Spitfire PR.IG Part One

Hello, it's me again. Yes, who else would it be?

I've got something old but completely new. I'm going to be building a Spitfire PR.IG. This Spitfire was an armed photo reconnaissance variant with an oblique camera mounted in the side of the fuselage and two cameras mounted underneath. It still retained all eight guns, but pilots were told to avoid combat whenever possible and were chewed out even if they were successful in a lethal encounter. I will be using Tamiya's Spitfire Mk I kit for the base and adding resin after market parts for the conversion.

I'm building this Spitfire dedicated to my beautiful wife for all she does for us. She loves the elegance of the Spitfire as well as the PR.IG's paint scheme. I thought it would be a good tribute build, as well as keep me out of trouble while she and the progeny are visiting the relatives for the next few weeks. Hello Thing One and Thing Two!

If you've never built this kit just on its own, you should.

Tada. Parts.

Here are the resin parts I will be using. I decided that I will only be using the Airwaves parts on the left. I received the resin kits free of charge from a friendly Spitfire enthusiast at the local modelling club. Thanks Mr. D!

Some reference material on the PR.IG, also provided by Mr. D (inside the entire book of reference material on loan). I'll get it back to you Mr. D, I promise!

I was looking forward to beginning the build as it will be a part of a special interest group (SIG) build on International Scale Modeller forum. I had to wait for July 1 to begin and I have to be done and post photos by September 30. Finally, a SIG that corresponded with what I wanted to build, when I wanted to build it! Here is half of the fuselage before cutting out the door.

The door successfully extracted with an X-acto blade.

I used dial calipers to identify the center the best I could. I had to look up how to read dial calipers on YouTube as I haven't read dial calipers since high school, when I took a drafting course. Calipers are my new favorite tool for measuring everything now.

I indented the plastic in the center with an X-acto blade so the pin vise wouldn't slide to the right when I started drilling.

Here is the first challenge I ran into. The hole was still very small and if I made it any larger, the fuel tank would be in the way.

Time for some cuttin'.

No one will see the back end of the fuel tank anyway. Well, I guess you and the Internets now.

The second problem was that I used the largest pin vise bit I had and the hole was still pretty small. I was taking a risk, but I really didn't want to buy and wait for bigger pin vise bits. I tested this method on a piece of scrap before doing this. What I learned was, the bit has to be going fast and go from the outside to the inside.

Here is the final hole. I didn't want to risk making it bigger.

Dry fit on the tank and the camera.

I have more clearance now for the hole and camera.

I guess I should mention, you should wear a dust mask before cutting and sanding resin. The explanation I heard is that the dust particles are like microscopic shards in your lungs.

Here are the underside cameras. A chunk of the wing needs to be cut off. I was watching the movie John Wick for the second time while I was doing this. The best action film I've seen in a while.

Part of the fuselage underneath also needed to be cut away.

I made some initial cuts with the razor saw.

Test fit of the wings and fuselage.

Resin test fit.

I have gaps in some areas that will require attention.

Here is the underside part of the wings I trimmed off and used as a test piece for the power drill method. I'm testing Kristal Klear in the same diameter hole to see if it will fill the hole.

Kristal Clear will dry clear as you can see. Within an hour the thinner application is already curing. The thick application at the top, took about six hours and it was a bit cloudy.

Here is where it sits.

Well, not really. I have a bit more done on it, but you'll just have to wait and see! The parts I needed to begin the interior arrived this week and I have begun assembling and modifying the interior. Thanks for visiting. Another update will be coming shortly, as well as a Zero update.

Thing Two's 1/72 P-51D Mustang Part 1

After the run-away success of the somewhat snap together Subaru, Thing Two was hankering for another model kit. I had my suspicions not about his ability to build the kit, but to be gentle with it as a model and not as a toy. For $9 and change, I thought I would give it a shot.

At the last model club meeting I picked up Revell's P-51D Mustang in 1/72 scale. I captured the build the best I could while helping along.

The kit was pre-painted and ready to cut off the sprues and assemble.

The box to the model in question.

The vast amount of directions, I believe there were more on the other side!

Cuttin' parts.

"Don't chop off his foot! That's alright, no one will see it anyway."

More snipping captions.

No more interesting things to narrate.

Woo! Alright, some assemblage. We first put the seat in and the rear wheel. I don't really trust snap together kits, so I hit it with some cement to fuse those parts together.

Putting the fuselage halves together.

Starting to look like a plane!

That's all we have for this go around. Hey man, we built this kit over a few days, so I'm going to break it up into a few posts. You can only get so far when Thing Two works on it for 15-25 minutes a pop. Until next time folks!

The Zero's Rejuvination!

All looked lost at the end of the last post for the Zero. As I continued to cogitate on the situation at hand, I realized that I could just continue with acrylic paints. The main inspiration was AK Interactive's FAQ Aircraft Modelling book that I recently acquired.

Let's see what I was able to accomplish.

The instructions called for semi-gloss black for the engine cowl. The FAQ book gave me the idea to paint it a lightened aircraft interior black and then I shaded the panel lines with flat black. You can see it better in real life.

I used a silver colored pencil to create chipping.

The completed, chipped engine cowl.

I used Tamiya's Titanium Silver to paint the propeller.

On the backside of the prop, I painted aircraft interior black.

I peeled off the Humbrol Maskol that I put down prior to painting the black. I'll show you what I mean below.

After coating the model with the Alclad Black Primer, I noticed a panel line I scribed was crooked and awful. I filled the line, sanded it and rescribed it with the the help of an embossing label

I sprayed semi-gloss black around the cockpit area as directed by the directions. Can't you see the difference? I removed the masking and added the antenna.

I glued the cockpit in place with Kristal Klear. Model glue and super glue will cause foggy on clear parts. Ask me how I know!

The side was re-primed with AK Grey primer. It caught some of the semi-gloss mist.

Here is the Titanium Sliver that I used on the prop.

Future self tells me, I shouldn't have left all those black areas.

This purple stuff is the Humbrol Maskol I mentioned earlier. It is a liquid latex that I applied with a torn green scouring pad. It also smells really bad, not a noxious, attack your nervous system bad, but just gross.

This will provide areas of chipping after applying the top coat.

I sprayed medium grey on the bottom. I realized that I really don't have the appropriate grey to spray, but I just wanted to move this project forward, plus the kids were gone for the weekend so time was of the essence. The next Zero will be better.

The finish of the bottom coat was terrible, the black primer had a rough and pebbly texture. I took a high grit sand paper and sanded it down. I would say the finish on the bottom is 80% improved. Some areas still have issues but they were difficult to reach, like under the fuel tank. Here I did some pre-shading with Tamiya Smoke.

Bottom coat re-applied. I think I should have put the coat on a little heavier. There was primer and paint down already, so I was concerned it would start to get thick and obliterate the very fine panel line detail. I'll nail it next time around.

For the top portion, I pre-shaded using the base coat of IJN Green. I put it down pretty heavy to show through the base coat.

The base coat of IJN Green is down. I added some lemon yellow to the paint, as I didn't have any white, to do some post shading inside the panel lines. It's tough to see in the pictures. I would have preferred adding white.

This is where the magic happens. I rubbed off all of the latex masking with my finger.

Zeros paint really took a beating in the Pacific and I wanted to heavily weather this aircraft and experiment with some new techniques. The areas on the outside of the wings and on the elevators, looked pretty clean after this. I took the same silver pencil I had for the engine cowl and created chipping effects on the panel lines. I don't have a good picture of it here, but you'll see it in the next post.

I masked off the leading edge for the Lemon Yellow highlights.

I added a little bit of Maskol to the leading edge before painting.

It came out fairly well.

Now for the chipping.

I'm becoming very familiar with cleaning and dissembling the Infinity. It's really a beautifully crafted airbrush. After recently dissembling the Infinity and the Badger I realized the difference between an $80 airbrush (that I got for $40) and a $250 airbrush.

Quality wise, I think this aircraft will have defects greater than my last aircraft, the Spitfire. I've tried a number of things different here, so I suppose that should be expected. I also learned that when you are spraying with metallics it's best to thin them more than you would for regular acrylic paints. Since the Zero had black primer, I think I should have applied the Titanium Silver all over instead of leaving some areas black. I see why grey or white is the preferred primer base for aircraft.This kit was $14, so I'm not too disappointed. It's all about the learnings.

That's it for now. It is on to a coat of Aqua Gloss and decals for the next post. See you then!