Thanks for the link James. I'll check it out soon and it looks fantastic.

I have not had any spare time over the last few days. Tonight was the first time I've had the opportunity to get back at the work bench.

So I started working with the pre shade lines on the Airfix PR Mk XIX Spitfire.

I'm going to try spraying the D-Day Invasion stripes on as they're showing on the decal illustrations.

Once the lines were sprayed I waited a little while before the masking began.


Then I sprayed some white ...

I hope that I can get the black stripes painted on later tonight. I'll let it dry more before I get busy with this step.

Meanwhile I can start with the pre shading work on the BP Defiant, the 2 Hurricanes and the 6 other Spitfires that are ready.

Thanks for looking and as usual
"Comments are encouraged. "

Nice to get to the painting stage. Looking good so far Louis. The paint shop is ready for more work. Nice long weekend for some more artwork. Nice link sent by James by the way.

Love the stark B$W stripes. You can't miss it.
Interesting image of discarded masking tape. It looks like a multi-winged alien moth. 🙂 . . . 'No, I have not been sniffing the glue again'.

According to the decal instructions this plane doesn't have the wing stripes on it. That does sound odd. I would like to find a photo of this pane, to confirm this, but so far I have not been able to.

Today I masked off the Invasion Stripes... in preparation for panting the PRU Blue.

Here's how it looks after a few light coats. I left it just barely translucent, so you can just see the pre shading effects. They are barely there, and hardly noticeable. I know this is "artistic license" but I wanted to do something to break up the monotone finish a little more than the fuselage stripes.

While I was spraying, the main canopy and one camera door was also painted in PRU Blue.

... as were the landing gear doors.

... and the beautiful spinner.

Here's how everything looked shortly after the paint spraying was completed.

After the paint had a chance to dry, I removed the masking...

Here's a few close ups of the "open" camera doors.


There is a little touch up work that needs to be done, but I am happy with the overall results of this one so far.

For those of you who advised the plane would look better with the Invasion Stripes, and having the doors open to see the internal details, you were right...

Thanks for suggesting these changes. It was a worthwhile effort, and really added some life to this build.

Thank you !

As usual,
"Comments are encouraged".

Here are the decal instructions.

First up, the fuselage side profile. You can see the fuselage stripes, but they are not visible on the wings in this drawing.

Next is the money shot...

They don't show the stripes on either plane ( RM 643 or RM 645) which are both unpressurized planes.

My best guess is that since this is from the late 1944 era, the wing stripes may have been painted over, or possibly never were added to begin with.

It would be great to find a corresponding photograph. They mentioned the source as "Aircam No. 8"

Unfortunately I don't have this available to me.

Hello Peter, and thanks for the wonderful photo ! I have another Spitfire that will probably end up with a full set of Invasion stripes. I am going to leave this one as is after some thought. My idea is that the plane was supposedly operated in this configuration during November 1944. I'm guessing that by then they may have over painted the wings stripes, but not the fuselage just yet. Since this plane relied on speed and wasn't armed, I'm sure the PRU pilots wanted to make it as invisible as possible, since the Germans were trying to intercept these planes using jets by this time.

Thanks for the photo ! I'll store it for future use... 🙂