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I built these late last year while waiting for the Kotare 1/32 Spitfire IA. For one reason or another all of my early Spitfire builds in larger scales have turned into unmitigated disasters, so I thought I would try and break the hoodoo with two of the most recent offerings in 1/48 before starting on the real deal. This let me play around with painting, weathering, masking and decaling without mucking up the Kotare kit. I finished the Tamiya kit as P9374, Spifire ‘J’ of 92 Squadron, but modelled for that short period between the adoption of additional identity markings for service over France, and the removal of the Squadron codes for the aircraft’s aborted participation in a VIP escort mission to France. It seems a reasonably likely scheme, and avoids the need (not faced by the restorers) to paint the aircraft with a depiction of scraped off or painted over Codes, which would just look ugly. The model is mostly out of the box, I just added the R/T aerial from Modelkasten rigging wire and Airscale instrument decals - because I ruined the one’s Tamiya provided. The decals are from the Fundekals sheet for early Spits - on which the code letters are a near dead match for Sky Grey. Paints are Colourcoats, the very light weathering is courtesy of a Flory grimewash, some light chipping with a prismacolor, and Humbrol enamel oil stains. The Eduard Spit is finished as THAT Spitfire, DW-K of 610 Squadron, using another Fundekals Spitfire sheet, and following the advice on that sheet to paint the undersides Sky Blue. I did first use the British Standard hue of Sky Blue, but ended up coating it over with the RAF sky blue, which is lighter and greyer. All paints, again, are Colourcoats enamels. The biggest contrast between the two kits are the the very different approaches to depicting the surface detail. I liked the Eduard approach on the fuselage, with the raised domed rivets aft, but preferred Tamiya’s restrained approach on the wings. I did mask off and fill in the Eduard recessed detail forward of the mainspar with Mr Surfacer as it was just too rivetty for my liking. I weathered the Eduard model more heavily, as it appears quite used in the photos taken at the time. I used the Barracuda resin wheels on this kit but honestly needn’t have bothered. Incidentally the code letters on this Fundekals sheet are a very good match for medium sea grey. When I build my next Eduard Spit I am also going to gently sand back the tops of the domed rivets on the fuselage a little - its not so much their prominence as their profile, which is more like little pin heads than domed rivets, which makes decalling over them a bear. I made the decals conform by using vast quantities of setting and solvent solutions. With enamel paints and gloss coats there is no fear of melting the paint doing this. Another contrast between the two kits is pose-ability, for want of a better term. It’s easier to deflect control surfaces on the Eduard kit, while Tamiya wants you to build the kit just as it comes. The Tamiya approach to modeling an open or closed cockpit is also, I think, taking things a bit far. A small tip, if you want the side cockpit inserts to fit perfectly, leave the fuselage halves on their respective sprues and glue your chosen inserts to them in situ. This holds the fuselage halves in perfect alignment to make the inserts a drop fit, and gives you both hands free for the careful gluing process. Both kits look like Spitfires when finished. I didn’t find either more difficult to build than the other. I will build both again when I can. Now I have seen both of these 1/48 scale versions of the Spitfire 1A, and also the Kotare Spitfire, which in many ways combines the best of both these approaches, I still think the most authentic treatment of the Spitfire’s surface textures , domed and recessed rivets, fabric, smoothed surface forward of the mainspar, is Revell’s 1/32 scale effort from 1967. Whoever did the surface tooling on that kit was a genius. cheers Steve

I haven't built a BoB Spitfire in many years and don't have one at all in my current collection of built models. This needs to be rectified. To that end I've settled on Sergeant Kenneth Holland's Mk.Ia N3173 of RAF 152S for reasons I'll elaborate on as we go. In terms of the model, I'm using the Airfix 1/48 kit. I have an idea for an in-flight display so this will be a wheels up, prop spinning (represented that way, at least) pose and the Airfix kit is particularly suited to that. The prop will be the challenge, and I'm going to experiment on how to represent it. I've made a bit of progress, and already messed up a little 🙂 I assembled the cockpit as much as possible and then painted it all black as a pre-shade designed to avoid the need for a wash. There's a little more work to be done here, including the detail colour painting but this gives the gist. As this cockpit will have a pilot in it I'm going to labour it too much, suffice that it looks reasonable through the closed cockpit. The first of my cockups is visible above where I forgot to include the armour behind the seat. It will be a simple matter to add it once the paint is nicely dry. I haven't painted a pilot figure probably since I was a kid! That will be the next adventure, along with finishing the detail painting in the cockpit so that I can close the fuselage and get on with the airframe. Cheers.

A straight OOB build for "production" - for presents , fleabay etc. The idea here was to create nice desktop pieces , add visible detail like nice resin guns and clear nav lights, a great paint job and an easy to use magnetic stand that makes no holes in the model. It's not a profit thing, more paid practise as folk keep asking for them and I umm and ahh. This took less than 8 hours over 7 days without interfering with rest of my life so well pleased. I look at stuff like this the same as playing my scales and exercises for jazz guitar: the more you build, putty, prime, airbrush etc the better you get and currently my hobby is more than paying for itself while my skills improve. Nice to know I can knock out 2-3 of these month from £2.99 kits and not even interfere with my own for pleasure builds. When i don't feel like doing any personal modelling, I grab a spare workbench and bang one of these out to keep my hand in, the folks out there truly dig those Spits, 109s Hurris and Focke Wulfs and I can wade knee deep on the piles I bought as practise/presents for £2.99... I'm going to experiment with weathered/unweathered and see what grabs folk more. BTW the 109 in the ratatata dogfight will shortly be appearing at an RFI near you. Now a gripe, my stands: They are made from stuff you can buy easily on ebay. They take less than 5 minutes to make and require only two simple holes drilled, two magnets glued on and piece of rod sawed to roughly the right length. There are ZERO HOLES made in the model, so you can pick up the plane, examine it and then it self-locates securely and magnetically back, in a variety of poses. I mention this as some "experten" mentioned me by name and was dissing them by comparing them to a detailed cut and measured acrylic stand with interlocking parts that needed a big hole gouged out of the model. You pays your money and takes your choice: Me? I don't like gouging holes out of a model I spent a week making and nor do the folk who buy them from me. Apologies if I sound like I'm whining but this character mentioned me by name and belittled my work, I get by fine without criticising or belittling other folk so I expect the same, at least from the grown ups here. Enough already, back to the model WIP here, Beauty shots ( goodnight Mr Bright Blue Background and Nikon D850 that bricked itself after an update...) Thanks for looking Anil EDIT: Updated images, processed with the right settings

I've just finished these, the second trio of Airfix's Spitfire I's from my stash built to utilise a couple of the schemes on the new Xtradecal Battle of Britain 75th Anniversary Spitfires transfer sheet X72224 here and one from the Southern Expo 70th Anniversary sheet. The first is a Spitfire I, L1027 LOoA of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron - as you can tell from the serial the aircraft is an early one, but I believe that (at least some and probably all of) the original 602 Squadron Spitfires were refitted to 1a standards in May 1940 - L1027 is portrayed in August when they were based at Westhampnett, one of Tangmere's satellite stations. L1027 carried a cartoon of a flying toilet as its nose art (and had an unflattering nickname to match... there is a fine photo of the artwork and a brief story of L1027 in Douglas McRoberts' book on 602 Squadron "Lions Rampant"). Ellis Aries flew it to shoot down a Do17 on 26 August and Nigel Rose was shot down and wounded by a Bf110 while flying it on 11 September. It was subsequently repaired/rebuilt and went to 53 OTU, stalled and crash-landed at Llandow on 28 September 1941 and was struck off charge a few days later. Anyway here is my representation of "The Flying Outhouse"* ... and here is a close-up - or at least as close as I could get - of the flying toilet cartoon with the motto "Izal get you!" on the scroll beneath... * Yes, the nickname wasn't actually 'The Flying Outhouse', I leave it to your imagination to guess what the correct word was. The second is a Spitfire Ia R6835 of 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron flown by Flying Officer Brian Carbury from RAF Hornchurch in August 1940 - on 31st August he was flying this aircraft when over the course of three flights he claimed two He111s and three Bf109s before being wounded by splinters when R6835 took a cannon shell in the oxygen tank which exploded. FO Carbury managed to nurse it back to Hornchurch and landed without further damage. R6835 was repaired and served with a series of training units, ending its days (as far as I can tell) at Henstridge, Somerset, in July 1944. Here is my representation of R6835 during her own 'Finest Hour' in August 1940... The third and final model represents Spitfire Ia R6691, PRoJ of 609 (West Riding) Squadron flown by Flight Lieutenant Frank Howell based at RAF Warmwell in August 1940. On 13 August Flt Lt Howell claimed 2 Ju87s whilst flying R6691. R6691 later served with 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron and 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron so she was a true Auxiliary bird. She was struck off charge on 31 March 1943. As noted these are all built from the Airfix 2011 tooling of the Spitfire Ia which goes together very nicely. There is a rather long and winding WiP thread here if you are interested in the details of the builds (as well as a whole bunch of unrelated trivia ) and the RFI thread for the first three Spitfires is here... The kits were mostly built OOB with the following additions/replacements: Eduard micro-fabric seat harnesses and canopy mask sets and SBS Models resin Spitfire I exhausts and EZ-line aerial wire; the paints used were a custom mix of interior green and Phoenix Precision Paints Dark Earth, Dark Green and Sky - the Sky and Dark Earth applied by airbrush and the disruptive pattern of Dark Green brush-painted. The transfers as for 602 and 609 Squadrons were by Xtradecal and the 603 Squadron markings from the Southern Expo 'Hornchurch vs the Luftwaffe' set. The Xtradecal fuselage roundel centres were slightly off-register which was surprising and annoying, I have never had any issues with them before and I hope never to again, The Southern Expo decals although 5 years old now performed well. Um, I think that's about it. Well done if you managed to wade through that ocean of text Cheers, Stew