PCM Spitfire Mk.IXc

[spitfire]

After the Tempest was finished and the Hurricane was in the “paint shop” I started on the Spitfire IXc, this was a low key build and done when I had time from the Hurricane and other non modelling jobs allowed.

For the build I decided to use a Yahoo Instrument panel as I did not like the multi layered kit panel.

Markings would be mostly painted on using Montex masks, I have a set of Maketar masks as well just in case.

For stencils I have a set of HGW Wet Transfers.

My subject would be Johnnie Johnsons Spitfire EN398 an early Mk. IX some markings would come from the Victory Productions Spitfire  - Aces of the Empire.

The subject will differ from the kit subjects in that it is an early Mk. IX and would have the features listed below, luckily as I found out the kit contains the necessary parts to achieve this.

I got a lot of information from this article on the Spitfire site

http://spitfiresite.com/2010/04/johnnie-johnsons-spitfire-revisited.html

 

EN398 was built between Nov 42 and Aug 43, the narrow cannon bulge came out Jan 44 so it would have the broad bulge.

1.     “C” type wing with two cannon but broad cannon blisters,
 

2.    Small teardrop blister at starboard engine cowling housing the cabin blower driveshaft
 

3.    “Small” carburettor intake
 

4.    Single-angled horn-balanced elevator

5.     Cheese cutter IFF the later IFF (Mk.III) was introduced March 43 but the photo of EN398 shows wires.

6.    The Merlin 63 engine was equipped with fuel cooler featuring a prominent circular intake in the port wing root

7.    A gun camera in the starboard wing root.

8.    Serial number EN398 was applied in small serif-style lettering on top of the fuselage band

9.    Fishtail exhausts were fitted

10. Not sure about the headrest as early IX models are reputed to have them.

Although the aircraft was still only two months old, it would seem that it was repainted before transfer to the HQ flight so minimum weathering.

And I found this photo which I will use as a guide for the build

The build is at a quite advanced stage now but I kept detailed notes and photos of the various stages, so don't imagine that this is a speed build.

The kit comes with some impressive instructions, painting and marking guides and a large decal sheet, this is what you get in the box.

First up is the box itself

The instructions which are quite well detailed

Painting and markings guide

The very generous decal sheet

The resin parts, which are most impressive

The PE

And the main course

Think I may have overdone the photos here so I will split them into another post if needed.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

 

[spitfire]

Nope I was wrong it posted fine, so will continue,

Next up is the After Market stuff.

I usually paint the markings as I am useless with decals

Just in case I also have these

And as back up

And the HGW Wet transfers

 

That's all for now as it is time for me to abandon the study, more tomorrow.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[mullac2001]

Ooh looking forward to this 

[spitfire]

16 hours ago, mullac2001 said:

Ooh looking forward to this 

You are very welcome to tag along, in real time I am at the paint stage but I will chronicle how I got there.

First up as usual was to cut parts from the sprues, leaving sprue “tails” to hold them ready for painting, as usual I started with the cockpit components.

Some time was spent cleaning up flash on the various parts and removing the large sprue attachment points.

Cleaning up the cockpit parts and drilling out the holes in the bulkheads

The resin parts were washed in warm soapy water using a strainer to stop small parts from disappearing down the plughole and they were then left to dry on some paper kitchen roll.

The cockpit components were airbrushed with Humbrol 120, which I prefer for RAF Grey Green but there are lots of alternatives out there.

The fuselage still need the area behind the seat bulkhead painting silver.

Lots of clips to hld the tails on the parts while airbrushing.

The seat was painted with Humbrol 133 but any red/brown paint will do.

When this was dry the seat back cushion was painted black using Humbrol 85 Coal Black Satin.

The resin cockpit side panels which are very well detailed and had been painted with Humbrol 120 then received some detail painting, and some decals from various sources, mainly Airscale and Barracuda.

The HGW Seatbelts were carefully cut out, which was a bit of a tricky job but it got done in the end, the seat belts were then assembled  ready for attaching to the seat.

As noted by several other builders this is best done by attaching the actual belt parts to the PE buckles etc while they are still on the PE fret

The finished seat was then attached to it's bulkhead, I left the shoulder belts off as thay have to be threaded though later.

 

That's all for now.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

 

[bigbadbadge]

Very good start, the Humbrol 133 is a great representation, I use that too.  

Great work 

Chris

[spitfire]

Thanks Chris, yes 133 is on of my favourite Humbrol paints but the seats did seem to vary a lot in colour so any type of red brown would do.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[spitfire]

Moving swiftly on.

The fuselage from the seat bulkhead back was painted with Polished aluminium.

The kit does not include the oxygen bottle so I rescued one from a scrapped Hasegawa Mk. V and painted it black and added some decals from a Barracuda decal sheet. The eagle eyed may notice later on that the decals are upside down, sadly I did not notice until it was way too late.

All the cockpit parts ready for assembley.

Having learned my lesson with the Tempest and Hurricane there now followed a lengthy test fitting and sanding session to get the bulkheads to fit into the fuselage halves using tape to hold them together.

Small plastic card pieces were attached along the fuselage seam line to help with getting the fuselage halves lined up correctly, these were tapered so that they did not stop the fuselage halves lining up.

The Yahu instrument panel was fitted to the forward bulkhead and trimmed to size.

The HGW harness was then fitted to the seat and the seat attached to the frame part and armour. The seat harness had some fuse wire attached and was threaded through the seat frame like the real thing.

When the seat was attached to the fuselage frame a test fit into the fuselage showed that it clashed with the nice resin fuselage side panels so some serious trimming of them was necessary to get the fuselage halves to fit together.

The control column was found to be too long so it was shortened.

The gun sight mounting frame set the gun sight to far forward and on a test fit it hit the loosely attached windscreen, so a longer mount was made and it fitted without clashing with the windscreen.

Then I carried on getting the fuselage halves to fit together, some more trimming of bulkheads was required.

The fishtail exhausts were cleaned up and painted with Humbrol 113 Matt Rust and left to dry before getting the graphite (sanded pencil lead) treatment, .

The instructions would have you fit the exhausts from inside the fuselage halves, however this is not possible as they do not fit, and I do prefer to fit them when the final painting has been finished.

So I made up a box like structure on the fuselage insides so the exhausts could be attached after the fuselage has been closed up, the inside of this was painted matt black (H33).

The fuselage halves were joined using CA and tape to hold it together while it dried. This left some quire large gaps, looking back it may have been a good idea to sand the fuselage halves flat before I started assembly, just like vac form kits.

The gaps in the seams were then filled with CA, accelerator was used and then the seams were sanded down and then polished.

 

Thats all for now

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

 

 

 

[spitfire]

Moving on to the wings the spent shell casing chutes on the lower wings were opened up, however there is the possibility that the outer guns were deleted on this aircraft at some time.

The resin circular wheel well parts were cut from their resin blocks and placed in position in the lower wing using Blue Tac, fit was checked to make sure that the upper wing parts fitted. Once happy with this CA was run around the resin and left to dry.

The wheel wells were then painted with Polished Aluminium along with the main gear legs, main gear leg covers, the inside of the radiators, prop hub and base plate. The actual wheel wells themselves will be painted the underside colour with the area that the legs retracted into left in silver, I forgot this when I started on the silver paint and got carried away.

From the information I gathered I decided to use the large teardrop shaped top cannon panels, these were trimmed to size to fit into the wing, the kit has three different styles of covers.

As the covers were flat they were roughly bent to match the curve of the upper wing by hand.

The panels were then held in place using clips and CA was applied from the bottom of the wing.

The three wing parts were then assembled, for this I used polystyrene cement rather than my usual CA to give me some wiggle room. These were then taped up and left to set.

Once set the wing seams were sanded and polished, then the whole wing was cleaned and polished to get rid of stray bits of glue from the tape and imperfections in the plastic.

Below is the cleaned up wings and fuselage

Very nice plans for an early Spitfire IX were copied from the book “Spitfire the Canadians” to help me with the details for an early Mk. IX.

The wingtips were cut from the sprue one had a big blob on the end which had to be cut off.

There was no positive attachment points to fit the wing tips so I used CA and some patience. Once set using accelerator the wingtips were sanded and polished and panel lines restored using my trusty Bare Metal Foil scriber.

I decided to fit the aft wing section to the fuselage rather than to the wing and it fitted really well, here it is sanded and polished.

A test fit of the fuselage and wings showed a gap of perhaps 1 mm per side which is nothing compared to the PCM Hurricane that I previously built.

So I fitted some pieces of plastic sheet into the gaps, the idea was to fill the gap without pushing the wing to fuselage joint outwards. This worked well and did not affect the wing dihedral.

Next up was gluing them in place using CA, once the CA had set the excess plastic was cut away, then more CA was applied to the joint.

Accelerant was used to set the CA quicker, then the joints were sanded and polished, masking tape tape was used to stop losing the wing and wing root detail.

Then I smoothed off the seams at the front and rear of the fuselage to wing joint.

 

That's all for now

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

[bigbadbadge]

Coming on well, cockpit interior looking good.good to see a Spitfire shape emerging. 

Chris

[spitfire]

31 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Coming on well, cockpit interior looking good.good to see a Spitfire shape emerging. 

Chris

Thanks Chris, it is shaping up rather nicely now.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[spitfire]

Back from Holidays, caught up with everything so back to the Spitfire, getting ready for paint, the small air intake was fitted, again the kit has alternative parts  for this.

And then on with the paint, in this case Xtracolor X3 Medium Sea Grey, this as usual went on well.

However I then realised that I had not painted the Sky for the fuselage band and masked it off, I further realised that I should have painted the code area with Sky as well so that I could apply the masks.

So out came the airbrush afgain and the Ky areas were painted.

Once dry the Code letters were applid using dummy roundels and guide tape to get them in the correct position.

Dummy roundels fitted with guide tape to make sure that they lined up on both sides of the fuselage.

Then on with the letters

The next one was lined up with the bottom of the first two, though looking at the photo of the real thing that may be wrong, I think that I will move it very carefully as I do not have a spare mask.

Next up mask off the Sky band and fit the upper wing masks.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Biggles87]

I somehow seem to have missed this ‘til now,I’ll go back to the beginning and read it properly.

 

John

[spitfire]

Hi John, welcome to the party, it is going a lot better tahn I though possible.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[bigbadbadge]

That underside is looking gorgeous,  great work.

Chris

 

[spitfire]

Thanks Chris, good old Xtracolor paint does it every time.

The codes though have been bothering me, the curvy bottom of the J in the photo of the real thing is smooth whereas the masks I have used have angles, after checking it seems that I have used J's meant for a US operated Spitfire, so they will have to be changed.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[spitfire]

Something about the codes had been bothering me eventually I realised that I had used the wrong masks, JE*J has curly J's and the masks I used were for a US operated Spitfire so had angles, so I had to change them.

So I changed the code letter masks to the correct ones and masked off the rear fuselage Sky band, the latter made me move the code letters forward a bit to fit the band in. They were probably in the wrong place to begin with but hopefully now they are correct.

Then out with the airbrush and the yellow paint, and the roundel position and the wing leading edges were painted, so I can now position the fuselage roundel mask.

I also remembered to drill out the holes in the wing roots for the fuel cooler and the gun camera

 

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[spitfire]

Well the kitchen ceiling painting can wait, I've done all the outside jobs so a bit of plastic bashing is called for.

Fuselage roundel masks in place.

Windscreen and aft cockpit glazing masks on and glued in place with Micro Kristal Klear

I'll be using this so the kit door can be used as masking.

All ready to go

Yellow leading edges masked

Canopy having some flash removed, for me a scary process.

And then a face palm moment, with the last few kits I have struggled with using Klear on the kit parts, it came out pretty uneven with some bubbles and took a few attempts to get right, I'd never had a problem before, so I ordered some Lakeland Quick Shine which is reputed to be as good as if not better than Klear. Found about it from an old thread on here,

But it would take some time to get here, so I took another look at my bottle of Klear and noticed that it was quite thick, so nothing to lose I put some in a jam jar and thinned it with water and hey presto, dipped the canopy in it and it worked, nice and clear, streak and bubble free.

Stupid boy I should have tried this ages ago.

So into the lettuce saver it went to dry in a nice dust free environment.

On a roll now so out came the airbrush and all the pesky yellow and Sky was covered with a fresh coat of MSG followed by some MSG lightened with white in a random pattern, not too much as the aircraft was reputed to have had some fresh paint before the man himself took it over.

Now to leave it a couple of days before masking the undersides.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

[Biggles87]

Lettuce save, hmm that sounds like a great idea. I wonder if SWMBO has one, and would she miss it.

I also have an old bottle of Klear which has thickened, I might try your water trick. Did you use tap or distilled water.

John

 

[spitfire]

12 minutes ago, Biggles87 said:

Lettuce save, hmm that sounds like a great idea. I if SWMBO has one, and would she miss it.

I also have an old bottle of Klear which has thickened, I might try your water trick. Did you use tap or distilled water.

John

 

Hi John, plain old tap water did the trick for me and a good stir.

 

Cheeers

 

Dennis

[spitfire]

Bit more progress, the undersides were masked off and the Ocean Grey was airbrushed, for this I used Xtracolor X6 and it went on beautifully.

Next up a some fading

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[bigbadbadge]

Looking good with the greys on , not long to the unmasking

Cracking job

Chris

[spitfire]

14 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Looking good with the greys on , not long to the unmasking

Cracking job

Chris

Thanks Chris, yes it should move swiftly along now, I've already faded the Ocen Grey and the camouflage masks will be on shortly ready for the Dark Green.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[spitfire]

Well time for an update again as there is a bit of progress and as usual silly mistakes !

Time for the masks, I was going to go for my old method oF Blu Tac sausages and paper masks using the "store bought" masks as a guide as I prefer the softer demarcation but laziness got the better of me and I used the masks from the last Spitfire build from AML.

Some modifications were required as the masks were intended for the Hobbyboss Mk.V kit so bits of Tamya tape were used.

This was especially noticeable on the nose which on the IX is longer, but I got there in the end and on with the Dark Green (Xtracolor X1).

All went well until I noticed a slight problem with the masking.

It was one of those "I'll fix that later" ones which I forgot to do in my excitement at getting the green on, so I finished what I could then let everything dry and added more masking tape, then finished the job.

Once that was done it was time to get on with the markings, the fuselage roundels had been attached earlier over a yellow base so there was only the red white and blue to sort out, the upper wing masks had been attached over a blue base so just the red to go on, I had forgotten to sort out the underwing roundels so I would need to sort out the masks for those.

First up was to cut out some dummy roundels using Tamiya tape.

These were then positioned on the wings using the painting diagram as a guide.

Thin strips of Tamiya tape was then used to mark out the position for the mask and the mask was marked to line up with the dummy roundel.

The mask was then applied and the wing masked off ready for paint.

The white and red portions of the mask were removed and the white airbrushed.

Then the white mask was re applied and the red airbrushed, the best paint that I have found for this is the Sovereign Colourcoats ACRN22 RAF FAA Red.

 

More soon.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

[spitfire]

As per the underwing roundels the fuselage roundels had their red and white masks removed and the white airbrushed, this was left to dry and the white mask replaced.

Time for the red, the underwing, fuselage and upper wing roundels were all airbrushed with the red.

Once the red had dried some oversized circles were made up to cover the red centres on the fuselage and lower wings roundels, oversized so that there was no gap between the red and white sections.

Not forgetting to cover the hole in the centre.

Blue section removed on the under wing roundels.

Blue section removed on the fuselage roundels.

Fuselage roundel masked off ready for the blue, I must get some Maketar curved masks, they would have been faster than doing this..

Time for the Blue, from Sovereign Colourcoats

And all done and the masks removed from the roundels, codes and Sky band, just some repir work on one of the code letters.

And that's it for now.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[spitfire]

Well can't believe that I have not touched this since July but, after completing the painted on markings I had a rush of blood to the head and broke out the matt varnish, as usual this went very well and I was made up with the finish, however I then realised that I had not applied the stencils walkways or the remaining decals.

So rather disgusted with myself I put the Spitfire on a high shelf and left it, but after thinking about it for a while I decided to give it a gloss varnish coat so I could apply the last bits and pieces. so I searched through my paint collection for some gloss varnish, I had not used any for years as my favourite paints Xtracolor and Colourcoats do not need it.

I found some old Humbrol tins of gloss varnish and broke out the airbrush and gave it a coat of gloss, this did not turn out well, so not impressed with this the Spitfire went back on the high shelf.

It may not seem PCM Spitfire related but bear with me for a while, my wife has been on at me for some time to put some mirror backing on the back wall of my display cabinets to:

1. show off my planes better.

2. to throw some light out into the dining room as where the cabinets are situated it's quite dark.

So I searched eBay for lightweight mirror material and got a sheet of acrylic 3mm thick with a silver mirror finish, which with the help of some two sided Gorilla tape was affixed to the back on the cabinet, and it looked great, it showed off my models and threw some light back into the room, just as the boss wanted.

However while I was doing this just as a precaution the display cabinet was emptied of models, during this process my ancient 1/32 Revell Corsair was damaged, nothing serious just a bent pitot, I bent it back and applied a spot of CA to the area that was cracked but it broke off in my hand.

The model was built in the early 1990's but given new paint and decals somewhere around 2004/5 and I rather like it so a repair was called for.

So up to the study it went and onto the bench, a quick drill out of the stub and glue the pitot back in I thought, but no, nothing that simple, as while I was doing this a main gear cover fell off, then I discovered that the main gear leg was broken and was "floating" on the rear support, these would have to be fixed as well as the pitot.

As I was fixing these I admired my early 1990's effort at the aerial wires which was (and still is) not my favourite job, and of course I managed to break off the aerial post, so I had to drill out a hole and fix it back into place.

Everything was good and I even managed to give the model a good dust and clean, here it is ready to go back to the display cabinet.

 

While I was sitting there fixing things I decided to have a look at the Spitfire, it was such a shame to ignore it after all it was close to being finished, so the gloss finish would have to be improved.

When I am forced to use a matt paint I normally just polish the area where the decals are going to be placed using a nail buffer, surface preparation is also done this way so it was out with the nail buffers and Micro Mesh and polishing commenced.

This turned out to be a rather better solution than the gloss varnish route and it is now nice and shiny so I can crack on with the build.

Next up then is the HGW Wet Transfer stencils, but I'll have to read up on the process that I used on my Tempest build because I have only used them once and my memory is a bit sketchy

Here is where I am up to now with the Spitfire.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis