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Hasegawa Spitfire VIII : FINISHED


desmojen

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And for my next trick.......................................

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Hasegawa's 1/48 Spitfire MkVIII!

Bought this off e bay a while ago for two reasons. One, it was going cheap. Two, the box art, yes really.

A lot has been written about this kit and it's wierdness re. fuselage length. I did a little comparison myself with Spitfire kits by Airfix, ICM, Tamiya and Falcon and it is indeed very short. Actually shorter than Hasegawa's own MkV :mental:

Apart from that it's a corking little kit, the cockpit is the best I've seen in 1/48 short of resin and even includes the proper rounded floor. The detail is wonderfully crisp and even the overlapping fuselage panels are represented in places. I couldn't live with the shortness though, because I have models of the right length to sit it next to, so I bought the Aeroclub fuselage to correct. Didn't really know what to expect from it but thought it was cheap enough to take a punt on so I ordered one.

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You get a complete new fuselage, here I've photographed it next to the original. The length difference is clear to see!

The new part is obviously based on a modified Hasegawa part and all the Hase cockpit parts fit into it with little effort. You also get a little sprue with some extras so it's pretty decent value all round I think.

Fingers crossed this one will go together a bit more easily than the Hurricane :lol:

Jen.

Edited by desmojen
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Motored on with this a tad today :)

I had already painted most of the interior when I did the Hurricane, and I did the new fuselage parts yesterday.

The cockpit went together without any hassle, I added some seatbelts but other than that it needs no work. I used the instrument panel decal in the interests of extreme laziness :lol:

It was a good heads up though, the decal was a bit crispy and prone to cracking up. Good job I have aftermarket decals for this scheme!

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Once I had the interior in I glued the fuselage together. It fit together fine, but being a limited run type moulding, it still needed remedial work although not that much.

I had to clean up the tail end a lot to get the tailwheel inserts and rudder to fit, and I was a bit annoyed to find that I had to re open all the holes for the tailplanes to fit into which was pretty fiddly. Once I had it all cut out the tailplanes and rudder fit very well, although the tailwheel inserts still needed some superglue action.

With that done I turned my attention to the wings. The kit parts went together perfectly and the inserts dropped in a treat too. The fun started when I tried to attach the wing to the fuselage :(

Initially it wouldn't fit at all. I had to trim a lot of material away from the rear part of the joint, and also remove the locating tabs from the leading edges. This helped but there was a massive gap at the wing root itself. I inserted a spreader bar (cocktail stick) into the forward fuselage to relieve this a little. I eventually got it to fit sort of well, again a bit frustrating when I know the kit fit together like a dream before!

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The fun continued around the new nose parts. They didn't fit the wing, or the fuselage :angrysoapbox.sml:

I got them there in the end, after a lot of trimming and some fairly major reshaping around the spinner end. All a little disappointing really, especially given the good reviews this correction set has received across the board.

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All's well that ends well however. I have Milliputted and smoothed the wing gaps since I took the pictures. A bit more rubbing out and some re detailing around the nose should see me ready for paint in the morning.

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Jen.

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Great looking work Jen, you've done an outstanding job on the front office :speak_cool:

To be honest though once the vanilla Hase kit is assembled and finished, unless you get a set of callipers out you really can't pick the couple of mil shortness in the fuselage.

Cheers

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Motored on with this a tad today :)

Jen.

Blimey Jen, youre not far wrong there, youre not hanging around here............ amazing as always from you :thumbsup2:

Bexy

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Speedy work Jen. Look forward to seeing it with some clothes on ;)

Your wish is my command :D

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Top colours are dark Earth and Dark Green. The white bands are Mr Base White as they were with the Hurricane.

The yellow nose is actually RLM04. I painted the spinner backplate black. The Hasegawa instructions state Dark Green for this while the Watermark decal instructions don't mention it at all, even though it is clearly visible in their supplied photo! I could see no good reason for it to be green though, so I went with black.

There was dissent with the underside colour as well.

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Hasegawa say it's Medium Sea grey, Watermark say Sky. I chose Sky simply because I felt it would look cooler! B)

Paints are all Mr Colour again.

'To be honest though once the vanilla Hase kit is assembled and finished, unless you get a set of callipers out you really can't pick the couple of mil shortness in the fuselage.'

I agree Darson, up to a point. But the reason I have gone with the correction is that this model will end up on a shelf with half a dozen other MkIX's which are all the right length. In that company, it would stick out like a sore thumb. And it's more like 5 or 6 mm btw.

I've also used one of my precious Ultracast spinners because the kit spinner is significantly too long.

Jen.

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I dont know how you manage to work to this standard, this quickly Jen.

Very well done so far

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I agree Darson, up to a point. But the reason I have gone with the correction is that this model will end up on a shelf with half a dozen other MkIX's which are all the right length. In that company, it would stick out like a sore thumb. And it's more like 5 or 6 mm btw.

I've also used one of my precious Ultracast spinners because the kit spinner is significantly too long.

Jen.

I hear what you're saying Jen and I agree with you that it would look a little odd with an unmodified Spit sitting with a bunch of modified ones.

Ultracast IMHO make some of the best aircraft accessories around and they really are worth it.

Btw you are one of the fastest builder (of quality) that I have ever seen. Please keep it up I'm really enjoying your build.

Cheers

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Thanks everyone! :D

Latest progress pic. I have some decals on, I have some weathering on and I have some matt varnish on.

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Probably not the final matt coat since there is still a bit of touching up to do, but definately getting there!

Jen.

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Thanks Neil. I find it's usually faster when I don't use hammers! :banghead: You started yours yet?

Jen.

Hi Jen,

Its looking fantastic... as for my one, no I have not started it yet, just started the italeri 48th Texan... and can you believe it that ive built four aircraft on the go without a hammer in sight.... its starting to get rusty :analintruder:

Cheers,

Neil

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Your Spit looks lovely. I'm over half way through the Hasegawa MK IX and hadn't realised there was a problem with fuselage length. It looks fine to me but looking at the comparison with the Aeroclub replacement there does seem to be a problem with the rear fuselage. Still, it was only an experiment in weathering/finishing so I can live with that. Nice kit otherwise.

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