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Showing results for tags 'AZ Spitfire VIII'.
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To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more; Days lost, I know not how, I shall retrieve them now; Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before. -- A E Housman, A Shropshire Lad, XVI Both the victor and the vanquished are but drops of dew, but bolts of lightning - thus should we view the world. -- Death Haiku of Ōuchi Yoshitaka King am I, whatsoever be their cry; And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see Yet, ere I pass.’ And uttering this the King Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow, Striking the last stroke with Excalibur, Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell. -- Lord Alfred, First Baron Tennyson, The Idylls of the King, "XII. The Passing of Arthur" I'm going to be doing a joint build with fellow forumite -Neu-, a man who has achieved everything in life that I once dreamed of doing myself, from postgraduate work to living in a Commonwealth country. When I first joined Britmodeller, I recall I saw a Spitfire XIV he'd built, and I thought to myself "I hope I can build to that standard some day". And so it was a great privilege for me to have him ask if I'd be interested in doing a build thread with him. I don't want to steal his thunder, so I'll let him describe his part of the build. For my own part, I'm build two AZ Spitfire VIIIs, both in anticipation of the new Eduard kit -- I need to be able to straight-facedly tell Mrs. P that I haven't any Spitfires "like that", and she doesn't know about retractable tailwheels or additional fuel tankage -- and because I felt they made a natural follow-up to my Spitfire Vcs that I've just finished. The Spitfire Vs were stopgap Spitfires, the tropical variants arguably the least lovely and the least competitive with their potential foes out of all of the marks to see combat in the Second World War. The two-stage Merlin fighters -- VII, VIII, IX, and XVI -- represent to me the swing of the pendulum to the Allies' favour, like the magic sword that hero receives at the end of the second act. "Its name is Excalibur, which is as much to say as 'cut-steel'." I've built the AZ VIII once before, and their IX -- which is a subtly different animal -- thrice. The kit's wings are a bit thick, and the prop needs some work for the spinner to close properly. Here's one I did earlier, with some friends:
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