Spitfire PR.IG Interior Completed

Things have been busy at work, and I haven't made as much progress on the Spitfire as I was expecting. I've made the decision to not worry about the deadline for the ISM group build, which ends September 30th. My job is all about deadlines especially before a code deployment to production, which I've been dealing with this week. I don't need deadlines in my hobby. This will get done when it gets done. I also learned this week that Advil is a pretty decent muscle relaxer.

I finished the cockpit last week so here it is. Happy Friday.

Primed with AK Gray Primer. Gray or grey? GrAy if you're American, grEy if you're English.

Interior was painted with Model Master Acryl RAF Interior Green.

I decided not to use the armor plating PE on the structure behind the seat. I figured they would have removed it to make the aircraft lighter and faster as well as more fuel efficient. Although the Spitfire PR.IG was armed, the pilots were given strict orders not to engage in a fight. A lot of the photo reconnaissance aircraft were field modified, so documentation on the exact build outs are spotty at best.

I picked out some stuff with semi-gloss black and aircraft interior black and some random red and yellow on some bits.

The instrument panel didn't quit come out the way I envisioned but the splash of color really made things standout.

After the seat was primed, it was sprayed with Tamiya's Hull Red from a lacquer can.

After a couple days of curing, I started painting with the hairy stick. The back of the seat got some flat black, with a little highlight of lightened black for some wear.

I worked my way up to painting the belts. I used Tamiya's Buff color. It's really horrible brush painting Tamiya acrylic, but it wasn't too bad once I thinned it and added Flow-Aid to retard the drying.

The belts in the seat.

Next I painted the grommets and the latches with silver, a very delicate operation.

When everything was cured, I gloss coated it with Alclad's Aqua Gloss.

I tried using a wash of black and raw umber oil paint.

I assembled the wings while I waited. Or maybe I just taped them together and glued them later. I don't know. Here's a picture of the wings.

After I gave the oil a couple of days to dry, I coated it with Ultra Matte varnish.

The instrument panel after a flat coat.

I used the Aqua Gloss on a very fine applicator to dab it in the instruments to give the appearance of glass.

The kit seat had a way of mounting with a tab that inserts into the floor, but the resin seat doesn't come with that option. I used some strip styrene stacked and glued together, then sanded down to give me a mounting point.

Glued into place.

The outside got a quick bit of paint just to make sure it wasn't white. Not that you could see it, but why not give it a little attention?

Mounted the seat with some cyanoacrylate glue. "Super glue", but not super glue, another brand.

The yoke.

The instrument panel.

The finished interior. It's a bit interesting how grayish it turned. Oh well, you probably won't see most of it anyway when it's closed up.

That's it for this week. Maybe you'll get an update in about a week?

I also came across this while I was typing and well, it's just amazing. I lasted 24 minutes.  https://youtu.be/qfHMytOUq6Y

Stay classy.