I once spent a week watching a cricket game one afternoon in Hong Kong. 🙂

During this short interlude, talking about Cricket, truck bra's and East Texas, I managed to glue some more parts on the Airfix PRU Mk XIX kit. Things are starting to progress rather fast now...

I painted the small boxes on the fuselage side walls,

installed the throttle and other various levers.

In case you're wondering about the camera opening doors, I decided to keep the fuselage closed up.

I did this for several reasons. I didn't want to take a chance and slip with the razor blade while cutting out the door. This would have had disastrous results and taken a lot of time to fix that I don't have too much extra of at the moment. Secondly I didn't want to ruin the graceful lines of this plane. Lastly I didn't want to take the additional time away from getting this one completed.

You can see the camera side window secured in place with some Future clear floor acrylic.

I added the individual instrument decals, and finished detail painting the IP.

I also painted the camera operation box in an aluminum color, then painted two of the buttons red, and the other two green. If you only see two larger buttons, the two tiny ones are on the far left of the camera box...

The plastic seat was bothering me. I didn't like the color choice, so I repainted the "plastic" part using a German WW2 Armor color called "Chocolate Brown" from the Model Master range of enamels. I painted this color directly over the flat black. This worked out fantastic using the black for a base color. I painted the brown on very thin, and the black shows through slightly in various places where the brown didn't completely cover. This gives the seat an appearance more like the real one was. They were not a monotone shade and had some little variations in the color of the plastic.

This color is still wet in these photos. It will dry to a "semi gloss" sheen and will not be quite so shiny once the paint has fully dried.

Next I added the clear part that represents the voltage regulator on the rear side of the pilot seat bulkhead.

Speaking of the cameras, They were added as well. It's a nice contrast with the wood and the RAF interior green.

Next step was to add the pilots seat assembly...

This was followed by adding the instrument panel.

Here's a picture that shows everything in place now. It's really starting to look decent now.

The next step was to glue the other side of the fuselage in position. I'm happy to report the fit was spot on, and with a little pressure exerted along the seams, things fit well.

Here's a few parting photos showing the pilot's "office". More of it is visible at this point than I tought it would be.


and lastly, looking down into the cockpit.

If you noticed, the wings are prepped and ready to install. I'm going to add the upper halves first, then the lower one piece section last.

Hopefully later tonight I can post up a few more pictures of the mostly completed airframe.

Now back to our discussion on "Cricket"...

Comments are encouraged. 🙂

Doing agreat job there Louis.

I recently bought from China a $5 spy pen just so I can access the tiny video camera (very good resolution). These days the micro-cameras are so small you could actually replace the Spit's cameras with real ones.

Tom C - that must have one of the happiest 'weeks' of your life!

DLS - great to see you back taking otherwise erudite and fantastic build logs in all sorts of directions. The Scottish cricket team has been very reasonable over the years!

Louis, I reckon that PR camera set up deserves an open port! Although I don't know when you'd get round to it!

Anyway - here is my idea of paradise (without the war, of course)...

Cricket dio, anyone?

David ,

Who's on first ? I don't know...
I have not watched this one in many years. Thanks buddy.

Paul,
That has to be one of the neatest Spitfire photos I have seen. I have seen a few pictures from the Army Air Forces and how the air crews and ground crews occasionally played baseball to pass the time. I had a distant relative who was a B-17 maintenance crew chief in the 8th AF during the War. He told me how they had to work on the planes continuously until they were fixed. He also told me that regular routine maintenance was done "when they could do it". Later on in his career he was the crew chief for the last flying P-47 in the Air Force inventory.

Cool picture. Thanks for sharing.

Hello Stephen.
I have been fortunate enough to have seen Kermit Weeks engine collection in person. He has a wall that is stacked from floor to the ceiling with Packard Merlins. He has some Daimler Benz engines and some Pratt & Whitney radials too. I'm fairly certain that he may even have a Junkers Jumo or two sitting there too.

It's very impressive to say the least.

Later tonight when I have access to my computer I'll post up a few pictures I took from the collection of engines.

Yes I was amazed by the fact that the cameras were mounted using wood too. It makes sense trying to conserve precious resources like aluminum during the War. Same principle as the Mosquito.

Here's a few pictures of the camera installation I found online that clearly shows the wood.

These are not my photos so I'll post up the source for them when I am on the home computer. It's a Spitfire website (I think it's called Spitfiresite.com ), that has tons of walk around pictures of various Spitfire Marks. They happen to have the PR XIX as one of the walk around photo examples.

The cameras are painted with a lighter color gray than what I used. I used a darker shade since I found a few pictures of the cameras in the darker colors too.

Thanks again gents.

Flaps up. It would have been cool to open the hatch to the camera compartment after all that good work.

Tom,
I decided to assemble the PR Spitfire with the flaps up, like you mentioned. It isn't that often you see them down, and like James Robinson posted on the Curtiss Helldiver, it was incorrect to leave them down.

Here's how it looks with the flaps installed in the "UP" position. A little boring, but more authentic.

I also cut open the camera doors !

not too pretty at the moment, but it will get better with a little file work.

It didn't take away too much from the overall lines of the plane. But the doors have yet to be added in the "OPEN" position. At least this way you can see the cameras inside.

Peter Hausamann, you have a great idea for the camera lens. Maybe someone can give it a try. I'll bet it would really look fantastic.

On to the Mk Vb, which will eventually be painted as a George Beurling plane. I added the 20 MM wing cannons.

Then built the oil cooler assembly.

This has a lot of details cast into it, and is made up from four parts...

Next I spent a little time assembling the under wing radiator.

It also consists of four individual parts, and looks great once assembled. You have the option of posing the exit door. I opened this one up fully, since it's going to be painted as a plane from Malta, where it gets a little "warm"...

These parts fit very well. In fact I simply pressed the radiator in position. The fit was good enough to hold it perfectly in place. I decided to add a little liquid glue as insurance however.

The last step for now was to install the clear canopy bits on the Airfix Mark V. They fit really good, and I used Future to adhere them in place.

Getting a little closer... Maybe later tonight I'll start spraying on some browns and greens on the early planes.

Time to eat dinner now...

as always,
Comments are encouraged.

Thanks Tom.

I also decided to go with the Spitfire that had the D Day Invasion stripes. You can see the plane I'm building in the very top of this next photo. It's overall PRU Blue with D-Day Stripes in Black and White.

Because this plane I wanted to model mine after didn't have a pressurized cockpit, I had to cut off the air intake on the Port side of the engine.

In order to fill in the little hole that was left after the surgery, I opted to use a little plastic square stock. It fit well and needed to be sanded down afterwards...

There were three small sink marks present just below the cockpit on the Port side. I filled them in, and once the putty was dry, I sanded them down. Here you can see they still needed some more filler as two of the spots were still low at this point. The one farthest forward was fixed with a single attempt.

I added some filler along the top of the nose to hide the seam that was still present after a light sanding.

The sliced off air intake was filled in and sanded to shape. The two remaining sink marks were also filled again. This time it was just right...

Here's the nose air intake surgery after a little sanding. It required another layer of filler to take care of the small lines that were still present in a few areas.

Here you can see the sink marks filled in nicely and look good after some more sanding work.

The final thing left to do was spray on a light coat of sand able primer. Once it dried, I gave the areas a quick light wet sanding with 600 grit paper.

Here are the results.

Next step on this PR Mk XIX plane will be to install the canopy and spray some pre shading. Then it will be ready for some PRU Blue and D Day Invasion stripes.

I'm getting much closer with this one... 🙂

As usual,
Comments are encouraged.

Thanks for looking.