This is a Revell/Hasegawa early Spitfire. The box was dated 2000.
I found it on the consignment table at the local hobby shop.
I was inspired to build this by an EAA video of a man named Bob DeFord that built a full size Spitfire from scratch. It’s the gray & green one in the photos that I added to this. I wanted to attach the video, but that was beyond my skill level. It’s on YouTube as well as the EAA web site. Very inspiring story.
The most difficult part of this build, for me, was getting the earth color “ just right”. I used Tamiya paints, and they don’t seem to offer the proper tone of earth. This was painted and I decided the brown was much too light & the green way too dark, so I stripped off the paint and started a search for the right colors. I found David Mills @davem to be a great resource on Spitfires, BoB, and the RAF in general, ( I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he worked for the Imperial War Museum). He gave me several formulas to mix my own home brew . I used 2 parts Tamiya XF-49, 2 parts XF-52, and 1 part XF-3. I used AML paint masks for the camouflage. They worked great and were worth the money, although it’s an art to get them placed just so. I used Tamiya XF-81 for the dark green and XF-21 for the underside.
Another source of angst was the Decal sheet. Although it looked great, I found that they were well past their prime. They broke apart when used. I sprayed the sheet with a rattle can clear gloss. That kept them from breaking apart , but it also seemed to make them resistant to water. I was fortunate the the major decals were useable. A new sheet of 1/32 decals to replace them were too expensive, in my estimation.
This should have been an easy project, but I had a lot of self induced hurdles to overcome, coming down with COVID in the middle of the project didn’t help things go any smoother. Over all I think it turned out OK and will represent the RAF & 609 squadron well in my small model airplane collection.
12 attached images. Click to enlarge.
