Israel's Mk.IXe from the 1/72 Hasegawa kit

[Giorgio N]

It is surprising that an aircraft so well known as the Spitfire IX has only very recently been reproduced in a properly and accurately detailed form in 1/72 scale. One would expect that with so many still around it would have been possible for model companies to make a good accurate kit many years ago and yet we had to wait until the Eduard kit arrived.

Among the many who tried and failed was Hasegawa, that in the mid '90s issued a series of Mk,IX/VII/VIII kits. These followed Hasegawa's standard formula of the era for their WW2 fighters: relatively few parts and very little internal detail coupled with very sharp moulding and very nice surface detail. These kits were pretty cheap in Japan but always became expensive when exported. Still Hasegawa mould quality was always very high and the generally easy fit made them loved everywhere.

The Spitfire IX was however marred by several accuracy problems, particularly the length of the fuselage. Other problems included an anemic propeller and a canopy that was fine for the Mk.VII (up to a point...) but not for the IX and VIII.

For a number of reasons a few years ago I bought number of these kits, mainly VIIIs, from a fellow modeller. I've already built a couple that I'm sure were also posted on this forum but I still have another 3. With the Eduard kit also heavily present in my stash (9 at the moment...) and being a Spitfire enthusiast some may thing that I don't think much of the Japanese kit, and they would be right... however there is one thing that these kits have: they build beautifully ! And whenever I feel like I'm losing enthusiasm for the hobby one of my favourite medicine is to grab a Hasegawa kit from that era and build it... so it was that last Saturday I came across one of these and felt a very powerful urge to start building it !

 

So, with my usually long intro out of the way, what do we have here ? All these kits I bought came with no box, so it's bag only. This was the only real Mk.IX issue I got: one of their many "limited editions", this time representing Clostermann's Mk.IX

 

 

As said before, the kit is very nicely moulded in a hard grey plastic:

 

 

 

 

The various smaller sprue sections carry the parts relevant to the different variants and subvariants issued. So we have a choice of standard and clipped wingtips (and the kit was also issued with the extended ones), rounded and pointed rudders, Aerovee intake for this specific box. The generic sprues also have parts that would not be used here, like the retractable tailwheel of the Mk.VII/VIII and relative doors.

 

Now anyone with a decent knowledge of the Spitfire will already notice a few things from these sprues... and I will go through them during the build. However I will not correct any of the kit shape errors ! This will be built straight from the box... well, almost ! I have realised that I can't build straight from the box anymore and in any case this kit requires some work to get to the subject I have in mind: an Israeli Mk.IXe !

[Giorgio N]

So let's start from the wings.. these are not bad shapewise and compare decently with Eduard's. However there are a couple of things immediately noticeable !

For a starter, the ailerons are designed to enable the modeller to build both Mk.IX and VIII from the same kit: fill one recessed line and you get a IX, fill another and you get an VIII. However there's no reproduction of the panel lines associated with the wing tanks of the VIII and of course no filler point for the same... not a big deal as I'm building a IX.

Then we can see that Hasegawa, like Airfix did later, moulded a bulge over the wing that was introduced after the war. This had to go as Israeli Spitfires did not feature this.

As I'm building a IXe, this was also the right time to remove the bulge over the gun cover panel as Hasegawa moulded this for a C wing. And here are the two upper wings side by side, original part on the left and bulges removed on the right. No work has been carried out yet on the ailerons but you can see the line that need filling.

 

 

Lower surfaces of the wing are ok but changing it to an E wing means eliminating the spent case slots for the two outer MGs. Again, left side as moulded and right side modified.

 

 

There's still some work to do... I have to reproduce the slot for the 20mm gun in its new position, I may cut this or simply use a black decal. And of course I still have to modify the guns and add a new bulge. The new barrels will come from the Eduard kit while the bulge could come from the Sword Vc I'm building for this same GB. The Eduard kit may also donate another few parts... these kits have common sprues for details of all variants so they are crammed with potential spare parts for other Spitfires !

[malpaso]

I am interested to see how this goes, as I have  Hase mk.VIII in the stash.  It’s main selling point is a ready painted canopy- slightly incorrect as it has the low rear window!

[Giorgio N]

On 5/5/2020 at 1:43 PM, malpaso said:

I am interested to see how this goes, as I have  Hase mk.VIII in the stash.  It’s main selling point is a ready painted canopy- slightly incorrect as it has the low rear window!

Hope my work will be useful ! Really it's not a bad kit, apart from the various inaccuracies.. like that rear window..

[Giorgio N]

I know, I should stop getting obsessed with detailing cockpits... afterall not much can be seen in the cockpit of a 1/72 Spitfire model with a closed canopy !

Still, I decided to add something as the hasegawa cockpit is really very bare. Not much, just a few controls here and there (throttle and landing gear), a few boxes and a few gas bottles. Mostly from plasticard and rod.

I also added a raised instrument panel to the original flat hasegawa part... and this involved a new trick: I had made a silicone rubber mould from the part of another kit years ago (IIRC the AZ Mk.IX) so I tried to pour some UV curing glue into this one. After the glue was had cured I had a decent enough representation of the panel. Some sanding on the rear and I could glue it in place on the Hasegawa part. Not an Eduard PE but still looks decent.

 

 

After some painting I had all that was needed to get an adequately good looking cockpit:

 

 

Seat belts were made with foil from the rear of a medicines blister, thin but strong. I have a few sets of PE RAF belts but I'd rather keep those for models built with open canopies.

[Giorgio N]

As I'm converting the wing to the E configuration, I had to do some more work beside removing the bulges: the E wing featured the 20mm gun in the outer bay, with the inner occupied by a 0.5" MG. This meant the following:

- removing the gun barrel fairing from the inner position, leaving a flat stub of the correct length

- drilling a holel in the stub. This hole has to be quite wide as the barrel of the MG was well inside this. I considered adding this detail but then just decided to leave the hole and paint the inside in black..

- cutting the domed fairing from the stub on the outer position. And then looking for a new gun barrel fairing...

 

I've seen an article where the modeller simply reused the inner barrel fairing but this is not correct as E wing Spitfires featured a differently shaped fairing. Fortunately I have a few Eduard kits in the stash and as these kits have all kind of fairings on a common sprue, I could get the E wing fairings from what remains of one of my previous C winged builds.

To get this to fit, I drilled a hole in both the stub and the fairing and a metal pin will help to keep them together while the glue sets and will reinforce the joint. Here below a comparison of the original and modified parts, original on the left and modified on the right:

 

 

With the work on the upper wing parts completed, I did something on the lower part... the Hasegawa kit does not really feature a good reproduction of the radiators and their intakes. My modification was very simple: add a front radiator from plasticard and then add some kind of ramp at the front, again from plasticard.

Here below you can see the radiator front on the left and the completed ramp closing the area from the top on the right

 

 

What unfortunately can't be seen in the picture is how I represented the radiator face... what I did was to paint this in silver and then place on top of this a black decal representing the radiator matrix. When this is applied on the silver base, gives a nice rendition of the radiator. Being only a 2-dimensional representation it's not great when seen from close distance, but once it's inside the duct it's actually quite realistic. And is much quicker than any other technique if the radiator face is devoid of detail.

[Giorgio N]

Some more progress over the weekend: fuselage closed and wings assembled !

Generally this is a kit that fits very well, with the exception sometimes of the wing-fuselage joint (a common problem in many Spitfire kits). However I had some problems with the fuselage, mostly due to myself and not the kit... in the end I managed to get everything sorted, but I should be more careful the next time, Here's the fuselage:

 

 

The white circle is the refuelling point. I did here the same thing I did on my RAAF Vc: drill a hole through the fuselage top and insert a length of rod so that it's slightly recessed.

The seatbelts arrangment is not too accurate... in reality the belt itself is shorter and there are two cables connecting the belt to a reel in the rear fuselage. On other Spitfire models I represented these, here however I just reproduced a longer seatbelt part going to the rear. The bar below the seatbelt is not included in the kit and came from a square section rod.

One other scratchbuilt addition that I have not mentioned yet is the armor plate behind the seat, easily made from 0.4mm plasticard. It's a small touch that however makes the cockpit look much more realistic

 

The wings fortunately did fit pretty well and even the separate tips went on fine with just some light sanding. I considered using the spare wingtips from the Eduard kit as these are moulded in clear plastic and would have resulted in more realistic wingtip lights, however I'm going to bother with this kit.

 

 

The white piece of plasticard is there to help achieve a better fit with the fuselage...as a result of my mistake one side wpuld fit well but the other doesn't. That plasticard bit will lift the fuselage up on this side, so giving a better fit on the top wing-fuselage joint.

Have to say that I'm not really a fan of clipped wingtips on the Spitfire ! To me the shape of the standard wing is one of the most elegant feature seen on a machine, in the same league as the best looking classic cars. The clipped wigtips look meaner, more aggressive, maybe even more modern, but IMHO detract from the beauty of this aircraft.

Still, there were very good reasons for them and here I am building a model with clipped wings, it's not the first and it will not be the last

[Giorgio N]

And more progress !

Wing and fuselage joined together, fit decent but not stellar at the top, and I'll need to do some work at the lower rear end of the wing-fuselage joint. As said before, I made an error when gluing the fuselage halves (didn't get the aligment right) and this may have affected the rest somewhat. Could be worse but having built a couple of these kits before I know I can do much better.

And with the wing attached to the fuselage, I could also add theflower engine cowling panels, that come with the Aerovee filter.

 

 

 

Sorting the gaps should not be a big problem. What however I realised is that I have forgotten to glue the new gun bulges in place above the wings ! Of course I can still do it now, but I'd have preferred to glue them before joning the wings with the fuselage.

Edited May 11, 2020 by Giorgio N

[RidgeRunner]

Nice work so far, Giorgio. I'll be watching

 

Martin

 

 

[John Masters]

This will look very nice I am sure.