Hasegawa 1/32 Spitfire Mk Vb, Converted to a Mk Vc
By Wayne Kohlmann
This is my Hasegawa 1/32 Spitfire Mk Vb that I converted into a Royal Australian Air Force Mk Vc.
This build is dedicated to Tolga Ulgur who has shown us on many occasions just how well Hasegawa's Spitfire kits build up. I think they did an amazing job of capturing the shape of this aircraft at a time when 3D scanning hadn't even been thought of.
The kit is a very simple one, parts wise, and is adorned with raised surface detail. This was my first attempt at fully re-scribing a model and, in retrospect, I was a bit heavy-handed with the scriber.
I added Aires' Spitfire Mk V resin cockpit set which is a vast improvement on the kit cockpit, but which seems to suffer from somewhat sloppy pattern work - certainly not the 'tight', crispness of Aires' more recent resin sets.
I scratch-built the wheel wells and radiator and dropped the elevators a tad. I bought some nice resin wheels but couldn't use them because Hasegawa's gear struts aren't moulded with stub axles on them. Instead, Hasegawa chose to mould the inner side of the wheel hub onto the strut. Damn!!!Fortunately, the kit wheels are very good and I simply rounded the tyres a bit more. A HGW seat harness set, Barracuda Resin wide cannon blisters and Master Details turned metal Hispano cannon barrels were also added to the model.
The model was finished with MRP Mr Paint and SMS lacquer paints, which are both a dream to spray. All markings, except Jimmy Cricket, were airbrushed with the aid of Montex masks. Note the pictures make the codes look like they're white. Trust me, they (like the spinner) are definitely RAAF light blue. I took my photos with a Nikon Speedlight flash attached to the camera (no studio set-up). I think the flash has washed the colours out a bit.
Having been compelled to undertake this conversion (to get a Mk Vc) I've just heard a rumour that Kotare might produce a Mk Vc kit - Doh! Isn't that typical of our hobby?
© Wayne Kohlmann 2024
This article was published on Saturday, March 02 2024; Last modified on Sunday, March 03 2024