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Jerry Billing was born in Canada in 1921 and in his late teens he was determined to become a fighter pilot. Initially joining the RCAF as an air-gunner in 1941, his persistence eventually saw him active as a Hurricane pilot and then, from 1942, a Spitfire pilot when he joined 19 Squadron. While with 19 Squadron he flew many different types of sorties in Mk.V Spitfires. Following action in Malta and some training of other pilots in the art of dog fighting, Jerry was sent to 401 Squadron in 1944, where he was assigned a Mk.IX Spitfire. On D-Day itself Jerry was on patrol over Gold Beach in ML135, but there wasn't any sign of the Luftwaffe. However, on the 7th June 1944, he was back in action again and downed a Ju88 and damaged two Fw190s. More information about Jerry Billing can be found here This is my first Eduard kit and it was built as part of the D-Day Group Build. Self indulgent bit - please skip ahead to the photos if easily bored! I've been working towards this kit for a while. A few years ago, when I got back into model kit building, I was mostly building bits and pieces including lunar landing modules, a space shuttle, a Batmobile and a big fire engine! Then, while searching online for possible next kits, I came across this Eduard Mk.IXc Spitfire kit. Wow! I was blown away by the detail and I loved the idea of the extra PE parts and paint masks. The only thing was; I hadn't ever built a 1/48 kit before and the last time I had built a plane kit (other than an Angel Interceptor) was when I was a kid. Also £28 for an aircraft kit seemed quite expensive! With my lack of experience I felt I would need to practice a bit first by building some smaller 1/72 Spitfires so that I didn't make a complete mess of the Eduard one. I built two Airfix and one Italeri 1/72 Spits and thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I then thought I ought to try my hand at a cheaper 1/48 Spitfire so I made the re-boxed ICM, Revell Mk.XVI, which turned out to be a fantastic project! And, as could be expected, even before building this kit, I was addicted to building Spitfires! So here we are! I used wanting to be part of the D-Day Group build as an excuse to finally buy the Eduard kit. I added a few scratch-built extras to the cockpit and it's all brush painted (hairy sticks!) with Humbrol and Revell paints. All-in-all a thoroughly enjoyable build. Mike's review of the kit itself can be found here The WIP for my build can be found here Finally (at last!) here are the photos - I'm afraid I took rather a lot and then couldn't decide which not to use! The next few were taken when it was almost finished but show some slightly different views to the ones above: Some photos of the cockpit before being buttoned up: I also learnt a lot from many people who contributed in the WIP and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who dropped by. Kind regards, Stix PS I think there's a couple more Spitfires calling out to be made! More soon...........

This is the kit I have been working towards for a while now. I saw it quite a few months ago but thought, because I hadn't built any plane kits for over twenty years or so, that I ought to practice on something smaller/cheaper in case I messed it up. Well I've practiced on three 1/72 and (currently) one 1/48 Spitfires and, in a week or so's time, I'm going to hopefully start this one. I've read a lot about how good this kit is and, when I noticed that this group build was coming up and there were decals for Jerry Billing's Spitfire included in the box, I thought it was the right time to have a go at it. Jerry Billing, a Canadian pilot, flew the original aircraft, of the kit I'm going to build, on 7th June 1944 and there's a good article about him below - the link to which was kindly passed to me by JackG: http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/jerrybillingbs_1.htm Anyway here's the kit in all it's glory - the first one I've built that includes PE. I know most people on BM will have seen the kit before but I'm too excited not to include the photos of everything! Jerry's Spitfire's markings: I can't wait to get started on this! Kind regards