It has been some twenty-plus years since I have built an aircraft kit in 1/32 scale. I recently decided to retry my hand at 1/32 scale aircraft building and, of course, I decided on a Spitfire. I prefer the early marque Spitfires and as most of the big model manufacturers only produce mid to late marques, I had to go with this one, the Revell/Hasegawa Spitfire Mk I/II. I got this kit second hand at a recent meeting of my IPMS Club for $25.00 with an Eduard photo etch interior detail set and a Master Details horizontal tail stabilizer set thrown in.
Anyone familiar with this kit knows it is a mixed bag of old and new moldings, with the wings having recessed panel lines and the fuselage having raised panel lines. I rescribed the fuselage without a problem, but had a Hell of a time scribing some sixty-plus Dzus fasteners along the cowling lines which are represented as small "pips" on the kit. The cockpit, out of the box, is okay I suppose but somewhat sparse. I fleshed mine out using a "Barracudacast" cockpit upgrade set made for the Tamiya 1/32 scale Spitfire Mk IX kit. For $8.00 you get a nice set of finely cast Spitfire interior parts plus decals for all the interior data. The real downside of this kit is the cockpit floor...there should not be one! A little surgery and some scratch-building yielded a better representation of a floorless cockpit. I buttoned up the fuselage halves day before yesterday and quite a bit of the cockpit details are forever lost. Now to work on the wings.
24 attached images. Click to enlarge.
