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What am I getting up to? Okay, I realize you don't care, but a strange impulse compels to me want to write every now and then (not only am I a failed graduate student, I'm also a failed writer*), and also I have a bizarre urge to complete as many builds as possible each year. I reckon my fear of failure** will impel me to keep on building and babbling. But possibly not! I'm inconsistent and unreliable, that's part of my charm. Blah blah blah. I'm wrapping up work on the AZ Spitfire IX Joypack; I decided to do all three at once, because otherwise I would have only built three Spitfires this year, and it's actually worse than that, because one of them is a Seafire 47, so really only two. As that would have meant I built more Mustangs (two Commonwealth P-51Ds, one Mustang IV) and Meteors (an NF.13, an F.4, and two RAAF F.8s, plus a Meteor III ruined by a disastrous superglue/noseweight accident) than Spitfires this year, radical corrective action was required. It turned out to be a good idea, because my initial positive impressions aside, if I'd only built one, I'd be unlikely to return to build the other two without a lengthy refractory period. From simply stupid engineering choices (there's not really a good time or way to put in the exhaust stacks -- if I had to do it again I'd put a strip of plasticard on the inside of the housing for them to rest against and sand down the edges of the little flat piece of plastic all the exhausts come out of so I could add it later easily), to the continuing frustration of attempting to get the right sit with limited run kit landing gear (Airfix has hit upon a genius solution, with square pegs; you have to work VERY hard to put their gear on wrong), and just the constant stupidities that can derail any build -- I knocked over my only bottle of flat clear; the flat coat went cloudy on one model and one model only, though all were sprayed at the same time; I've dropped everything I've picked up: a near complete Spit, wetted decals, very small parts, a can of cola, glue, etc -- I think I'm ready for the projected Eduard 1/72 kit for 2015. I plan on buying at least ten of any double boxing they make, and I rarely buy more than two of any kit: I am dead freaking [stronger language available] serious about Spitfire IXs. They are the most beautiful anything ever to have existed, and the fact that they came into being expressly to kill the hated (by me, intensely) Focke-Wulf 190 just makes it all the sweeter. So here's one of the Spitfires earlier: This is an LF.IXe of 318 (Polish) Squadron in Italy in 1945. Not visible here is the hideous gap between spinner cone and backplate, which I did not mention earlier but which is arguably the kit's worst and most annoying flaw. Suggested workaround is to only build black-nosed Spitfires of 2TAF, so you can glue it all up before painting and sand at your leisure. Here's a group shot around 2 PM Sunday: Yes, my workbench is super messy. In the foreground is a Spitfire IXb using markings from the Print Scale "Presentation Spitfires" set, which was kindly sent to me last Christmas by Ed Russell, of I believe Red Roo. The decals are not as terrible as some of the stories about Print Scale might have lead me to believe, but I should not have flat coated them today, (I applied them this morning), rather letting micro-sol and -set work their dark magics on them overnight. Past Me often screws himself in service of creating a sadder but wiser future me. In any case, this is "ZD-B/Turf Club I" of 222 (Natal) Squadron, and the last Spitfire is now done up using Southern Expo decals as MH434 when she, by curious coincidence, was also ZD-B in 222 Squadron, a year later. I built a Fw190 likely shot down by MH434 earlier in the year, so that's my first dogfight double, as well. Edward. These are not the Beaufighter. You have lied. You are a liar. I am not a liar -- unless it's convenient and easier to do so -- and I'm getting to the Beaufighter. I'm going to build this boxing: https://www.scalemates.com/products/product.php?id=122025A good old fashioned Beaufighter X. But I have a thing, I prefer to build aircraft that saw combat, or could potentially see combat (like RAFG), and the cool thimble-nosed decal option is for a postwar aircraft, as its underwing serials clearly indicated. Freightdog to the rescue! Their "Brits Abroad, Part II" sheet has decals for a thimlbe-nosed TF.X in 1949 during Operation FIREDOG in what was then Malaya. As the Malayan Emergency is another area of interest for me, this rings three bells: thimble-nose, aircraft on active service, and weird little 20th century war. FIREDOG is especially interesting to me, because it's basically what the RAF was doing instead of fighting it out with MiGs above Korea, and lucky for the RAF, too, given that the Meteor and the Vampire were its frontline fighters at the time. In any case, that's what I'll be building. The Spitfires are almost totally done -- I have to swear a lot and cram in their exhaust stacks tomorrow morning -- and then I can tidy up and start on the Beauf. The plastic has already been washed. God willing, I might manage to finish it before the new year, wouldn't that be something? I now leave you with a song whose title describes me at least thirty percent of the time; you may not like it so much as I do, but it does have Karen "Doctor Who" Gillan and Paul Rubens of Pee-Wee Herman fame in it, too. Karen Gillan does nothing for me, I have my own, far superior redhead. But I like the song. *Some might say frustrated writer, but frustration would imply I've not accepted that my destiny is to do none of the things I dreamed of in childhood. I'm not that naive. **Having sampled it at length, I don't much care for it.