Bristol Beaufighter Mk.IF Cunningham

Steffen Arndt
As I find the application of decals rather boring I need a lot of time for that .. thus my Spitfire project will take a little more time and i started something fresh to keep motivated. The Revell 2018 Beaufighter was released this year as Mark If and it includes decals for an ace pilot with John Cunninghams NG o R in which he eventually shot down 10 of his opponents. I bought some Eduard sets and took some of the stuff I already had for the Mk.X and got started.

First let me say that I hate the colour of the plastic. It is a dark grey with some metal flakes included. I do not know why Revell does not just make it a light grey like most of the other companies do or at least choose a solid colour (except black or white)... Anyway. The kit is rather nice. Fit so far is good. I am still undecided if I will replace the throttle blocks with the Eduard PE ... it is a lot of work to make these folded boxes look convincing.

Anyway I started with the wings as I am not a big fan of doing cockpits. I must be the only one on the planet because everyone I talk to tells me he likes doing the pit. The wheel wells are rather nice and fit very well. I am not sure i took the correct parts for the supercharger intakes .. need to check my refs. The flaps can be positioned open and are not so bad but need some detailing or replacement with PE. So I chose to keep these closed. The inner flaps fit excellent while the outer ones need a little work to fit, nothing difficult though.

The parts of the interior also fit well. As written above, I need to make a decision and so the side consoles are not yet glued but just "clipped" into place. I will use the Eduard instrument panel ant the CMK pilots seat (plus steelbelts for the rear seat). As I have bought the larger set for the interior (491124) which has some side wall details for the access bay I will pose the entrance door open. Else the Zoom is more than sufficient for this kit.

Steffen Arndt
Little progress on this project. I have added the PE in the entrance bay and airbrushed everything interior green. Then I started to remove the throttle quadrants. First one is off, but I am a bit worried. Eduard also wants me to remove side wall detail which I also started...

Steffen Arndt
It bugged me so I removed the other two quadrants too. It worked out very nice in under a minute and I did NOT hurt myself ... I like this Tamiya tool