Eduard Spitfire Mk.Vb Late ProfiPACK (82156) 1:48

[Mike]

Spitfire Mk.Vb Late ProfiPACK (82156)

1:48 Eduard

 

 

The Spitfire was the champion of the Battle of Britain along with the Hurricane and a few other less well-known players, and it’s an aircraft with an amazing reputation that started as a bit of a damp squib in the shape of the Supermarine Type 224.  This gull-winged oddity was the grandfather of the Spitfire, and despite losing out to the biplane Gloster Gladiator, designer R J Mitchell was spurred on to go back to the drawing board and create a more modern, technologically advanced and therefore risky design.  This was the Type 300, and it was an all-metal construction with an incredibly thin elliptical wing that became legendary, although it didn’t leave much space for fuel, a situation that was further worsened by the Air Ministry’s insistence that four .303 machine guns were to be installed in each wing, rather than the three originally envisaged. It was a very well-sorted aircraft from the outset, so quickly entered service with the RAF in 1938 in small numbers.  With the clouds of war building, the Ministry issued more orders and it became a battle to manufacture enough to fulfil demand in time for the outbreak and early days of war from September 1939 onwards.

 

By then, the restrictive straight sided canopy had been replaced by a “blown” hood to give the pilot more visibility, although a few with the old canopy still lingered for a while.  The title Mk.Ia was given retrospectively to differentiate between the cannon-winged Mk.Ib that was instigated after the .303s were found somewhat lacking compared to the 20mm cannon armament of their main opposition at the time, the Bf.109.  As is usual in wartime, the designers could never rest on their laurels with an airframe like the Spitfire, as it had significant potential for development, a process that lasted throughout the whole of WWII, and included many changes to the Merlin engine, then the installation of the more powerful Griffon engine, as well as the removal of the spine of the fuselage and creation of a bubble canopy to improve the pilot’s situational awareness.  Its immediate successor was the Mk.II that had a better Merlin engine and higher octane fuel to give it a healthy boost in performance.  The IIa was armed identically to the Mk.Ia with four .303s in each wing, while the IIb carried the two 20mm cannons of the Ib and two .303s in each of the wings.  It was followed by the Mk.V that had yet another more powerful Merlin fitted, which returned the fright of the earlier marks’ first encounters with Fw.190s by a similar increase in performance from an outwardly almost identical Spitfire.

 

 

The Kit

This is a reboxing with additional parts of a recent tool from Eduard that has been released earlier, following on from their other later marks of the Spit in their usual manner, providing us modellers with a wide selection of types and sub-variants as they proceed through their launch schedule.  This ProfiPACK depicts the late Mk.Vb,  the letter B referring to the type of wing fitted to the airframe that was engineered to accommodate a pair of 20mm cannons within the area previously occupied by four .303 machine guns in earlier versions.  This is a thoroughly modern tooling with immense detail squeezed into every part, and for the inveterate upgraders, the kits are moulded with that in mind, to be augmented by a raft of super-detailed resin and brass sets from Eduard themselves, which benefit from concurrent launch and excellent fit.  The outer skin has been fully riveted with fine lines of rivets everywhere, plus different widths of engraved panel lines, fasteners on cowling panels, and even some lapped panels such as the fuel tank in front of the canopy.  It arrives in Eduard’s ProfiPACK box featuring a gold banner, with five sprues in their grey/blue styrene, a clear sprue, a fret of Photo-Etch (PE) that is nickel-plated and pre-painted, a sheet of pre-cut kabuki masking material (not pictured – they’re impossible to photograph well), a large decal sheet with separate stencil sheet, and the glossy instruction booklet with painting guide at the rear in full colour.  It is nearly identical in terms of sprues to the earlier boxing that we reviewed, and the differences between the versions are fairly small, but you use alternative parts on the sprues for the cannons and for some decal options, plus the decals themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the cockpit, which will probably be familiar to most, although there is a huge amount of detail when it’s done the Eduard way.  It is built up on the starboard sidewall insert, with equipment, controls and a choice of seat-carrying fuselage frames depending on which decal option you have chosen.  The seat is next, having the flare rack at the front added from PE, as well as some nice painted PE seatbelts and rear armour.  The control column is also made up, and has a PE trigger added before it and the flight control box (more of a tangle, really) are joined to the seat and inserted in the next two fuselage frames forward.  The next frame forward holds the instrument panel, which can be made from plastic with decals, or the more realistic and detailed lamination of PE parts with those lovely glossy dial faces on a separate backing plate, either of which then glue to the frame, with the gunsight at the top of the panel, and the compass just below, then the rudder pedals are outfitted with PE straps, before being put just inside the footwell below the panel.  Forward of that frame is a blanking plate that is glued in place along with the spinner back during the fuselage closure procedure.  The socket for the tail wheel and the leading edge of the wing fairing are also glued in, with a 1mm hole drilled in the port side.  The canopy will require small parts of the sidewalls removing to accommodate the appropriate glazing, so make sure you cut those parts off too.  They slip in a mention of a panel line on the very front of the nose that you need to fill in, so don’t forget that one, as it’s called out with a line and the word “fill” during the attachment to the wings later on that is easy to miss, but you might want to deal with that while sorting the fuselage seams.

 

The lower wing is a single part that stretches as far as the clipped wingtip would be, and there are two pairs of small holes that need drilling out on both undersides before you go any further.  A long wing spar bridges the gap between the wheel bay cut-outs, then the rest of the bay walls are made out of short sections and just the two outer wing-gun barrels per side are dropped into their slots ready for closing up, then placing the fuselage into the gap and gluing it home.  The empennage is next, with separate elevator fins and flying surfaces, plus the rudder and its control link.  Back to the wings, and the elliptical tips or clipped alternatives (depending on your decal choice) are slid into place along with the ailerons, the latter you can pose deflected if you wish.  Staying with the wing, the model is flipped over, and the radiator, oil cooler and chin intake with fairing are all added in, the radiator and oil cooler both having PE mesh inserts, L-shaped feeder pipes at the rear, and a flap with two actuators for open and closed positions.

 

The narrow track landing gear has replacement PE details fixed to the leg after removing the plastic representation, and these then have the captive doors attached to the rear, and wheels made up from a tyre and two hub parts, with a split yoke and wheel for the tail, which slots into the socket buried in the fuselage earlier.  The 20mm cannon parts simply slide into their sockets in the leading edge of the wings, with nice muzzle detail moulded-in.

 

The canopy has a choice of PE or styrene rear-view mirror on the windscreen, and a choice of open or closed canopies with a PE pull-handle in the top.  The fixed rear glazing is fitted first for the open option, but is moulded into the closed canopy for better fit on a closed up cockpit.  The locations for the masks are shown in a diagram at the end of the instructions, using liquid mask for highly curved areas of the blown canopy, and it’s worth noting here that the masks cover BOTH sides of the glazing, usually called Tface when sold separately.   The cockpit door can be mounted open or closed, then the aerial is glued to the rear of the canopy on a base, two small holes are opened up on the upper wing for the PE landing gear markers, with a fuel filler cap on the cowling in front of the windscreen.  The exhaust stacks have been moulded carefully to give hollow tips with a choice of two styles, and the prop is a single part, covered front and back by the two-part stubby or pointed spinner, with the peg on the rear sliding into the front of the fuselage.  The final steps show two aerial wires from the fuselage sides to the elevators, which you will need to provide from your own toolbox.

 

 

Markings

There are a generous six marking options from the box, including Ocean Grey and Dark Green camo with various personalisations, plus one in dark blue and grey/green mixture that you must mix yourself from two Gunze shades, the numbers for which are provided.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• EP120 S/Ldr Geoffrey W Northcott, Co of 402 Sqn. RCAF, RAF Merston, Jun-Nov 1943
• AB276 F/Lt Václav Hájek, 313 (Czechoslovak) Sqn., RAF Hornchurch, Jan-Jun 1942
• AB184 Sgt. Olav Dionne, 332 (Norwegian) Sqn., RAF North Weald, Aug 1942
• EN794, S/Ldr Yvan du Monceau de Bergendal, 350 (Belgian) Sqn., RAF Redhill, Jul-Dec 1942
• AA853 W/Cdr Stefan Witorzenc, 1 Polish Fighter Wing, RAF Heston, early Jul 1942
• EP829 S/Ldr John J Lynch, 249 Sqn., RAF Krendi, Malta, Apr-May 1943

 

 

 

 

 

The decals are printed by Eduard and are in good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas.  The stencils are on a separate sheet, and are marked on a page of the booklet, separate from the rest of the markings to avoid confusion from trying to read overly busy diagrams.

 

Don’t forget that as of 2021, the carrier film from Eduard decals can be coaxed away from the printed part of the decal after they have been applied, effectively rendering them carrier-free, making the decals much thinner and more realistic, and obviating the need to apply successive coats of clear varnish to hide the edges of the film.  It’s a great step further in realism from my point of view.

 

Conclusion

There are always some moans about "yet another" Spitfire model, but other people’s kits don’t make money for Eduard, and they do it their own unique (and impressive) way.  They’ve done a great job of these earlier Merlin-powered marks, and the detail is excellent from the box, with nothing else needed to create a great replica other than paint and glue, a little bit of fine wire or line for the aerials, and some of your own hard work.

 

Very highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of