Hasegawa 1/32 Spitfire Vb Converted to a Seafire 1b
By Robert Taylor
This has been a fairly extensive upgrade to this venerable old kit, incorporating quite a bit of after market stuff and scratch building. The aircraft depicted is a machine serving with 885 RNAS aboard HMS Formidable in late 1942.
The basic outline of this kit is fine, it certainly looks like a Spitfire to me. However, a little help is needed in the the detail department to match the finesse of more contemporary kits.
First off, the cockpit was replaced with the Aries Mk.V offering with a few parts from an old Eduard PE set added. A bit of thinning of the plastic and resin was needed to get a good fit. I used the Hasegawa gunsight, making a new mounting bracket for it as the Aires mount is pure fiction. A Barracuda Cast seat was used, the Aires one is made for a frighteningly enormous backside! The resin seat armour was replaced with one I made from litho plate for a better scale appearance. The pilot's head armour was sanded from its frame, substituted with the part from the Eduard set, and a head rest glued in place. The kit's rear cockpit frame was used as the Aires one didn't fit the fuselage cross-section too well, any distortion of the fuselage at this point will result in a poor fit at the wing root. A little extra detail was added here and there using plastic card and wire. After painting and weathering, a few airscale placards and the fabulous HGW seat belts were added to complete.
Next, the whole aircraft was engraved by running scribers along the edges of the existing raised panel lines, and then sanding off the raised detail when complete. Reference to drawings is prudent here, as some of the wing detail is a bit spurious and needs adjusting. All errors and cock-ups were rectified with CA glue, accelerator and sanding sticks. Small circles and various other shapes were added using engraving templates. Hinges for access hatches were simulated by laying thin plastic rod into the appropriate engraved panel line and fixing with a little liquid cement. Lifting points and spigots formed from plastic card/rod were added, one aft of the engine cowl, and one just aft of the cockpit. Other lumps and bumps were added using shaped plastic card.
Elevators were cut and repositioned as per typical of Spitfires, the tail wheel was cut and repositioned to give a castored look. The prop is from Grey Matter Figures, though I did use the kit spinner as the resin replacement had suffered a bit of shrinkage, and consequently wasn't the correct diameter. Exhausts are from Quickboost, I removed the gun heater tubes as per period photos, leaving just a hole in the cowl, aft of the exhausts. I'm assuming this was done because these aircraft were operating at relatively low altitudes in the warm Mediterranean climate.
The Vokes filter wasn't that great a fit or profile, it comes in two parts and needs a bit of work to get right. The two parts were glued together and any gaps and shape issues were rectified using Milliput and sanding to get something that looked about right. Mr. Surfacer was used to iron out any final blemishes.
Master brass canons replaced the kit parts, the machine gun port covers were sanded flush to the wing, and new ports drilled. A camera gun was added to the port wing root.
It was my intention to use an Airwaves resin insert for the arrestor hook assembly, but hacking away a large part of the lower fuselage to accommodate said insert struck me as being way to scary! I used it as a template to scribe the detail instead. A small hole was cut, and a hook carved from thick plastic card was inserted to complete the modification.
Now for the really brave stuff! The underwing radiator and the wheel wells just weren't right and needed fixing. So I cut the radiator housing from the wing, replacing it with one removed from the wing of an old Revell Spit I had in the stash; this having a much better shape. I made up a new radiator to go inside the housing using square plastic tube, plastic card and RB Productions' straight radiator mesh. These PE meshes are very impressive, I used the honeycomb variant in the oil cooler also. Gun heating ducts were made from corner pieces of sprue, and the radiator vent was formed from litho plate for a better scale look. The wheel wells were removed with my inexpensive rotary cutting tool, and replaced with new ones scratch built from plastic card/strip. Landing gear leg tunnels were also scratch built, being non existent in the kit.
Finally the fiddly bits were added, including radio mast and landing gear legs from G-Factor (the kit legs being too skinny), Barracuda Cast wheels, and the gear doors from my PCM Mk.IX kit. What I assume to be an IFF aerial was added to the underside of the starboard wing. All photos I have of these early Seafires seem to show just the one, not two as seen in later versions.
Paints used were Xtracrylix EDSG and Slate Grey for the upper surfaces, Sky for the underside, and Grey/Green for the interior. I've used other brands of paint for wartime FAA colours before, but have never been entirely convinced by the Slate Grey. Several visits to the FAA museum at Yeovilton (only an hour's drive away), and a good look at the Shuttleworth Collection's Sea Hurricane made me rethink things. Xtracrylix Slate Grey is bang on, a big difference and very pleasing, I believe Hannants has British colours off to a tee. Though Xtracrylix can be slightly temperamental to use, what paints aren't, I find diluting them with distilled water by about 25-30% usually does the trick. Clearly, other mysterious factors such as lunar phases, high tide times and daily dairy herd yields impact on the performance characteristics of these paints!
Weather staining and panel lines was done using Pro Modeller's excellent water based washes. For exhaust and cordite staining I used enamels, heavily diluted with white spirit. Paint chipping and wear of the wing root and leading edges was done with a silver Primus pencil. Matt varnish by Vallejo.
National markings are spares from a PCM Spit, the 'G' is from the Barracuda Cals British P-40 sheet and slightly modified, serials are Xtradecal and the stencils are a mixture of Hasegawa and Revell. After placing the roundels in the 'standard' position and then later looking at photos of the actual thing, I realised that the fuselage roundels should have been further forward, almost touching the lifting point. Such is life!
I'm pleased with the final result, it has taken a while to do though. I think the Aires cockpit is one of that companies older upgrades, but with a little extra work, it does scrub up well and looks just the business. It would be very nice to have an accurate, new tool 'baby' Spit to work with, I have another two of these in the stash, and time is at a premium.
Lastly, what is it about Spitfires that makes a bloke in his fifties, who is of sound mind, grab a model of one and fly it around the room making dodgy impressions of a Merlin? Pure magic.
© Robert Taylor 2014
This article was published on Tuesday, April 01 2014; Last modified on Monday, April 07 2014