nickhenfrey

That's a very interesting comparison - thanks They both look great, even though different in the dihedral and the angle of the gear legs

I remember that part in the engine bay!!! I'm going to build it with gear down, I am concerned about the dihedral, and I'm sure I'll need to pack out the wings Thanks for your reply!

@keith in the uk I'm pretty certain there were options to mount the electric motor instead of the Merlin, or inside the Merlin @neilg turned out very nice - I'm looking to build one as Douglas Bader's 222 squadron Spit, what would you say were the hardest parts of the build (I have built a couple in the past but so long ago I can't really remember them)?

Are you totally insane? Three 1/24 spits at the same time!!!! Incredible! Any more progress I'm starting research on a 1/24 Douglas Bader 222 squadron Spit, alongside an Eduard 1/48 of the same, if I ever finish Bader's 1/48 Hurricane. I thought those two in parallel would be pushing it but three 1/24 Spits.... Watching with a lot of interest...

Thanks for the comments yes, I thought it was something like that! Most pictures of it on the ground do show the handhold open. Another thing for me to worry about! So where does the handhold cover go to when it's open? I'm actually working on the radiator at the moment, like everything when you start looking at the pictures you think - oh that's what it looks like! It seems there are two very thin rods connected to the non-moving bit, and then two more rods connected to the radiator flap. Both Airfix and Eduard seem to have combined these four into a single pair Also is it me or is the front of the radiator too narrow vertically and too wide horizontally????

Quick update So I have: done a bit of touching up Corrected the camo around the L-Lima on the port side, you can see from the group photo the green brown split runs between L-Lima and E-Echo Corrected the flash on the fin, so it doesn’t extend so far down Added some paint chipping by filing and chipping with tweezers and a metal moulding tool Run over some panel lines and raised edges and big details with a Faber-Castell silver pencil Run along my home made rivets very lightly with the silver pencil and light green, tan, pink, light blue and white Staedtler pencils to make them seem more proud than perhaps they really are. From a distance this does seem to make the metal wings look, well, more metal Still got the masks on the starboard codes, because I'm going to apply the serial numbers before removing and then defo a coat or two of Future

Actually I wish now I'd read Basilisk's build log to the end - what a fantastic result So I decided to tone back the fasteners, and address the curvature between wing and fuselage. From what I can see the fuselage panels curve outward and the wing root panels curve upward so that they meet to form a smooth overall curve (if that makes sense) I have started with coats of Mr Surfacer 500 to try and smooth out the wing root, which I think will do the trick - otherwise I may use Squadron Green stuff- but I don't like it's consistency or stickiness or something else with it always seems to make a mess, but at least I can sand it down In the meantime I simply sanded the wing trailing edges to get that sharp edge, took the simple root of mostly filing the underside inboard of the main flaps, top and bottom of the flaps. Easy to re-scribe the underside, not so easy to recreate the upper side detail OK, so ten months into the build and here's where we are: The aluminium foil panels looked great, but attaching them was a flop. I tried Future and it just didn't stick. In the end I went with super glue, but it dried so quickly I ended with hardened pools underneath, so gave up with that: Wing upper side and curvature between wing and fuselage Wing underside Close up of the wing root curve after primer I pulled off the ally, then spent days sanding the panels back flat and re-scribing the panel lines, which wasn't easy as the scribing blade insisted on detouring round the hard superglue I then went on to try some HGW rivets. Preparation is all, I primed with Alclad grey, then coated with Future, and one double line stuck, one half stuck, what a drag. To cap it off I ran my finger over the finished result, shone a light on and could feel and see absolutely no raised effect In the end I used the Trumpeter punch set, the #3 punch with a sideways flick effect to apply every single rivet individually. You see why this post is so late.... They look OK at the moment At this stage I've pre-shaded, applied some white squiggles, laid out where I think the roundels and code letters will go, and sprayed white for the under and fuselage decals, and grey where I think the code letters will go, and then applied some masks (Montex for roundels, hand cut for LED and fin flashes): Checking where the LED should go Those should be exactly 80" inboard But I moved the undersides out a bit and reduced to 45" Cutting the LED masks and trying to apply them straight After researching (mostly on this site) I have assumed the following: The Hurricane in this picture: is V4676 in September 1940 It is the A camo pattern It has a Rotol spinner It should have 49" B upper wing roundels 80" centre to wingtip (I've just masked these with Montex, no white) 50" A lower wing roundels 80" centre to wingtip 30" code letters in light grey, (the picture confirms the code letters are quite "bold") 35" A1 fuselage roundels 8" Black serial numbers I am using the picture for the port side placement, mirroring the roundel placement on the stbd side, and arranging the codes at the same spacing I will put the serial numbers mirrored, so that on the port side it is aft of the code (you can't see it in the picture), on the stbd side the seem to run under the L Hope that all seems sensible.... The wing leading edge is still a bit dodgy, so I've applied mor Mr Surfacer, sanded and reprimed, in the process I've oversprayed my landing light reflectors, doh! Next is a bit more aluminium in high wear places, wing roots, leading edge and cowling front, masks then some salt and alcohol, and the first coat of real paint I then masked off the roundels, code (LE-D) and the tail fin Upper wing 49" Type B Montex Lower wing 45" Type A Montex (50" didn't fit, and they are less than 80" from the wingtip) over white paint Squadron codes over light grey Fuselage roundel = 35" Type A1 Montex over with paint Fin = 8" stripes Tamiya tape I am using all Tamiya arylics for the camo (I mix 2 parts paint to 1 part X20A at 15psi, sprays like a dream) Sky = XF-21 Earth = XF-52:5, XF-49:1 Green = XF-81 Earth applied, only lightly where the green will go so as not to distort the pre-shading I cut the masks from Tamiya tape, with some heavy duty thread stuck just inside the edge to give the slight overspray effect I did the green in sections, because the masks seem to come off faster than I could attach them: After a bit of reverse masking and touching up: Then I sprayed the roundel yellow (on both the yellow and blue A1 circles), then red, then blue using the following ratios: Dull Roundel Red - Mix of 75% flat Red (XF-7 ), 25% NATO Brown (XF-68) Blue - Mix of 95% flat Blue (XF-8), 5% flat Black (XF-1) Yellow - Flat Yellow (XF-3) with a tiny amount of flat Red (XF-7) (sorry forgot who published these, but they look great) Red Blue The big reveal - oops that's going to need some touching up! So, with a tiny bit of touching has brought me here Pleased to see the rivet detail is still visible But the paintwork is very fragile I was going to add the gear next, but in fact I think I will add some metal chipping, retouch up then at least one coat of Future Also pleased to see the cockpit is still looking ok

@dogsbody Chris - well the fit wasn't straightforward, but brute force, trimming of obstructed parts and loads of glue have done the job, this is after some basic sanding and filing, but no filler, and no rescribing yet, so it can be done without major gaps, but it's certainly not easy…

Chris Yes, I was expecting a fair bit of work from reading others' builds, but seem to be over the worst now I will be dealing with the trailing edge, and then back to... ... riveting

Moving on, I decided to make a push on getting the wings and fuselage buttoned up Had to look at the landing lights, punched some aluminium foil disks and stuck over the plastic parts (painted black) and then built up the visible framework Then very fiddly, spiralled some thin fuse wire painted it black and cut and glued it to form the framework for the bulb holder. I think I probably should have just taken a photo and printed out at hi-res So done that. Spent ages filing the raised parts on the lower wing to avoid trouble, and then glued the upper wings in place. As I previously mentioned it took a humongous amount of force to form the front of each upper wing, and had to use super glue to hold it but reasonable successful Lots of clamping required Not so pretty (yet) Q Should the trailing edge be that thick? A = No!! The landing light Then onto the fuselage, built up the Eduard instrument panel, I see they now do the instruments themselves with glossy finish, avoids the little drops of gloss varnish, and they look pretty good, nearly forgot the firewall, which actually isn't visible And onto fitting the fuselage onto the wings I HATE filler So many, many, test fits, and nipping little bits out here and there I was finally able to get the fuselage to slot either side onto the wings and with a little bit of bending got the rear part flush and glued that on with poly cement, superglue, and when all set wadged in a load of E6000 to get the strongest joint, knowing a huge force will be required to close that gap at the front In the process I broke off the throttle control on the port fuselage side, so remade it and the little lever behind and this time glued them onto the frame - with a much better result than before And here we are, over six months and a major milestone, well not complete, but underway Centre and rear fitting nicely, bit of a gap at the front to close! Looks bad but that gap will close! OK And cockpit still looking ok

A couple of updates in quick succession.... Rivets Well the plan is (was?) to use aluminium foil to represent the panels with domed rivets, and simply using a riveting tool from the rear I looked at the thinnest foil available and decided on 0.018mm hairdresser's foil, It turns out this is really just a short roll of ordinary kitchen foil. I am planning to have the shiny side outside, and paint it, as the dull side is advertised as being non-stick!!!! My prototype in the previous update is based on that Alternatives are: bare metal foil - would have to roll the rivets through the backing paper - may try when I've had more experience (it's a lot more expensive!!!!) copper foil - want to be able to rub the paint off at panel lines to naturally simulate the same thing Copper aluminium leaf - I think it will tear, may try if all else fails I see the issues with the 0.018mm foil as: It's 50% thicker than bare metal, but this is probably ok because I want to create the texture rather than just wrap existing texture The edges may show, I will attempt to cut it accurately so the edges line up with the panel lines, and either cut it into the plastic panel line or just fold it in. Foil is interesting stuff, as I'm sure a lot of you know, it's critical to flatten the edges, however I cut it the edges are always burred How to attach it to the plastic - I will try and use Future/Klear - because it's thin, non-destructive - and seems to have worked quite well on prototype 2 (plan is to paint it on the back of the foil round the edges and along the rivet and panel lines so you get that slight bent metal effect (well you can hope can't you?) I have another issue in that I am using a single riveter but the rivets in the double lines should be opposite one another not staggered in any way. I am experimenting with a small diameter steel rod at one end to engage the riveter, so that two successive lines match up - but it is extreeeeeeemely fiddly, I may need to make up a jig, ah - got a solution now….. A test sheet - there are lots of those! My means of aligning double rows of reivets, the teeth engage on the right angle rule and start at the same point (well that's the plan) And one of many rejects stuck to the inside of the fuselage for effect

Yeah - thanks to @Troy Smithfor the info on that red canvas/whatever it is in the wheel bay This is actually several updates rolled into one - I wasn't expecting the gun covers to take so long to do!!!!!! So first - this might be a problem!!! I test fitted both upper wings, and basically they don't fit without a huge amount of bending to fit the front centre to the lower wing I thought I'd got something glued way too high onto to the lower wing. Thinking I'd have to do some heavy duty filing I then test fitted the upper wing to the fuselage halves and the wings are nowhere near curved enough. So I then forced one upper wing into place on the lower wing and with my third hand tried the fuselage half and it seems to fit. Anyone have the same issue? Essentially both upper wings are far too flat, and need major bending. Perhaps this is a "feature" of the 2020 re-release? By the way that first picture definitely emphasizes the rear wing issue - that step should not be there! And onto the gun bays. I always used to paint mgs black or dark grey with quite a bit of light grey and silver dry brushing. This time I found I had some Tamiya gun metal so I tried that. The guns do look quite dark and metallic, but when I looked at the photos, they look matt black!! So I put a lot of black wash on, and they look OK I think.... I used Alclad semi matt aly with just a little Tamiya black wash. I added the gun actuators, which I guess are (Bowden?) cables, rather than electrical or pneumatic, and that's about it. I painted the ammo belts in alternate swishes of gun metal brown and yellow to get he look of individual bullets without going overboard. They look ok from a reasonable distance I tried the Eduard gun covers, and I probably did them wrong, because I folded the inner lattice back onto the cover itself, and it's difficult to describe, but the lattice is very fragile, I will try both sets of covers, Eduard and Airfix (which fortunately are identical in size) the Airfix items are OK, and actually who cares what they look like off? I only want to see the model either with or without the covers fitted, I'm not interested in the covers themselves when they are not fitted - do I???? Well, I wrote the above around four weeks ago, but been struggling with the gun bay covers ever since. So in the end I unfolded the Eduard items, cut the lattice underside from the covers themselves and glued them back on. Trouble is they just don't seem to fit, so a lot of the lattice is now bent and buckled Then I tried test fitting. Well it's complicated because the spars that divide the main gun covers from the small ammo covers are part of the gun bays, whereas everything else, including, obviously, the cutouts are on the upper wings So several days of filing and test fitting, and bending the spars and I'm sitting there thinking this will never work and why oh why didn't Airfix make the spars as part of the wing? Well obviously they didn't because opening the gun bays was optional This went on to make me realize three things: 1. It would have been much better if they'd done the same as their 1970s 1/24 scale and just moulded the wings with the cutouts, and if you didn't want to do the gun bays then you glue the covers on 2. Therefore I would act like that is what they did: I cut off the spars from the gun bay parts and fabricated my own on the upper wings: I dropped the gun covers in then slotted and glued in my new spars so the cover was a perfect fit 3. This whole issue was my own OCD in wanting to be able to fit the gun bay covers perfectly, most ppl if they are exposing the gun bays simply tack the gun covers haphazardly onto the upper wing to represent where the mechs would have slid them if they were rearming Then I found another photo @Troy Smith had posted of the gun bays and it seems the Eduard representation of the retainers for the fasteners aren't really accurate at all, so I'm now making those from 0.5mm sheet polystyrene All in all I'm rather disappointed by the gun bay section of the Eduard set - it's neither practical nor looks right. Coupled with the strange Airfix decision made, for me, this all a quite painful exercise, which could have been much simpler. Of course this is all in my opinion, and other modellers would probably have sailed through this, worked around it, or simply not got as obsessive as I did (having said that we're all pretty obsessive, aren't we really?) OK - so after a lot more effort here are the gun bays, with my home made spars and fastener retainers - which are probably oversize: And from the underside: And the reworked main covers, look ok without a magnifying glass/macro lens So, that was a lot more work than I thought it would be Now I've been thinking rivets.................................. And of course googling I find there is a fantastic Hurricane already on Britmodeller with rivets: By @ad70 - he used Archer rivets - looks like a loooooooooot of work (but a magnificent result) I am playing with an alternate idea for the domed rivets, here is a prototype (stuck on the inside of the wing as a test, sprayed with Alclad Grey primer/microfiller) I am going to attempt a whole wing next I particularly want the rivets on the side engine cowlings, in the picture of Bader in front of the boot, there are definitely rivets there So I'm off to experiment more with rivets!

It probably was my browser to be fair, so this time I've assembled the whole thing including links in OneNote first So progress report covering cockpit and gear bay It may not look like a lot of progress, but it's taken a fair amount of time Troy posted a marvellous photo of the starboard exit panel (this is part of it): so I copied it, printed to a Jetcal decal and had a go. I filled the recesses with a little thinned black acrylic, then cut some steel painted stretched sprue to make the locking bar. The handle I made by taking some 0.3mm rod and flattening one end with pliers to make the upper part (I previously tried gluing cut out sheet to rod but it never looks good) The result was disappointing: I then looked in the Airfix instructions and found there was a decal supplied for the warning and Open and Shut positions, so I stripped off the original decal, applied the Airfix decal and cut out the two notes pages decals and tried again, looks respectable now: For the port side I found an a picture of an old Eduard photoetch, copied and printed it to a Jetcal, it looks ok, but could be better. I also found a photo of the two meters and copied that to Jetcal. It looks ok but not great. I built up the big control on the port panel from rod and flattened rod, I found a photo showing a red rotary knob, it probably should be black. I dry brushed a bit of metal colour and it doesn't look bad. I also cut a bit of photoetch to represent the throttle lever. A few bits of stretch sprue painted black and light colour finish off the port panel I thought I was done with the port panel but then checked my references, I had copied this picture: but then checked Troy's picture of the Finnish Huri and found it was different, so went for the new scheme: Basically there are two controls, plus two switches for the shrouded cockpit lights, one black on the sidewall, and one brass on the panel (like a very old style light switch) so I added those. I'm still not clear what the controls are, one is described as a propellor control, but for the Rotol constant speed there is no pitch control!! I scraped off the meters decal and painted the angled ledge white then black then attempted to scratch off the meter face through the black to the white, that looked terrible. Then I attempted to cut the meters from left over photoetch, that looked bad. In the end I cut out the last pair of meters from my sheet of jetcal (I had printed four just in case) and just stuck them on complete with the backing - I'm reasonably ok with this now: I have done a bit of tidying up on the main cockpit, added a couple of small stopcocks to the right of the seat, a quick small lagged pipe to the right, with two smaller brass pipes above, and a bigger linkage from the throttle body, also the funny little actuator for the quick harness release you see on top of the frame on the port side I'm onto the gear bay now - most pictures show it grey and not aluminium. However I've gone with aly semi matt and it looks good, with a bit of Tamiya black wash I added the leather or canvas strip in the wheel bay and the smaller pipe alongside the main cooling pipe, plus a couple of (pneumatic) lines from the cylinder, they're not going anywhere yet, they will go to the gear cylinders that go on later I had a lot of trouble fitting the cockpit correctly to the lower wing, which I correctly (phew!) deduced was caused by the rear end of the cooling pipe. Having filed that I finally got a fit, so this is where I am: Looks like the red canvas needs a bit of rework!! Needs to be weathered to much darker, stuck down better, and the yellow bits painting grey Gun bays next!

well, thanks for the kind words!!!! Actually a lot of the time was uploading to FlickR, and the text is largely in OneNote - so will take another shot at it this week thanks again!!!!

ah, ok, just spent an hour writing an update and linking pictures - then Britmodeller crashed - I think that's if for this build report for the moment - I will try and share some pics when done Thanks for looking.....