Eduard new 1/72 Spitfire IXc - Restarted after 4 years !

[Chuck1945]

I am about to start on mine. For planning this out, is there a reason you opted to assemble the lower sidewalls onto the fuselage instead of following Eduard's plan to attach them with the seat and bulkhead assembly?

[Giorgio N]

I am about to start on mine. For planning this out, is there a reason you opted to assemble the lower sidewalls onto the fuselage instead of following Eduard's plan to attach them with the seat and bulkhead assembly?

Mainly I wasn't sure to be able to stick the sidewalls flush on the fuselage parts if inserting everything from below as Eduard suggests. On my next build I'll try the method they propose, at the moment I'm quite happy with my method as seems to be working well enough but guess that if the instructions suggest a certain sequence, this should be the one that works best..

One other reason for gluing the sidewalls in place was to take a picture of the whole cockpit sides, as with this build I'm also trying to show what this new kit is like, such pictures better show the inner detail.

Speaking of cockpit, I've started adding bits on one side:

I have attached all the parts on the port side as this allows me to check the alignment of the seat with the entry door. The seat doesn't seem to pick the right angle when glued on its support, checking all the parts in place allowed me to sort the angle (ok, the seat is not shown in the pictures because I've yet to add some seat belts...)

The two parts located in front of the cockpit help a lot in keeping the fuselage parts well aligned. They should also help with the cowling. A first dry fit of the fuselage halves showed that fit should be pretty good but it's clear that there are a lot of bits inside and the fit of these is very tight.

Among the parts to be fitted is the bulkhed carrying the instrument panel:

Eduard ffers two parts, one flat to be used with a PE panel and one with raised detail. The detail is very accurate and pretty good, the AZ kit however seems to have an even nicer panel. Mond, not that there's much to complain about this one, it's a very good panel for its scale.

As before, the time spent waiting for the cockpit parts to set was used on the wings and I now have an almost complete set:

Fit of the wings was good but I removed the outer alignment pins to achieve a better fit (thanks to the Wooksta for the tip!). On one wing, the upper didn't fit perfectly because the part between aileron and flap interfered with the lowe. Trimming some 0.2 mm solved the problem nicely.

These two pictures also show well the rivet detail. As said before, rivets are not to everyone's taste, in any case I'm impressed by how fine these are

[CedB]

Looking very nice Giorgio - I like that i/p and will look forward to saving some for other models!

i had a quick look at the instructions online and the compass looks like 'a challenge'?

[Giorgio N]

Looking very nice Giorgio - I like that i/p and will look forward to saving some for other models!

i had a quick look at the instructions online and the compass looks like 'a challenge'?

Thanks Ced ! Regarding the compass, I went for the plastic parts only but I agree that the PE compass support looks very tricky... I may build the next Eduard Spitfire using a full PE set, I'll need plenty of patience and liquor for that...

Speaking of PE parts, one detail that can be reproduced well by these are the seat belts. In my overtrees there were no seat belts of course and this time I decided to rob a set form the same Eduard, the old Zoom set designed for the Tamiya Spitfire Mk.I. Not too accurate but does the job... The loss of one lap belt during construction and its replacement with some foil made the whole even less accurate but the effect is decent nonetheless. At that point I couldn't resist trying to dryfit the fuselage and the wings. Fit looks pretty good and the seatbelts look Ok.

Once the belts were in place, it was time to add some other cockpit bits and touch up some parts where the paint had been damaged by the handling

Looks ok to me ! Now I'm ready to close the fuselage, although I may add the gunsight first. Speaking of gunsights, Eduard offers both the standard and the gyro sight, whatever is not used will end in the spare parts box (don't know how often I've said this during this build..).

[Navy Bird]

Have to say that I'm struggling in reproducing the pictures right, the green I see on the computer screen is not like the one I see on the model, the colour I've used is IMHO a good representation of Interior Green but shows very bad in pictures.

I was having the same problem, and I solved it by buying two photographic targets, one white and one neutral grey. I took a picture of the white target using the same lighting setup as I use for the model, and then used that photo to create a custom white balance for the camera. I don't know if your camera allows you to do this, but it's worth taking a look. Once I did this, my colours look pretty good. If you can't create a custom white balance, your camera may have different presets (daylight, shade, fluorescent, etc.) You can try each of those and see if one of them gives you something you like.

Cheers,

Bill

[CedB]

Very nice Giorgio, looking good!

[Cookenbacher]

It's looking great Giorgio, thanks for bringing us along. This will prove a valuable reference when the time comes.

[Giorgio N]

Thanks for the tips about the camera settings Bill, will have to try these. At the moment I'm correcting the pictures on the computer using Corel Photo Paint but I'm not doing a good work with this...

Fortunately Eduard did a better work on their kit than I can do with the pictures and closing the fuselage was quite easy.

The fit was pretty good, no filler required, just some light sanding on the fuel tank. Speaking of this part, a small scratch may be noticed on its side, better seen here:

This has nothing to do with the kit, I caused it by accident while I was using the caliper to take the measurements, all other kits are fine.

With the fuselage closed, I couldn't resist comparing this kit to the AZ one and here's the difference in size:

The two fuselages are aligned at the top, it can be seen how the AZ (in tan) is shorter than the grey Eduard fuselage.

The wings are roughly aligned on their simmetry axis, the Eduard ones are not complete (wingtips missing) but the larger span is already evident when compared to the wingtip joint lines on the AZ parts

Next step will be the upper engine cowling... this promises to be where the problems will be !

[snowen250]

i'm at the painting stage with mine. Wings gave a bit of grief, but the upper engine cowling just fell on. No problems at all.

Overall this is my favourite 1/72 kit ever. I think it is just superb.

Simon

[Killingholme]

The engineering of this kit worried me, but looks decent so far. (Not quite convinced two different types of wheel well is all that necessary though....!)

Good luck with the upper cowling. I am sure it'll fit well, but I'm scared of it because the same design in the Fujimi Spitfire XIVs is a nightmare. That's unfair to Eduard though- I look forward to you demonstrating that I have nothing to fear. If that part drops on well without detail-obliterating sanding, I'll certainly go out and buy a couple...

Will

[DominikS]

Just before going on holiday I closed the fuselage and install the cover. Wasn't so bad. Worse was joining wings with fuselage. I think I had made some mistakes before as I had some work to fit them.

I also wanted to close cockpit but this is the worst part of the kit. The door is higher than the wall after removing this small parts. Gonna restart working in two weeks. Hope it won't take much time to make everything fit as it should.

[Paul J]

Could Eduard have gone wrong like they did with the 48th 109G-6? I hope not!!!

[The wooksta V2.0]

Good luck with the upper cowling. I am sure it'll fit well, but I'm scared of it because the same design in the Fujimi Spitfire XIVs is a nightmare.

Ditto the old Ventura kits, the Aeroteam F21, Xtrakit mk XII and the forthcoming Sword mk XIV kits. The problem with them is that they lack locating pins - few shims of plastic card to help as locator tabs, and there's rarely a problem.

The Eduard kit has locator pins and makes it much easier, although I agree that the upper cowling should be one piece.

[Dave Fleming]

Several of the extra parts in mine have found a home in an Airfix mi IX

[Giorgio N]

It's been 4 years since I last updated this thread, F-O-U-R years ! In the meantime I had done some work on this model but in the end it was abandoned on the sholf of doom as I had lost a part for one of the radiators. Then last week I found this part while clearing the bench.. so I said to myself, why not continue the original WIP ?

In the meantime there have been plenty of build of this kit and I've built a couple myself, including a Mk.VIII for a Group Build here, so there's nothing I can add to what is today already known about this kit. Still, may be worth showing the last few steps in the build of this model, even if 4 years later...

 

So, where are we now ? In the meantime I had attached the wing to the fuselage and added wingtips and a couple clear parts. I had also glued the radiator sides and decided to use mesh to reproduce the radiator matrix:

 

 

 

So really I am not far from the end and I'd have finished the model years ago if not for this part...

 

 

Well, now I found the part so it's time to finish this model ! And I started by trying to sort the infamous upper engine cowling parts... these are well known for not fitting too well in the Eduard kit, hopefully now it should be decent. I lost part of the lovely surface detail while sanding the parts to fit but better lose surface detail than having a bad joint...

I'm now preparing something for the rear radiator matrix. Originally I used thin metal mesh and this is nice however in the last couple of years I've used decals to represent this area and I'm using this technique for the rear. The front will stay as they are, I tried to remove the mesh but it's well glued in place and I don't want to damage anything..

 

In the last 4 years I've also come to own a number of decal  sheets for the Spitfire IX. As a subject I'm now considering a Spitfire in D-Day stripes... I have a few options in a couple of Xtradecal sheets, just have to choose one

[Giorgio N]

So the radiators... as said above I had originally used a metal mesh for the front face of the radiators. Here's a picture that should show the effect...

 

 

I'm sure some here will recognize that mesh... it's the one that Ventura used to supply in their Spitfire kits to make the radiator face ! Each kit came with a small area of this material and there was enough for 2-3 kits. Looks fine but in the meantime I have developed a different approach for the Spit ix radiators: printing a decal. And here's the decal ready to be used:

 

 

The drawing is a recreation of the pattern that Eduard used in the PE parts included in their Profipack kits. It is quite accurate, already sized for the Eduard kit and shows the presence of two separate radiators for water and oil.  It's printed on specific decal paper with my cheap laser printer. Just paint the radiator face with steel or silver paint and apply the decal on top and here's the result:

 

 

Considering that an entire 1/72 Spitfire IX is smaller than the picture looks on my laptop, I'd say that the result is not bad. A proper 3D moulded part or a PE insert would be better, but for the "cheapo" Spitfire models I have in mind this is more than adequate

[Navy Bird]

Great idea to print the radiator meshes. I've done the same thing for jet engine faces and exhausts. I think you can get away with this in 1:72, but in larger scales you sometimes need the 3-D effect for more realism. I faked the 3-D on some 1:72 jet fan blades by incorporating a drop shadow into the artwork. Once it was inside the intake trunks, the effect looked pretty good.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Giorgio N]

Thanks Bill !

Regarding decals, IMHO they are acceptable when the part is not much visible anyway or if it's located so deep that the 3-dimensional effect would be lost anyway. The Spitifre here is a good example, once they are hidden inside it's hard to tell if it's a decal or a 3.dimensional part. I'm however also considering your technique for a couple of jets, where attaching a picture of the compressor first stage may actually result in a realistic enough effect without going to the trouble of scratchbuilding the whole intakes

[Broadway]

Making a note of this for future use, so much is new to me.

[Giorgio N]

Time to glue the radiator lower parts, that were the reason why this kit was left on the shelf of doom for so long...

 

 

There's a tiny gap where these meet the relevant sidewalls. Nothing that some filler can't sort. Cannon barrel fairings are also in place, so it's time to fill, sand and prime...

 

Then I found that my Tamiya grey primer can is practically finished. Oh well, I have a white primer can.. and this went on a bit better before spurting put the very last drop. Fortunately I had enough paint left to give some decent priming, that was then followed but a coat of tamiya flat white, this time applied by airbrush

 

 

Tamiya's flat white is one of the best white paints around, sprays beautifully and covers pretty well. Since I'll be building a D-Day striped aircraft, makes sense to use this as first coat of paint.

[Giorgio N]

It's now time to choose the subject ! As the kit came without decals, I had a look in the decal stash, checking both aftermarket sheets and spare decals, and Inow have a few ones I can choose from:

 

ML407 OU-V of 485 Sqn. from Xtradecal. Pros: a very famous aircraft as she is still flying, now known as the "Grace Spitfire". Also she is shown with tidy stripes and I like these. Cons: apart from the stripes it's a relatively "plain" subject

 

MK892 ZD-C of 222 Sqn from Xtradecal. Pros: it is on the other hand a very unusual subject, with a replacement panel in grey primer over the fuel tank and the code letters reproduced very roughly. Cons: it's maybe a bit too "scruffy" subject

 

NH171 AH-Z of 332 Sqn. from Xtradecals. Pros: I like the Norwegian colours worn in a band on the spinner, it's a nice colour touch. I also like the idea of a "foreign" squadron as would be nice to remember all the men that fled their countries to keep fighting in the RAF. Cons: painting a 5-color band on the spinner is going to be a real pain in the...

 

MH819 NN-M of 310 Sqn. from Xtradecal. Pros: another foreign unit and this time a Czech one, would make for a nice touch to a Czech made kit. She also probably wore a special marking on the engine cowling so making this even more interesting. Cons: the same markings are also in an Eduard box, so it's a very often represented aircraft

 

MJ239 LO-B of 602 Sqn from Sky Models. Pros: she wears a nice colourful unit badge and is a subject not often reproduced. Cons: I'm not sure of the colour used by Sky for the fuselage codes...

 

MK392 JE-J of 144 Wg from the Airfix kit. Pros: maybe the most famous Spitfire IX ever ! Cons: maybe a bit too famous ?

 

Ah decisions, decisions... the fact that the invasion stripes were different on all these aircraft means that I have to decide quite early in the painting stage. My plan is to mask the stripes first and then add the camouflage. Not how it was done on the real aircraft but works better from a modeller's point of view