1/32 Tamiya Spitfire Mk.IX

Gallery Article by Malcolm Reid on May 7 2010

 

What can I say – the perfect kit ever ! I built this straight out of the box with the exception of a couple of extra hoses and wires around the engine to make it look a bit busier - the ignition harnesses are particularly noticeable by their absence. The only problems I had with the kit were the seam line along the canopy, those nasty wing leading edge gun inserts (which for some reason I battled with) and the punch marks on the inside of the fold down cockpit access door – this forced me to rebuild this part. Apart from that, I have never come across a better engineered kit.

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I decided to go for a change from the standard JE-J and selected the kit option of a colourful French Air Force Spit operational in Vietnam in the late 40’s. I particularly like the French blue spinner (with sky backing plate !) and the tall configuration rudder painted in the tricolor. Based on past experience, I tested some of the kit decals on my trusty F-16 test plane. Yes, as suspected, the printing is beautiful but the decals did not respond to Micro Set/Sol. This is where things got tricky – I decided to paint all the roundels. The entire aircraft was masked off except for the roundel areas – a circular cutter is a must for this operation. The roundels were painted before the camouflage. White was painted first, masked, followed by the red and then the blue (and yellow on the fuselage roundels) using a convoluted sequence of various diameter masks. To my amazement the roundels came out really well – most importantly, the kit's fine riveting was still intact and visible. Colours used were white Tamiya X-8, red Tamiya X-7, yellow Tamiya X-8 and blue (Tamiya X-14 and Humbrol H48 in a 1:3 mix). The spinner was painted using a mix of Tamiya XF-8 and X-2. The engine was painted a dark grey. I used a sharp silver pencil to replicate the chipping of paint and the silver studs so prevalent on a Merlin engine and used a combination of oil/white spirit wash and pastels.

My local model shops had not received the Tamiya Spitfire camouflage colours (AS-30, AS-31 and AS-32) so I had to make up a mix. These were :

  • Undersurface light grey – XtraColor X255 RAL 7001 Silbergrau and Tamiya X-2 white in a 50:50 mix
  • Upper surface grey – 5 parts XtraColor X157 (FS16176 F-15 mod Eagle grey) and 2 parts X603 Russian Flanker blue (of all colours !)
  • Green – 5 parts XtraColor X155 (FS14096 B-52 dark green) and 2 parts Tamiya X-2 + spot Tamiya X-8

I lightened the upper surface green quite a bit for scale and fading as I would expect would have happened in South East Asia what with all the humidity and rain. The soft demarcation between the upper surface colours was achieved using rolls of prestic/blu-tac. I then masked off and painted the walkway line on the wings (in dark grey) and the red gun covers.

I applied a lot of chipping to various parts of the airframe using a pointed tip brush and Tamiya XF-16 aluminium. My assumption is that Spitfire paint would flake off in large quantities in the SEA environment as was the case of Japanese WWII aircraft. I could not find any reference photos on French AF Spitfires in SEA service so had to use pictures of other aircraft as a guideline. I then applied a liberal dusting of dark grey pastels to the panel lines and to tone down the chipping. Exhaust stains were provided using light grey airbrushed and over-sprayed with dark grey. Subtle gun gas stains on the wings were also applied with airbrush applied dark grey metallizer.

The only decals I used were the “P” codes, the serial numbers and the various stenciling. After the decals had dried, each individual rivet hole had to be perforated using a sharp needle. I used my trusty decal solvent (Tamiya SuperThin !!!) where the decals silvered (even on a gloss paint base). This stuff works well but is not very forgiving if too much is applied as it melts the paint on the model and the decal. Anyway, when decals don’t respond to Micro Set, they get the aggressive treatment ! A final Humbrol matt coat dulled everything down.

I can safely say this is the easiest, quickest build I’ve had in 20 years – it took about 2 months of on and off evening building to complete. I wonder what Tamiya will bring out next ? Can’t wait.

Malcolm Reid

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Photos and text © by Malcolm Reid