it was semi dry (ie stiff but not set ) I used a scalpel blade to clean up the putty that had "flowed" up the fairing to get a sharper definition between the wing and upper fairing. Once dry I used a Stevens Internation sanding stick to smooth everything out. The process was a lot easier in the end than I thought it would be when I started. I must cofess however I did do everything by eye rather than trying for precise measurements

At last Here is the work in progress showing the "sunken" outer engines.

I have the pics - can you please tell me how to attach them to the topic?

Hi I saw this article after I bought my Halifax and realised all was not well with the engines. Luckily I had a spare Matchbox example lying around and like you realised that the outer engines were too high. I adopted a slightly different approach in that I removed the rear hump from the wing in total, filed the wing upper joint under the hump down about 1.5 mm and then attached it to the engine cowling. Added the plastic card to the to drop the the entire nacelle as you did but when attaching I achieved the effect that the entire engine, including the rear of the hump, had "sunk" into the wing. I then filled the resulting gap with Pratley's putty (South African equivalent of milliput which I swear by). This gave me a lot less area on the top of the wing to get level and relieved me of having to mould a new hump. Accuracy? Cant say for certain but it does look a lot more like the picture now. One day i will figure out how to attach pictures

I know the Hasagawa kit came in for a lot of flak but after removing its nose, replacing it with a 2 stage Griffon and putting the larger XIV tale unit on it looks far more the part than a built up Acadamy kit does

I wanted a radiator for the Airfix Spitfire XII for a conversion Iwas doing. I told Airfix why I wanted it and offered to buy and the following day got an e mail to say it was in the post. as per the above experiences it was received a few days later with a compliment slip - and I dont even live in the UK. As the topic says - full marks to Airfix

Hi Mark Thanks for the welcome. I have to confess that although I am a Brit (through descent) I have never lived in your "green and pleasant land", so I hope that does not disqualify me from the forum :-) I am producing the Spitfire flown by the South African Air Force Museum until about 2000 when they unfortunately tried to taxi through a perimeter wall on landing after an engine failure. Its serial was 5553 and was coded AX - K. Decals are comming from AtoZee models and the Airfix supplied spare radiator arrived today in the post. I must say I am very impressed with them as I offered to buy the parts, which they then sent free. Although it was officially designated a IXe it looks identical to the XVI. It has the fishtail exhausts and 4 spoke wheels. There is a very good shot of it on page 131 of "The Spitfire in SAAF service" by Steve McLean (who I knew when I lived in Cape Town and who lives and breathes Spitfires) which I am using as a reference. I too am crazy about the Spit/Seafire family and currently have 9 complete in 1/48 ranging from the early Mark 1 with the flat canopy to a Rhodesian Mk 22. I am also very into cutting, slicing and dicing and one of my other projects that worked well was combining a Hasagawa Mk IX with the Airfix 22 Nose to do a Mark XIVc. The tail and radiators were taken from the inaccurate Acadamy kit.

Hi Mark Yes - the wings are from the Mk XII, but just the tops. The underside comes from the Seafire XVII to use the twin radiator layout. I would attach a pic if I could figure out how to attach them. And I was eating dinner when I read your post :-) Also changed the c wing to e configuration by putting e cannon bay covers from the spares box

Hi Having read this topic I bought the Seafire xvii and another xii to cross kit. Did the XV ok but then had a rush of blood to the brain and went instead for a spitfire xvi with the leftover bits. Achieved it by grafting an ICM nose from one of their badly molded kits and it worked very well. The only complication was that the graft of the ICM parts had to happen immediately in front of the cockpit and NOT at the firewall. The wing roots matched almost perfectly. Airfix also very kindly supllied a spare radiator for the XII when I told them what I was doing.