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“Spit and Polish” – Spitfire Mk. Vb, Jan Zumbach, No. 303 (Kościuszko) Squadron, RAF


TonyOD

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This looks like a great kit and you've done a nice job with the internals so far.

 

I built the new Airfix 1/72 Mk. Vc recently and it was a terrific kit.  I'd expect the 1/48 to be as good or better.  One of my early kits after coming back to the hobby was a rework of an '80's era Airfix Mk. Vb and I did Jan Zumbach's mount.  I found a lot of the same pictures as you and was amazed at how chewed up the wing root was.  I copied that  wear on my model and it was fun to have a big swatch of bare metal on the wing. :)

 

Following along with interest!

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Getting there with the innards. I added a bit of scratch detail to the port sidewall, and will also have to scratch some seatbelts. The i/p decal looks pretty decent. It might stand an open canopy…

 

50-FEB470-53-CC-48-C4-9-D3-E-CE8-AE5-A7-

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16 minutes ago, mark.au said:

It would definitely stand an open cockpit.  A little dry brushing will really pop some of those details, too.

Second that - some lovely work there Tony!

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Nice work on the internals with just one comment. I'm not convinced that the panel on the port side just ahead of the slot for the frame ( a cover for some control wires/cables ) was painted black on early Spitfires, I've seen it on later marks like XVIs and restored aircraft but on earlier marks I think it was grey/green.

Keep up the good work.

 

John. 🇺🇦

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11 hours ago, mark.au said:

It would definitely stand an open cockpit.  A little dry brushing will really pop some of those details, too.

 

I'm sort of trying a new skill with each new build, it doesn't stand out particularly but I tried a bit of dry brushing (coppery green mix) on the cabling on the starboard sidewall. Dry brushing gives me the heebie jeebies. 

 

I started scratching some rudimentary seatbelts from stiff foil last night, but this morning Black Friday did what Black Friday does, there is a new tool Tamiya Spitfire Mk I inbound (25 quid, free postage, Jadlam)  which comes with an etch set that has two sets of seatbelts, so I'm going to use one of those. 

 

5 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

I'm not convinced that the panel on the port side just ahead of the slot for the frame ( a cover for some control wires/cables ) was painted black on early Spitfires, I've seen it on later marks like XVIs and restored aircraft but on earlier marks I think it was grey/green.

 

Quite probably! I took my lead from pics of someone else's Vb build. I have the SAM Spitfire modeller's guide which is full of photos and paintings of the cockpits of all the various marques, it's hard to know what's reliable a lot of the time to be honest, especially as many of the pics are from restored warbirds rather than primary sources.

 

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16 hours ago, TonyOD said:

Dry brushing gives me the heebie jeebies. 


I get where you’re coming from, but if you mess it up just dry brush over it with the base colour; all gone! 👍

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The cockpit is nearly done but is on hold pending the arrival of the above-mentioned Tamiya kit and its spare seatbelts, so I've been tinkering with some other bits. I couldn't put off looking at the sticky(?) issue of the landing gear any longer. Sure enough with a gluing surface of approximately 1 square millimetre it's a weak point if it's going to support the weight of a 1/48 scale Spitfire. I've read about drilling and pinning the legs but my hand-drill seems to have gone astray during a house move, I have a little Archimedes drill but I'm confident I'd make a hash of it. So I've glued the two sections of each leg together with CA and then flooded with Tamiya green top which I will allow to cure completely so they effectively fuse into one piece (well, two pieces) of styrene, then I'll paint and install before putting the wings together and mask them in cotton wool before painting the underwing. I reckon they'll hold, just. I'm more annoyed on behalf of the casual, non-hobbyist buyer who just fancies a go at a Spitfire, shells out their however many quid for a kit and just follows the instructions. If they think they're going to be able to stick the oleos on last off with a smear of your standard cement and having them hold they haven't a prayer. A bit poor from Airfix, if you ask me.

 

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34 minutes ago, TonyOD said:

I'm more annoyed on behalf of the casual, non-hobbyist buyer who just fancies a go at a Spitfire, shells out their however many quid for a kit and just follows the instructions. If they think they're going to be able to stick the oleos on last off with a smear of your standard cement and having them hold they haven't a prayer. A bit poor from Airfix, if you ask me.

This was exactly my experience on returning to the hobby when this this kit was first released. It was damned annoying!

 

Richie

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12 minutes ago, RichieW said:

This was exactly my experience on returning to the hobby when this this kit was first released. It was damned annoying!


We live and learn, eh? 😁

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As I go I’m finding various ways Airfix’s OOB representation of the Vb differs from EN951, variously: no wing strengthening strakes (which I’ve removed before rescribing the panel lines), little antenna missing from top of rudder (removed), no headrest (removed):

 

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  • TonyOD changed the title to “Spit and Polish” – Spitfire Mk. Vb, Jan Zumbach, No. 303 (Kościuszko) Squadron, RAF

The cockpit tub for Zumbach’s Mk Vb is done and ready for the fuselage close-up. It looks… ok. A little bit crowded maybe (but then the real thing was pretty poky), the tolerances were super tight and it took a bit of fettling of the various slots and holes in the sidewalls for stuff to fit. But I’m happy enough with it for it to be an open cockpit, there’s a little bit of scratch detail, a flare rack left over from my Eduard Mk I  and rather than my usual rudimentary foil seatbelts I’ve swiped some spare harness straps from a Tamiya Mk I etch set and repurposed them into something that looks a bit more like seatbelts. I have to say I don’t really get why certain kit manufacturers (yes, you, Airfix) put out beautifully moulded kits with provision to present the subject with the canopy open to show off a wonderfully detailed cockpit, but nothing in the way of seatbelts. I get that much of the interior isn’t really visible once the fuselage is zipped up, but the absence of seatbelts on the pilot’s seat is pretty obvious, and while they can be scratched from foil or Tamiya tape or whatever they won’t look as convincing as the rest of the interior. Anyway, moan over. Onward!

 

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Looking good Tony. Love the Airfix Covkpit tubs.  It's  not just Airfix re Seat belts (they are present in the 1/24 Spitfire IX, look at the Hasegawa and older Tamiya kits and the Hasegawa stuff was expensive for what seems a basic kit.  I think the Airfix stuff is great and in my opinion competes with the best of them.

Great work on your Tub

Chris

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10 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

I think the Airfix stuff is great and in my opinion competes with the best of them.


Thanks for the kind words!

 

“New” Airfix is indeed very good, and I am having a lot of fun with this build. I still feel though that a 1/48 kit with an RRP approaching 30 quid should have the detail of the seatbelts covered, even a decal would be better than nothing! 

 

I have both volumes of SAM’s Spitfire modellers’ guide and it’s interesting that when it came out (10-15 years ago?) there was relatively little out there in 1/48, nowadays we are truly spoiled by comparison. The following brands are the ones I’ve picked up, and the reasons behind the purchase: 

 

Airfix: Vb (new tool), XIV (new tool), PR XIX (newish tool), 22/24 (newish tool), Seafire XVII and 46/47 (both newish tools) - dependable kits, ease of building. The last four of the above have been around for a while, haven’t been reissued in a good while and seem to be pretty rare, so when reasonably priced opportunities to get them in the stash came up I grabbed them.  

 

Eduard: Ia early, Ia late, Vc, VIII, IX, XVI. Wow. I’m a massive fan of the brand, and they pretty much own the Merlin-powered Spitfire in 1/48 for me. The Profipacks are superb. Not the cheapest, but great attention to quality and accuracy, the prepainted etch is fab, and a wonderful range of colour schemes in both Weekend and Profipack editions. 

 

Special Hobby: Vc, Seafire IIc, Seafire XV. Plenty SH have kits have found their way into and out of my stash over the years but I don’t recall ever actually finishing one! I think the pricing is decent considering what’s in the box, but the pleasure of knocking one together awaits. 

 

Tamiya: Ia (new tool). I’ve heard nothing but good things about this kit, and a peek in the box bears it out. Fingers crossed we will see a new Mk V and maybe IX somewhere down the line. 

 

ICM: they seem to be a bit “marmite”, some people love them, others hate them, or if not hate them exactly are rather sniffy about them. I’ve seen some great results from ICM kits and they are cheap as chips and very versatile, I’ve bought a couple simply to build in leftover schemes from Eduard kits. 

 

I haven’t been near Revell or Italeri as I gather they are nothing to shout about. Academy’s XIV I have avoided as while I’m not a slave to accuracy I gather they are a bit weird-looking (pity, as nobody else does a high-back XIV). Apart from that I can only think of Hasegawa, I don’t know much about their 1/48 Spits but I gather they go back a while. 

 

Best out there? For my money Eduard for the sheer depth of their coverage of the type. I’d love to see some Seafires or early PRs from them. I think Tamiya have raised the bar with their Mk I and I feel they will be big in the “mainstream” Merlin-powered versions but I feel they are an entirely different kettle of fish to Eduard, business model-wise. 

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warning...lengthy ramble ahead...

8 hours ago, TonyOD said:

I haven’t been near Revell or Italeri as I gather they are nothing to shout about.

 

The Revell IX/XVI is a rebox of the Hasegawa IX , the Revell Mk.II is from 1978 (see below for details on both)

The Italeri is a rebox of the Occidental kit.   The Occidental has some errors, but is buildable if you want to do some work.  I have one part done in a box.  Again, like the ICM, made obsolete by Eduard unless you like correcting older kits.

MPM did a boxing with some parts to make a PR XI as well.

 

7 hours ago, TonyOD said:

Academy’s XIV I have avoided as while I’m not a slave to accuracy I gather they are a bit weird-looking

Always gets a hammering.  Odd point, most of the Academy kits faults are also to be found in the Airfix Spitfire XII and Seafire XVII, the reason they don't look so weird if their nose rings are not oversize.

The Academy kit as a stand alone actually looks OK, it's like the nose has been taken with a wide angle lens.

I have read countless reams of tosh about the kit, and there are/were corrections available that don't really fix the problems.  

Actually, ALL the main issues are fixable with "some modelling skill" , but used quite often... and a leftover Airfix 22/24 spinner and some other leftovers. 

Here's the main fixes

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235089908-opinions-on-academy-148-spitfire-mk14-and-kitbashing-a-mk14-from-airfix-kits/#elControls_4016531_menu

Needs some additions, and I have some additions to make but amazingly most of the panel lines are in the right place, and it's not too wide. 

The 'hard' bit was pinning down the problems and working out the fixes.

 

Airfix, for whatever reason, have said categorically 'NO' to doing a high back XIV, but then they are very good at that... as in not setting up tooling to not be flexible...  

 

7 hours ago, TonyOD said:

(pity, as nobody else does a high-back XIV).

No, Hobbycraft did a high back XIV,  shapewise its decent,  but feels like a 72nd kit scaled up, basic detail and heavy panel lines, though some have no panel lines on the rear fuselage at all.

Most of the Hobbycraft moulds ended up with Academy, and are available from them and Italeri reboxes. 

But a few Hobbycraft moulds ended up in China, and around 2010 were available under the Kitech-Zhendufu, usually Kitech, they have the ex HC Spitfire XIV, Seafire XV, Sea Fury, Do-17 and a few more. You often read they were knock off copies, they weren't, I have examples of the same kit in both boxings.  The Kitech decals were complete rubbish, but when they were available were really cheap, IIRC £6 posted on ebay....

Also, Aeroclub did high back XIV and 21 fuselages, which were very good low pressure mouldings, so panel lines a bit soft, one particularly good Aeroclub was meant to use up the leftover bits if you did the Airfix Seafire 46/47 as a 74, which left you the 22/24 wing. 

 

7 hours ago, TonyOD said:

Apart from that I can only think of Hasegawa, I don’t know much about their 1/48 Spits but I gather they go back a while. 

The Mk.IX is noted for having a too slim rear fuselage,  look OK on it's own, next to another Spitfire it looks odd.

the Vb kits is described as being "1/50th", it's not, but the fuselage is a little short.   It's quite petite, and I think the first 1/48th Spitfire to get the cockpit sidewalls right, or at least not wrong, as in expanding out at the bottom into the wing fillets...

The Hase Vb was used as 'inspiration' for the Special Hobby Spitfire/Seafires, again, common repeated tosh is "they are based on the old tool Tamiya"

They aren't.

 

Odd final point, weird wonky Spitfire shape  in 1/48 are a 90's/00's thing, the very old 60's Monogram IX is damn good in basis shapes, as are the 1978 era Airfix Vb and Revell Mk.II.

No gull wings on the Monogram and Revell, raised panel lines, and a funny nose on the Airfix Vb.

I'd rate the Airfix as a good contender for conversion to a prototype and Speed Spitfire as you need to remove the most of the panel lines on these and removed raised is easier than filling engraved....  

I'm almost tempted to do an @Alex Gordon and use leftover Eduard bits to tart up the Monogram IX for sheer bloody mindedness,  but really, if i'm going into that kind of loonyville I'm going to play with the Monogram Hurricane, I've got a doozy for that one.....

Talking of the esteemed Mr Gordon,  this build of the old Airfix Vb shows what can be done with it

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235083422-airfix-old-tool-spitfire-vb-in-148th-scalefinished/

 

The sort of kit that is a great one for some upgrading, if nothing else it great workout of basic modelling skill....  in the link you can see my still stalled conversion to a Seafire II..... from 1981.

 

I think the only 1/48th Spitfire I don't have are the Falcon vacforms, and the Fujimi, and theor IX is a clone onf the Monogram, they did a V as well but AFAIK it's jink, oh, and the Aurora BTK... the first 1/48th Spitfire, and the 'inspiration' for the very first Airfix Spitfire kit....

I say this as I have spent far too much time cross referencing and obsessing over the blinkin' things, but I also stand by my comments, and fixes.

 

8 hours ago, TonyOD said:

I have both volumes of SAM’s Spitfire modellers’ guide and it’s interesting that when it came out (10-15 years ago?) there was relatively little out there in 1/48,

the kit reviews are laughably bad in volume 1 I recall,  bloke has no idea what right or wrong....

 

Did you ever see my fixes for the old tool Tamiya Mk.I? ..... has anyone seen my straightjacket? 

 

 

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15 hours ago, TonyOD said:

The cockpit tub for Zumbach’s Mk Vb is done and ready for the fuselage close-up. It looks… ok. A little bit crowded maybe (but then the real thing was pretty poky), the tolerances were super tight and it took a bit of fettling of the various slots and holes in the sidewalls for stuff to fit. But I’m happy enough with it for it to be an open cockpit, there’s a little bit of scratch detail, a flare rack left over from my Eduard Mk I  and rather than my usual rudimentary foil seatbelts I’ve swiped some spare harness straps from a Tamiya Mk I etch set and repurposed them into something that looks a bit more like seatbelts. I have to say I don’t really get why certain kit manufacturers (yes, you, Airfix) put out beautifully moulded kits with provision to present the subject with the canopy open to show off a wonderfully detailed cockpit, but nothing in the way of seatbelts. I get that much of the interior isn’t really visible once the fuselage is zipped up, but the absence of seatbelts on the pilot’s seat is pretty obvious, and while they can be scratched from foil or Tamiya tape or whatever they won’t look as convincing as the rest of the interior. Anyway, moan over. Onward!

 

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Inspiring! You've impressed me that's for sure.

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15 hours ago, TonyOD said:

the tolerances were super tight

have you dry fitted this into the fuselage halves and test fitted the tank cover?   Do it and tape it up.  maybe no problem but.....

C79-B5-F33-4-BE5-4971-9-A2-C-E0159-BFBAA

 

be aware that paint on the top edges/ledges may well cause interference...  as well as those glue globs on the sides... 

It's really crucial stage, as any slight misalignment transfers into the tank cover.

 

May old news to you, but I'm going to stress this for others...

 

neat work though

cheers

T

 

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The cockpit looks pretty great in spite of all the "fiddly-ness"!  I agree with you about seatbelts -- they are the one aftermarket item I insist on with every build because they are always visible through the canopy and seem to really increase the realism of a build in my eyes.

 

Great work so far!

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@Troy Smith, you missed the Otaki VIII/IX, and its Arii repop, from the late '70s. Good surface finish, but very sparse in the details. No gull wings. The ailerons are long as in the Mk IX and simulate fabric covering rather than metal, which is incorrect. I'm working on one now, which was supposed to be a quick Mk VIII build. AMS kicked in, and it has become a test subject for modifications. It may turn up here one of these days.

 

Hasegawa could have cornered the late Merlin market back in 2002, if the fuselages weren't too short and the spinners too wide. The detail on their kits is very good, and I'm using some bits on my Otaki VIII.

 

Cheers,

Wlad

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Nice cockpit.

I finished an Otaki/Arii MkVIII last year which I started back in the UK more than 16 years ago. As @Wlad said it needs a bit of work but with an Aeroclub gull wing section, an aftermarket cockpit interior from True Details and shortened ailerons it didn’t look too bad sitting next to the Hasegawa Mk IX with an Aeroclub corrected fuselage.

Cheers

 

John🇺🇦

 

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7 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

be aware that paint on the top edges/ledges may well cause interference...  as well as those glue globs on the sides... 

It's really crucial stage, as any slight misalignment transfers into the tank cover.

 

There is indeed a certain amount of misalignment between the fuselage and the tank cover, especially on the port side. I've sanded the bottom of the tank cover down a little bit (there was a pronounced step at the front when I test fitted it) and it's getting a little bit of gentle persuasion to line up while the cement cures. After a little bit of remedial work with some PPP I think it'll look fine.

 

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The fuselage halves pair up fine, although there is a mismatched panel line up front that will need some attention:

 

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8 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

Airfix, for whatever reason, have said categorically 'NO' to doing a high back XIV, but then they are very good at that...

 

More's the pity... somewhere down the line I fancy having a go at NN660, the prototype that had a Spiteful wing grafted onto a Mk XIV fuselage. It may have to be Academy for that one.

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