I started this one a few weeks ago alongside a Tamiya 1/32 MkXVI thinking I could use the Tamiya model as a source of minor detailing for the 1/24 model.
The conversion to MkIX will be done with the help (…) of the old heritage set
Other goodies will be used such as resin seat, some Trumpeter parts I could gather, Airscale instrument panel, Master canons, MasterCasters 1/24 Flaps set for the Trumpeter Spitfire and custom mask made by DN models
The plan is to build a Mk IX from 349 sqn : GE – L serial PT723 clipped wing as illustrated in the next picture:
The heritage conversion
The heritage set I am using has been stored for quite a long while and I may have missing parts.
The resin is not void of air bubbles but the extended nose, the 4 bladed prop, the second radiator and the tail parts should be really helpful for this conversion.
Not that it will be an easy one because the fit of the resin nose is really bad, the small air intake should hide a bit of that disaster but still …
On top the problem is not so huge but will require quite a bit of adjusting to fit.
Needless to say the engine won’t fit. No big deal there as when you build both the 1/24 Airfix and the 1/32 Tamiya engine at the same time, you’d be ashamed to display the 1/24 engine anyway. In all fairness there is a huge technology gap between these two so they can’t really be compared IMHO. Beside I am not a fan of opened panels on Spitfire and I rather want to display the elegant lines of the aircraft 
The wheel inserts
I was lucky to bring a wheel insert set from my last visit to the US. The set was sourced from Ebay, just after being announced on LSP. Price was very cheap and probably not covering the resin gross price.
As you probably all know the Airfix wheel bays are not closed and you can see the inside of the wings. This set was a great opportunity to save a bit of time closing the side of the wheel well myself with plasticard.
The set has the added bonus of being available with resin wheels and as I don’t really fancy rubber wheels at all, these will be welcome even though if they are just copies of the rubber kit’s wheel.
Strangely enough I didn’t get a tail wheel with my order, but just two main wheels. So somehow I’ll be stuck with one small rubber wheel anyway
When I came back home, I immediately started working on the spitfire wings test fitting the new wheel inserts. The quality is a bit rough and not devoid of air bubble.
It doesn’t look like this was going to be an easy drop in mod…
First thing to do was to remove the thick resin blocks, quickly done on a sheet of 180 sanding paper and a lot of rotating motions:
After removing the block, I started to wonder if these parts were sided or not.
I tried different configuration and ended up making my mind on which part to use on each side and marked them.
If they are supposed to be side relevant, then a quick mark on the instructions on straight in the resin would tremendously help 
Once the wheel inserts are in the wings, you can’t place the Hispano guns anymore, but that’s no big deal for me as they are really ugly and I will use the master’s canons anyway. So off they went.
Strangely enough the inserts don’t seem to be symmetrical as one gun ejector is covered (right in the above picture) by the insert while the other is left free… (left one)
The gear can not be attached if the resin inserts are left as they are. The Proxxon will be used to mill resin out to allow the gear struts to be attached in their correct location.
Note the surgery (just one clean cut) to recover the gun ejector on the right side !
You can’t really display the wheels retracted as the wheel will conflict with the side wall, but that is clearly stated before buying the set.
I also had a bit of trouble to decide about the top wing two pins and the top gear retaining plate glued on the inner top wings were supposed to be left in place or removed.
After test fitting I decided to remove them as I thought the purpose of the inserts was to cover the full height of the wing internal and one of the two pins were clearly in the way.
Yet, once I removed them, I realised the inserts were not touching the top wing unless I compressed the wing hard and therefore messing their shape.
No big deal but that made me realise that maybe, just maybe I shouldn’t have cut these pins. Oh, well, too late to address this now so let’s move on …
The wheel insert set is very poor and looking back I could have done much better with sheets of plasticard. I’m usually not bothered by challenge when I build models but this set has too many drawbacks:
- Coarse resin needing smoothing with putty and sanding.
- Lots of air bubbles
- Lack of left/right part instruction, lack of information about the original part to keep or remove.
- The insert still leaves a void between the two wings on top of the wheel wall
Assembling the wings
The Mk IX conversion adds another big radiator under the wing. Both radiators are provided in resin but the bottom wing need to be adapted for fitting the second radiator.
I started by marking the position of the resin part and then milled a layer of plastic with the Proxxon until to insert the radiator fit.
As you can see from the picture above, the gun panels were all closed on the top and bottom wing. The flaps were also cut from the bottom wing. The small flap panel was also opened from the top wing.
Here’s why I think the Heritage set missed a few parts. I only had one radiator resin block; the part supposed to go inside the radiator casing. But I had two (different) radiator casings. Luckily the resin parts fit almost perfect the kit parts. So all I had to do was rebuilt one out of 0.75mm plasticard. Of the resin part, I just saved the two radiator faces. 
From outside it is barely visible:
The wheel wells received a little bit of detailing with plastic strips and the radiator are puttied in place.
Having built the MkI almost two decades ago I know that one of the weak point of the kit is the wing dihedral that is way too flat. I tried to address this by gluing a metal cloth hanger on the bottom wing before solidifying the whole with milliput.
Hopefully that should provide a better wing angle and should also help on the wing/fuselage joint a bit later on….
The MkVb boxing provides the clipped wingtips and although Spit IX from the 349 had all sorts of different configurations during their service time, the one I am building has the clipped wings.
So out with the saw 
Fitting of the clipped wingtip is far from being a no putty operation and curiously the parts fit better when I switched the parts opposite from the instructions.
I also had to adapt the cut according to the aileron to ensure the wingtips were properly aligned with the trailing edge of the ailerons.
The early clipped wings were done in wood and had no position lights – but PT723 clearly sports the light. Luckily, Airfix provided transparent parts for them. Fitting is not perfect either but that can be very easily overcome. I’ll attach them later at the last stage of the build as I usually do.
The wing is now assembled & ready for priming. Most of the panels were puttied, as were the clipped wingtips. The rivets were toned down by light sanding.
The cockpit
The stock cockpit is very sparse from the box, so a bit of scratching is required, after all this is 1/24 but I’m not going into crazy detailing but just basic stuff.
Some bits added:
And being painted ….
More work is required and I should revert to the original radio channel selector (top right) which is too large. The Airfix kit part will be better. The Airscale placards decals will come in Handy.
Same work sequence on the right side which provides a bit more challenges:
The kit’s offering:
That’s rather sparse, but still better than the original 1970 kit I built before as the gear handle assembly is already a dozen time better in the MkVb kit.
Some stuff added during a dry fit session:
And after painting with some added details. Wires still need to be placed but I first need to work on the bulkheads. I’ll do some weathering before doing that though.
With the side consoles basically done, the next obvious area to work with is the IP and the seat. The IP was replaced by an upgrade from Airscale. Very easy to install & paint and giving very nice results !! (I just need to make a few corrections in the photo below)
The seat demanded a bit more work because it’s the Grey Matter meant for the Trumpeter kit and the frame is quite different.
I redid the armour plate behind the seat with thinner plasticard and cut the support frame to fit the new resin seat. The frame supporting the seat was also modified as the original part was not quite accurate. I messed up a bit the hole for the harness I had to make in the head armour plate. I’ll try to correct that later on…
The front part (flare round storage? ) was cut from the kit’s seat and replaced on the Grey matter seat. The whole was assembled twice (initially, I smartly glued the seat on the wrong side of the frame making the first ever Spitfire rear faced pilot seat )
The harness will be made with Eduard RAF late seatbelts. I have never been a huge fan of PE seatbelts because of the unnatural pose they always end into.
IMHO PE is too rigid for that. But that’s what I have handy here so let’s try to make use of them.
I must admit they made progress since their early printed seatbelts because. These are printed on both side (that helps) and more importantly the print is much more reliable than before. Usually with early offering when you bent the PE the print was going AWOL and never at the right spot of course.
It’s a problem I faced here as well, but to a much lesser extent than my past experiences. That said, I would replace them with HGW seatbelts anytime…
Here are the seatbelts assembled but not glued yet:
Then attached to the seat and frames:
As I said, soft seatbelts anytime over rigid PE
Before closing the fuselage I took some final shots of the cockpit assembly and sidewalls. Most of these will now be hidden forever
The sidewalls were lightly weathered and the Airscale decals put to good use.
Final shot of the IP alone, And the Ip positioned in place in the right fuselage.
I deliberately cheated on the position of the rudder as I wanted details to come under the seat rather than having a visible gap when viewed from above. The control column is from the trumpeter kit. The compass and fuel ON/OFF panel were completely remade.
Final picture before closing the fuselage halves:
The kit is now ready for the next big challenge: 
Nose Surgery
Time to address the fitting of the Heritage long nose to the Airfix model.
First order of business: the huge gap on the bottom nose with the underside of the wings:
Luckily, When the air intake is positioned the gap kind of closes but there are some side curves in there that will be really hard to correct:
I don’t know if the original idea was to leave this like that which seems weird.
The top of the nose won’t be much easier to work with. The part is very thick.
The guide to mate the original nose part will need to be removed and a new guide glued in place to accommodate the resin nose top. That will hopefully reduce that gap between the two resin part:
The engine will not be installed. I will rather place some plastic parts between the walls to reinforce the inner nose. Where is that new putty tube I bought lately…
I used the 1/32 Tamiya MkIX kit to check the correct position of the air intake:
It seems that Heritage model positioning is quite matching the Tamiya design which is good enough for me to proceed. I decided to address the insane gap with milliput from inside the engine cowling. After squeezing the milliput in, I pressed the intake from outside into its position and smoothed the milliput from outside with wet fingers and paintbrushes.
It’s ugly but it’s a start:
The aft end of the resin intake is strangely cut at a right angle. The kit part was called to the rescue and a lot of sanding was required to mate the two parts together: 
More putty (squadron), more sanding .. you all know the drill:
Lots of details are being lost so most of the rivets & fasteners will need to be sanded flush and completely redone.
A lot of plastic was added inside the cowling. First bits of sprue were added to keep the side walls separated at the correct distance. Then a plasticard guide for the top cowling were added on each side of the side wall. And finally a base for the exhaust pipes was glued in place. This was made mandatory because of the absence of the engine.
The top resin cowling has been seriously sanded on the inside for a better fit: on all sides except at the propeller. If not done, the placement against the fuel tank creates a huge step and in turn creates a gap between the top cowling and the side wall. Simply sanding the inner cowling to decrease its thickness solve both issues.
Back to the wings
Since finishing assembling the wings, something bugged me about not being right. So more research was needed on the wings. I have an itch the wing are not the correct type and I may have to change stuff to make it fully accurate.
You could write a book only about the spitfire wings, but here’s a short recap about what I could gather:
- A type: Original wing design, till 1942.
– Weapon were 4 .303-calibre Browning machine guns. (4 on each wing)
– No gun blister on top of the wings, slight bumps above the undercarriage.
– Retractable landing lights on the bottom of the wings.
– Gear Indicator on top of the wings.
– Ailerons could be fabric covered (till around 1940) or light allow
– One large radiator only.
– Asymmetrical walkway line (left wing was L shaped, right wing was a straight line).
– This wing was mostly used on early Spitfires such as the MkI and MkII - B type: the 2 inner .303 machine guns were replaced by 1 Hispano 20mm canon with 60 rounds.
– A blister appeared on top of the wing for the Hispano canon.
– The canon is quite visible with the barrel fairing protruding from the leading edge.
– Total weapons were thus 2 20mm canon and 4 .303 machine guns.
– The retractable landing lights were relocated.
– Ailerons were made of light alloy.
– One large radiator only.
– Asymmetrical walkway line (left wing was L shaped, right wing was a straight line).
– This wing was mostly used on Spitfires MkV family. - C type: The C wing was a complete redesign.
– Addition of the second radiator, identical to the first one, under the other wing.
– The undercarriage was modified and the top wing blisters on top of the undercarriage were deleted. The undercarriage was also placed further forward.
– Symmetrical walkway lines (both wings L shaped)
– One more Hispano 20mm canon was added to each wing, next to the original one.
– Total weapons were thus 4 x 20mm canons and 4 x .303 machine guns.
– The inner machine gun was relocated more outboard.
– With the twin canon fitted the top of the wing sported a very large canon blister and two canon barrel fairings protruding from the leading edge.
– In the field, the extra weight of the added canon was a problem and very often one canon per wing was removed. It could have been either the inner or the outer canon with no specific rules. the barrel casing was then replaced by a short stub.
– Later production C wings came out of the production line with a single canon. The short stubs were then deleted and the large blister on top of the wing were replaced with a narrow blister on top of the single canon.
– The retractable landing lights were deleted.
– The top wing gear indicator was removed.
– This wing was mostly used from Spitfires MkIX - D Type: This wing was specific for the long range unarmed reconnaissance Spitfires. Weapons were removed and replaced by larger wing fuel tanks.
- E Type: The E wing was introduced in 1944 and is structurally identical of the C wing.
– The two outer .303 machine guns were removed but their bay remained (empty).
– Only one 20mm canon was installed, it was placed further aft in the wing, the barrel was then fully encased in the fairing protruding from the leading edge. The corresponding blister was slightly different from the C wing blister but obviously of the narrow type.
– The second canon from the initial C wing was replaced by a M2 Browning .50 machine gun with 250 rounds.
– The machine gun could be replaced with a second 20mm canon. - The new wing: Another wing redesign came with the later Spitfire Mk21. It’s way outside of the scope for this build but mentioned only for the sake of being complete.
See? I tried to be quick about it explaining the wing types. Of course the above is just the theory. Field modifications were frequent and very often a Spitfire may have melting pot options from different wing types. And I’m afraid that is what PT723 had…
From the above picture, we can see that the 349th Spitfires of the era had a single canon fairing, with no barrel visible (so typical of the further aft placed canon of the E wing)
There is no outer machine guns and they have clipped wings.
Problem is that there is no short stub next to the canon fairing. So we can be sure that there is no .50 machine gun installed. That would be something closer to the C wing than the E wing. Here comes the open question: C or E type wing or a bit of both?
At this time, my feeling is that the 349th had late C wings with the short stub removed at the production line.
This seems to be confirmed by the official OOB archives of the 349th as theses Spitfires were coded “LF MkIX Merlin 66″And that should correspond to a C wing with 2 Hispano canon and 4 .303 machine guns.
Invisible on the above picture, the blisters on top of the wings are the narrow type, unlike the blister on my models that seems to be of the wide type but not perfectly placed.
I didn’t really realise until I saw the MkVb Tamiya in 1/48 of the same aircraft. This one features the large blister correctly placed:
Airfix probably wanted to depict the two cannon larger blisters. That blister was abandoned pretty quickly as they realised that the two canons per wing were too heavy and field mounted one canon only. So the blister was changed to a narrow one. Only a very few early MkIX flew with the large blister (those converted from MkVb) and it’s definitely not the case of the aircraft I am representing.
But the Airfix blister is nowhere large enough to represent that large blister and it’s nowhere narrow enough to be the later narrow blister either.
It seems to be moulded somewhere in the middle of the two blisters dimensions…
If my Spitfire had the large blister, it should be located on top of the gun bay identified by the red lines in the above picture. So that blister had to go and needs to be replaced by a narrower blister placed only on a single gun bay (the one where the canon is installed obviously).
The black arrows illustrate the width of the Airfix blister (not wide enough).
The red arrow illustrates the width that the large early blister should be.
The green arrow illustrates the width the narrow late blister should be.
Happy with the research, I took the Tools out and made a quick further surgery session:
I cut both blisters from the wings with precision saw (one of them with a 90° bend field modification specially for this operation)
Then the wings were sanded off once again:
Milliput was used to fill the gaps before sanding again. The removed blisters were filled with milliput as well as they need to be sanded narrower later on:
After a coat of Mr Resin primer, the wings are smooth again (except for a few defaults remaining) and a good base for engraving and riveting.
Thinning the blister to the correct width was easier than expected. I still need to work a bit the symmetry and probably reduce the height a bit, but this will be good enough.
The marks on the top picture are the dimensions I need to end up with according to the Tamiya blister adapted to 24th scale. The right piece has been narrowed: 
The blisters are flat on their bottom and the wing is slightly curved. So if I place them like this I will end up with more sanding and putty duty.
Shaping these has always been a problem for me but this time I decided to use a KISS (keep it simple stupid) technique and simply placed sanding paper on the top of the wing and slide the blisters on the sanding paper at the level where they should be placed hoping the surface of the blister would take the curvature of the wing.
It didn’t work too bad so hopefully I won’t need to use putty gluing these to the wings:
Deciding to place the cannon in the outer or inner bay was also a long process – you can see spitfires Mk9 with the canon either on the inner or other bay. Usually the short stub is a good indication, but here they are not present, so in the end I had to decide for myself and placed them in the inner bay. The newly shaped blister can now be glued in place and the position for the (Master) turned cannon tube is marked
The wing story is not done yet, I still have to relocated the inner machine gun bay just outside of the panel line as per C wing position. The machine gun holes in the leading edge have been filled. And I will decide later on if I will recreate them.
Engraving, Riveting & surface detailing
The next step took me ages to complete and consisted in engraving panel lines, restoring lost details and adding some more and riveting.
Work started on the wings based on the Montfort Pdfs and the 1/32 Tamiya model which was extensively used as reference. 
Before punching rivet lines I want to be sure that I do not need to sand anymore and therefore I first need to place raised rivets at other specific locations.
This was done by punching the smallest possible bit in a 0.3mm plasticard sheet. then glued to the plastic with ultra-thin Tamiya glue and then sanded to further decrease the thickness:
Then one dull Sunday I woke up and felt like punching a few rivets …
Armed with a good rivet drawing (Montforton), a divider, Rosie the riveter 1.5mm, a needle, a pencil and a lot of templates I went to work:
I use Dymo tape when I want to stop the rivet line precisely. I found out that trying to do it by the eye gives real bad results.
After a few hours, I completed the right wing. I then brushed some black acrylics and rub it away, hoping to make the rivets more visible:
I had to compromise a couple lines, more especially around the flap indicator door which is badly placed (and too large). Most of the rest went fine and matched the rivet drawing I used.
I found riveting duties boring and yet addictive After a full day’s work on one wing, I needed as much time for the other wing and another day for the bottom of the wings. 
It’s far from the riveting quality I have seen from my pairs but I will live with it. I think ultimately if you really want quality rivet work you need to work only with a needle and avoid the rivet wheel . But I’m not brave enough for that yet. Some details such as hinges, positive rivets & small bumps were nevertheless added: 
PE FLAPS:
Seeing a Spitfire parked with the flaps down is highly unlikely.
Flaps are raised as soon as possible after the landing because they tend to be damaged while taxiing and they block the airflow of the 2 big radiators and as a pilot you really don’t want to see that engine overheating.
Yet I wanted the flaps to be down. Let’s say the flaps were tested after taxiing back from the last mission and the maintainer forgot to raise them leaving that to the pilot part of his pre-start checks.
The PE flaps are designed for the Trumpeter MkV offering. They fit rather well the Airfix kit as well. The only problem is that the notch in the flap where an actuator go through the wing is not at the same place. But this is easily relocated. Care must be also taken to switch the PE actuator one rib down from the instructions.
The fixed flap is glued on the top wing after all the ribs were glued in place. The DSPIAE glue applicator really became useful in assembling the very tiny ribs. 
I had the thing on my bench for quite a while and almost regretted buying it, but not anymore. It was really easier to use than my usual toothpick method for assembling both the fixed and mobile flaps. 
Here are the mobile flaps assembled:
The rods are not glued and still too long and the hinges aren’t glued either. 
The inner fixed flap has no wall and it’s normal to see inside the fuselage, but it seems I didn’t plan for that when I scratch built the cockpit walls and I’ll need to make them fit better before attaching the flaps.
Detailing the engine cowling:
The engine cowl fasteners were present on the resin parts but most of them were erased during the much needed sanding sessions. To re-create them with 0.3mm plasticard I tried two methods:
The first one was used on the left side. The fasteners were created with a punch and die set before being glued to the fuselage.
First a small hole was made and then I punched a larger one centred on the first one:
Obviously centring issues decreased the success rate to approximately 50%
The accepted parts when then glued to the cowlings and immediately sanded thinner: 
After cleaning a quick coat of Surfacer was applied:
Not entirely satisfied with the outcome (lots of further cleaning is needed, some inner holes have been filled and need to be drilled again,…)
So I decided to try another method for the right side: This time I simply punched the larger ones and glued them straight to the cowlings:
And then drilled the inner hole straight trough:
Of course doing this I lost a few where the glue didn’t hold but the success rate was higher than for the first try.
The fasteners were then sanded some more, cleaned and painted.
After both sides were further cleaned, repaired and adjusted I was finally satisfied with the outcome: 
Unfortunately the quality of the resin parts is very bad. It’s full of air bubbles which are not quite visible to the naked eye but working closely (and macro photographing) made them very obvious:
I had to find a way to make this a bit smoother.
This was done with a water based putty which was generously applied all over the cowlings and then wiped away with a humid cloth. Many passes were needed to fill all of them: 
The ill shaped propeller spinner
I think I start to understand why there are very few Mk IX conversion in 1/24
Dry fitting parts I realised that the prop cone wasn’t perfectly round and that the cowling is larger and present aerodynamic issues when the prop cone placed into position. That is if you can find the best placement considering it doesn’t rotate as a circle!
The first step was to find a way to mate the prop cone to the nose of the aircraft. The nose as a rather large hole but the resin prop cone is plain.
I actually realised it wasn’t perfectly round when I was searching for its centre to bore a hole:
The hole in the nose is about 9.5mm. I found a piece of wood rod in my stash which will be perfect for the prop axle. I just sanded one end of it to a more reasonable 6 mm which is the size of the hole I drilled in the resin spinner: 
Mating now the spinner to the nose of the aircraft, here is what I discovered:
Going back to the 1/32 Tamiya Spitfire I realised that the nose was curved towards the spinner to ensure a smooth transition, the resin conversion doesn’t curve in, and therein lies the issue.
After having marked the area needing material removal I simply sanded the nose area in contact with the prop cone to get rid of that offending step and ensure a better (if not 100% accurate) aerodynamic transition: 
Of course doing so I discovered new air bubbles which needed to be filled with the usual method, as you can see with the white dots in the resin sanded area.
Some more fine sanding required and then I can replace the once again deleted fasteners. All in all it was a simple fix with only minor previous work destroyed, but I’m glad I found out now rather than after painting!
Fuel tank armour plate
There is a very visible armour plate around the fuselage fuel tank. The armour plate is flush with the engine cowlings but creates a bump on the rest of the fuselage. This was created with a 0.3mm plasticard sheet cut to shape and glued to the fuselage.
It does create some fitting issues for the windscreen, so the shape of the windscreen was cut out of the armour plate before gluing it in place (which in turn created more problems later on) The 0.3mm plasticard was further sanded down until completely flush with the engine cowlings and just enough to create that thickness difference against the rest of the fuselage. Rivets and screws were drilled through before gluing the sheet in place.
The filler cap was drilled as well and the non-existent cap will be scratched as it is absent from the Airfix kit. 
Fuselage riveting & detailing.
Most of the panel lines on the fuselage were good to use. The rivets were positive and ugly on the Airfix plastic and these were sanded flush and redone with the wheel and needle.
But before doing that the 2 large compartment doors on both side of the fuselage were further detailed:
To ease up the riveting process, I scaled the Montforton drawings to 1/24 scale and cut them by groups of panels. Then I taped these on the model and from there, it was simply a matter of rolling the rivet wheel on the printed rivets.
I started with the front fuselage under the armour plate and worked my way to the tail, alternating rivet wheel and the rivet needle where appropriate:
This is zoomed in quite close and a lot of problems are still visible – most of them you will not see with the naked eye. The result is very subtle as the rivet wheel needs to first go through the paper thickness. But that’s exactly what I wanted.
The risk is that the paper moves under the pressure of the wheel. When that happens you end up with a curved rivet line which then will need to be sanded and redone.
This happened on the radio door because the paper template was smaller. It was very visible and no way I could leave it curved.
But when the templates are larger and well taped, it is not so much of a concern:
Working my way to the tail. And below the result:
Riveting of the fuselage took the best part of two days of modelling madness.
The tail modifications.
The 349th Spitfire Mk IX had the broad chord pointy tail and large stabs. All are provided in the Heritage resin conversion. To give a more dynamic pose all mobile parts were cut and will be glued at an angle.
I started by cutting the elevators so I can display them down (stick forward – which helps the pilot get out of the cockpit), I modified the trim actuators and I will add a small rod between the two sections. The stabs were not easy to fit on the fuselage and a lot of sanding was required. Then the stabs were rivetted:
The rudder is very rough and full of bubble. The rudder trim tab was cut so it can be placed at an angle, the trim actuator was redone with Trumpeter bits. The tail light (also Trumpeter) was also added and the whole thing was sanded down.
The rudder actuator was made from scratch as it was non-existent. The fuselage fairing was scratched out of a plastic cotton bud cut to shape. As you can see, the usual Bubble filling sessions are mandatory. 
Ready for painting
After weeks … months of engraving, riveting, correcting, sanding and riveting some more I though the model was finally ready for painting and received a final coat of Mr Surfacer primer.
The tail elements, the canopy (which is placed reversed), the spinner, the exhausts and the access door are all blue tacked for now.
Seeing her in this stage was a great motivation factor
More to come in part 2…
Red Dog's models 