The first, the last and the many: The Mk.Vb

The first Spitfire and the first 1/24 kit, the beginning of a long history! 

Friends of us in Bishops Lydeard have a watermill with a museum on local history. My wife suggested to build a Spitfire, since there was no aircraft in the museum. This is the result. 

A new 1/24 Spitfire for a museum 45 years after the first one. My skills improved a bit 🙂 

A British Spitfire Mk.1a in 1/72 

A Polish Spitfire Mk. VB in 1/72 

A Dutch LF Mk. IX, from 322 squadron, Soesterberg, 1/72  

And after doing some research, I found which Spits I'm going to build. This will be the Mk. IXc. It has a nice history. The original MH424 was sold to Belgium and scrapped. The Aviodome, later Aviodrome museum got Spitfire MJ271/H-8 and painted it in the colours of MH424/H-53. It was sold to the UK and painted silver: the Silver Spitfire. This Danish registered machine made a tour round the world in 2019. So a worthy subject for a model. 

The Mk. V is going to be built in the colours of AA918 VL-Z. This Spitfire flew with 322 Dutch RAF squadron. There is some doubt if the VL-Z was the AA918 or the AA9120, but as the decals are for the AA918, this is it going to be. 

The clear parts that came with the Mk,Ia 

But the Mk.V has a different canopy, which was added to the kit 

The real rubber tyres and part of the pilot 

One of the old frames with part of the fuselage. The fuselage is terrible! So much flash, you can hardly see the holes on the engine frame structure 

The other frame with the starboard side of the fuselage, 

The underside of the wing. It can be adapted to make it a Mk. V clipped wing with cannons and machine guns 

The upperside of the wing, Airfix also provide the strengthening strakes over the wheelwells 

A frame with all new parts, fortunately with not so much flash.
After I had painted the prop, I discovered that Airfix added the correct Ml. V prop. The only problem is that there is no hole in it to fit it on the electric motor. I tried to drill a hole but it;s very difficult to get it centered. So I'll probably fit the old prop when it needs to turn and the new prop when static. 

Another new frame including the Vokes air intake filter. 

The engine, prop and a coolant pipe made of leadwire. Later I discovered that Airfix did their homework and added an updated prop for the Mk V 

When I started the build, I realised I still had an old electric motor which could be used to make the prop spin. It wasn't described in the instructions of the Vb, but I still had the original instructions from 1974 and it turned out that all the parts necessary for this conversion were still present in the box, including the big black stand to hold the batteries. But I don't want to use the stand so I'm going to build a starter-trolley which can hold the batteries., 

I was looking for a way to be able to connect and disconnect the wires, in order to show the model without the batteries. I suddenly realised that I had the solution in my other hobby, my model railway. Recently I bought a set of couplings with two tiny magnets and wires. If the magnets are connected, they conduct the power. As they are very small it will be possible to build them in the place of the original electric coupling. Problem solved! 

The place in the front fuselage where the original electric connection was situated, with the half of the coupling provisionally in place I discovered that on the other side under the cockpit there also seems to be a connection 

This the model railway coupling. It fits nicely and with the two tiny magnets there is a firm electric connection, which can easily be disconnected. 

The engine painted and the electric motor installed. Only a bit of touching up to accentuate the various pipelines needed. There is also another part added to the front of the starboard side of the engine, but I haven't been able to find out what this is supposed to be. The most likely option is a Coffman engine starter, but I'm not sure.  

The two engines compared. Top the old Mk. V and bottom the new Mk. IX. I always thought that the old engine was much smaller, but though it's smaller the engine itself isn't that much smaller. Of course, the new engine has a big turbo. 

I also bought the instrument panel for the Mk. V, but I wasn't really impressed. You have to glue it with a small sheet of clear plastic behind the panel. You have to thin down the panel, but still the instruments look a bit far away. So I'm going to punch out each instrument and stick it on the original instrument panel after sanding it down to remove the relief. 

Sometimes the kit puzzles you: this kit has something added to the starboard side of the engine, but so far, nobody knows what is supposed to be. I've only seen it on Mk60 engines and they were not used on Mk.V Spitfires. Still waiting for a reply from Airfix and the Cosford museum, 

Started working on the cockpits and it's clear that there has been some development on the production of kits: the top row is the Spitfire Mk. Ia from 1974, with some added parts for the Mk. Vb. The bottom rows are for the new IXc. An evolution of 50 years! 

I bought a separate decal set for the panel, but wasn't satisfied with the instructions to put it behind the panel. So I cut out every single instrument, glue the clear instrument part behind the panel and stick each instrument at their respective place. The quality of the decals wasn't very convincing. Some decals lost the centerpart of the decal and it costed a lot of struggle to get it in place. But it will do, 

The panel in place. A lot simpler than in the Mk. IX! 

The cockpit. I decided not to much time on improving it, because there will be a pilot, hiding much of the cockpit. Furthermore, if you compare it with the Mk. IX it's futile to make it look as good 

I only made the seat a bit smaller, because it was way too wide! Once the pilot is in place, I will add the seatbelts. 

I got a seatbelt set from HGW models and they looked nice. When I started to work on them, I had the problem that the backing came loose. So I glued them in place, complaining about the bad quality. Then I discovered that the paper backing had to be removed 🙁 After having done this, it was a lot easier using them. But I also missed instructions on what glue to use. So although they look good,they're not my favourite. 

The pilot in his seat with the additional seatbelts. Either the pilot was too big or the belts too short, there was no way of closing them as they should be. But you won't see much of them, once the cockpit is closed 

Another view of the pilot. 

The fuselages of both Spits have been closed. The IX is a lot easier to work on than the V 

The wings of the two Spits. Top the Mk.V 

Test fitting the wing 

The wing of the Mk.V with all the gunbays closed. They are not really nice to see if you compare them with the Mk.IX. Now the wing tip has been cut of to make this al LF Mk.Vc 

The two Spitfires, spot the differences 

Close up of the engine. Not so much detail as on the Mk.IX. I had to remove the tubes for the gun heating which should go on the exhausts. The problem is that the cowling hasn't been adapted for this, so they don't fit with the tubes in place 

I painted the underside but discovered that I used an old paint which was too dark. Although I had already masked it to paint the upper surface, I decided to undo a lot of work and remove the masking. I now painted the lighter grey and it looks better. Because I was now experienced in masking it took less time and I even managed to paint the uppersurface 

Making my own masks! I take a paint scheme that comes with the kit and enlarge it to the size of the kit. Than stick a few strips of wide masking tape on my desk and cut it out, using the paint scheme as a template. Most of the time this works out nicely, although the part where the side meets the top-surface sometimes needs some extra attention.