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Boulton Paul Defiant Mk I (Airfix 1/72 Dogfight Doubles)


jrlx

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Dear All,

 

This is my rendition of Airfix's 1/72 Boulton Paul Defiant Mk I. The kit comes in an Airfix Dogfight Doubles boxing, which also includes the Dornier Do 17z.

 

These two aircraft met over Britain in August 1940. The Defiant managed to shoot down the Dornier but was, in turn, itself shot down next by an escorting German fighter.

 

This specific Defiant was based in Martlesham Heath, where BT Labs were later built. This is quite meaningful, personally, because I did my MSc. Project there in 1993-4 (on self-pulsating lasers for fibre optic communications systems, by the way).

 

I started the build in the Summer of 2015, in the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain GB but didn't manage to finish it in time and shelved it in November of the same year. The build was resumed in June this year for the 100th Anniversary of the RAF GB. Again, I didn't finish it in time and only managed to conclude it last week.

 

Some points of interest regarding the kit and build:

 

  • The fit is generally good. The only problem were the joins between the wing and fuselage, including the wing roots
  • I used Eduard's PE sets for detailing the interior, exterior and flaps (my first use of PE flaps). Eduard's masking set was also used.
  • The kit is good in terms of detail out-of-the-box but the PE sets really improve it a lot
  • The navigation lights on the tips of wings and on the spine were scratch built from transparent sprue.
  • I used Alclad black primer on the external surfaces to provide pre-shading but it only worked well on the undersides. On the top sides it looked like the effect was killed by the dark camouflage colours, so I resorted to post-shading.
  • I tried to not overdue the weathering, as period pictures show the aircraft in a relatively clean state:
    • panel lines were enhanced with a dark wash
    • a silver pencil was used to provide some chipping on the walk-way area of the wing and around the cockpit
    • pigments were used to make exhaust stains and earth stains on the undercarriage area and elements
    • "fresh engine oil" was applied around the carburetor

 

The WIP is here.

 

And these are the photos of the finished build:

 

1. General views

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y4mBPKNvEr-oswp_XoInYkb-KXjHFBFF_2HXUt-m

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y4meEscn9WgyE_GvR48T6CQic0_r_Ljyupigo3e9

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2. Details of wing and navigation lights

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3. Details of flaps and radiator

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y4mndwmu5H_3IdgW3ucwvlAuxmFxIePYKYDDe1JB

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4. Details of cockpit, machine gun turret and exhausts

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5. Details of cockpit interior before closing the fuselage

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6. Details of undercarriage and wheel wells

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To finish with, pictures of the real thing:

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I hope you like the build. All comments and criticisms are very welcome.

 

Thanks for looking

 

Jaime

 

 

 

 

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Brilliant small-scale detailing.

Well done, but....

I'm not sure, are the main roundels on the fuselage upside-down?

I thought the straight edge cut -off went along the demarkation between upper and lower camouflage colours.

I'm probably wrong, but thought I'd ask anyway.

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Thank you all for your very kind comments! They're very much appreciated!

 

3 hours ago, bruce bay said:

Really lovely colours too - my early RAF builds always look far too vibrant. You have nailed it

I used Alclad Grey primer for the interior and black primer for the exterior, and the colours are Alclad metallics and Gunze acrylics. I used a combination of black primer as pre-shading and traditional post-shading to achieve the weathered colours effect.

 

1 hour ago, FatFlyHalf said:

I'm not sure, are the main roundels on the fuselage upside-down?

I thought the straight edge cut -off went along the demarkation between upper and lower camouflage colours.

The fuselage roundels were applied according to instructions:

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However, from the pictures of flying aircraft I posted above and from the scheme below, it seems they should be complete roundels:

https://boxartden.com/reference/gallery/index.php/Modeling-References/Camoflage-Markings/08-Boulton-Paul-Defiant/Boulton-Paul-Defiant-8-04-960

 

Too late to sort it out now, I'm afraid I overlooked this detail... Thanks for pointing it out, as it can be useful for future builds by other modellers :)

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

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Thats a fantastic finish, thought it was 1/48th at first.

Nice back story too, I drive past Martlesham Heath everyday, some of the old buildings are still going strong, one of them is a solicitors and has some great photos of the airfields history on the walls, I was in there a couple of years ago, very nice model

 

Darren

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