Procopius

These look amazing! When my wife turns her back for a hot minute, I plan on getting some.

When a Mac's coffman starter goes, it goes.

I'm guessing that you mean in 1/48 scale? EDIT: Well now I look foolish. Or even more so, anyway.

I was just re-reading the old "Spitfire - The Story of a Famous Fighter", and, apropos of nothing, there is a mention in there of some OTU Spitfires with spinners colored to match their respective flights.

That would surely be my first choice, but I can't find one anywhere for love or money.

Is the Seafire XV close enough to a Spitfire XII that one could be converted, using, say, a spare Sword Spitfire Vc wing and the tail from the 3DKits Spitfire IXe conversion set? Or are their lots of subtle differences that would need fixing?

Has anyone built one of these? How is it in terms of shape and accuracy? I've built AZ kits before, so I'm generally familiar with them, is there anything specific to the two AZ Vb I should know about?

Yep, he accepted something like $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and lived rent-free in a yacht they provided him when he was in DC, among other things.

Looks mighty fine! What's the Freightdog set? It no longer appears to be available, alas.

Looks jolly nice to me! Might the "A" be referring to the fact that the flight commander is foremost?

As others have said, this looks splendid, Marcel! How did you go about weathering her?

Oh! I'm quite eager to see how this turns out.

You devil!

You devil!

I found this kit to be a frustrating build, but you've made it look quite nice.

Aaaa! I should never have trusted the decal sheet without looking at a photo! It said white, and I, fool that I am, believed it. A quick google image search would have shown me otherwise. I had wondered why your build of it had the red spinner... If you do go the AZ Hurri route, let me know how they are; I'm starting to feel snobbish about raised panel lines and thus less enthusiastic about the old Airfix one.

Earlier this year, I resolved to build a sharkmouthed Spitfire, and thanks to the kindness of Britmodeller's Forlornhope, who sent me some spare Almark decals he had, I just finished doing that. I used the Hasegawa Spitfire VIII kit for the build, accepting (but not liking) that it has some length issues. I sanded off the bulges over the landing gear bays, as I'm reasonably sure that they were not present on the aircraft during the war, and used an Eduard pre-painted etch set for the cockpit--an effort largely wasted, especially when it came to the tiny rudder pedals I painstakingly bent and folded, and which are totally invisible to even the most grimly determined observer. I swear to you they're in there, though. I also used an Eduard mask for the canopy and hubcaps, and I now see that my entire life before discovering these was wasted. I masked the camouflage using these incredibly useful templates, downsized to 1/72 through judicious misuse of my office copy of photoshop. I also used Future/Klear vice micro-sol/micro-set as my decal solution, and it is VERY effective, albeit alarmingly predisposed to cause the decal to stick instantly and resolutely. Not good if you're ham-handed, as I am. Now, on to my mistakes. There are probably others not obvious to me as well. 1. Completely stuffed up putting on the sharkmouth decal, the whole point of the thing, and the aeroplane has a very lopsided and sheepish looking grin as a result. 2. Failed to use filler at the wing roots and fuselage seam, and it shows. 3. Landing gear slightly cockeyed. Please excuse the poor photo quality, I use my phone for these, and it's a mere 5mp.

I know here in the USA, the appropriate Modelmaster colour is called "RAF Interior Green", which is whence the practice started for myself.

My only guess would be that he felt more comfortable with more airplane behind him in case he took any fire. Personally, as a small person, I HATED the later Griffon-engined Spitfires with all the venom a twelve-year-old Merlin partisan can muster. Now that I'm old and wizened, I find all Spitfires beautiful. (Except the PR versions. No guns!)

Well, the life of man is folly, of course, but I'd still build the AZ Spit, I'm just more confident about my ability to do JEJ's aircraft justice with my limited skills using the Fujimi model. Live and learn about the markings! I never knew.

Having only recently tried using Eduard masks, and having also discovered that, quelle surprise, the results are far superior to my shaky-handed brushwork, AND, having in my possession a largish number of Sword kits (2 Vc, 2 IXe, and a XVIe lowback) and other late model Spitfire kits (Fujimi FR.XIVe, AZ XVIII, Eduard F.21 etc etc etc), all of which have no purpose-made mask, I was wondering: is the cockpit framing close enough that I could repurpose Eduard masks for the Hasegawa Spitfire IX/VIII, for at least the front part of the canopies in any or all of these cases?

What a great memory!

If nothing else, I'll be happy to grab it for the JEJ decals to use on a Fujimi XIV.

Hey, for some reason I have it in my head that the wheel wells of RAAF Spitfire VIIIs were painted the same color as the underside of the aeroplane, e.g. Medium Sea Grey in my case. However, doubt has set in. Should they in fact be aluminum? Or interior green? Britmodeller overmind, help me, I beseech you!

Looks jolly nice to me! I'm actually working on making the same aircraft, right...this...instant. Don't think it will turn out as well. Hard to see if the fuselage is bent, the rudder throws me off.