Another spitfire, this time Hasegawa's MK IX. I know its to short and considered un-buildable for that reason by some. Even even though it's to short it still (to my untrained eyes looks in proportion) so I chose to ignore that and just build it.
I chose an aircraft flown by Kiwi, Pilot Officer Max Collett as it had the C wing but with the 20mm cannons outboard and .50 Cals inboard (e wing armament?) I assume this was done in the field. Max Collett is still alive I believe and is involved with the 485 Sqn Association. I guess I could of asked him but typically I found this out to late in the piece.
The Build
This was a pretty straight forward build, all the problems were of my own making. The decals for the instruments were punched out and applied individually, whilst this is time consuming I think it's worth the effort. One issue was what to do with the .303 gun chutes and hole sin the wings. I couldn't find any real evidence on what was done so I assumed the airframe fitters would have blanked off the cartridge ejection shuts and just used the patches for the wings.
I also used a Ultracast seat, exhausts and door. In my opinion Ultracast do the some of the best resin for World War II aircraft. I also added a piece of fine wire to each undercarriage leg for the brake lines.
Painting and Finishing
For painting I masked the kit out with blu-tack then decide to use Gunze Masking agent. bad move as I found out that it reacts with acrylics (ammonia?). Shan't be doing that again.
The kit was painted with Gunze Acrylics (H330 and H331) for the upper surfaces and Tamiya XF19 for the lower. As far as I'm concerned these are pretty good matches for the RAF colours. I used future for the gloss coat , then used Promodelers Weathering Sludge Wash for the wash. I like this stuff as being water based it's forgiving, cleans up easy and doesn't need to sealed prior to decaling.
I used Aeromasters Post D-Day Spitfires sheet Pt II. The decals went down with no problems at all.
Regarding the wing armament, I'm no Spitfire guru and am going of what was on the decal sheet. From it and what I found out via the net, the gun mod was done in the field, so the aircraft was initially delivered with the C wing armament of 2 cannon, 4 MG's.
Now this bit is my theory, as just a convenient way to move on and get the kit finished :-). Once the e-wing armament was fitted by the Sqn/base workshops, the 4 .303's were removed, the shell chutes on the underside of the w wings blanked but the patches were just left over the .303 holes. Of course I have no proof of this, but equally I couldn't find any evidence of what was actually done, when these mod's were done locally.
The kit was sealed with Gunze Flat and lightly weathered with pastel chalks and a silver pencil. I don't go overboard as I really couldn't be bothered, plus the photo of the aircraft I had didn't look to beaten up.
The Photos
