Revell 1/32 Mk 1 Spitfire
By Dean Large
Well, this is THE classic aircraft as far as I’m concerned. Mustangs and things are all very well, but the Spit is the one we’d all like to fly. I fancied doing a Spitfire in the earlier green/dark earth/sky colour scheme a la Battle of Britain, and after my encouraging experiences with the 1/32 Tiger Moth I did for a previous model, I thought 1/32 was the way to go. I scoured eBay and bought myself a nice cheap Revell Spitfire I/II in 1/32 scale, and had a play with the Eduard photoetch cockpit set, although I know that’s really for the Mark V. When you look in a cockpit though, you see the busyness of it all, rather than start wondering why the chassis lever is different on this one than it should be, so I decided not to bother too much about pure accuracy- even the squadron codes depict an aircraft from 1942 – but does it look good? That’s the main question.
I tried a few new techniques on the cockpit, namely mixing my own cockpit green, coating the assembled and painted parts with Johnson’s, shading the raised details with very thin Tamiya Smoke, then flat coating the results. Although it seemed like a lot of stages to go through for something that’s pretty much hidden, I think the results were reasonably good. One thing I left out was the PE instrument panel – the one from Revell responded well to drybrushing and the drops of Johnson’s in the instrument faces. The seat was the PE one, (which looks a bit big to me) sprayed with Tamiya Red Brown, and then oversprayed with a thin coat of Tamiya Clear Red, to get that deep Bakelite colour of the real seat. PE harnesses were given an anchor cable to further back in the fuselage, as per my references, and I tried the trick of coiling fine wire around another wire to make the pilot’s oxygen hose. One of my references showed a bundle of wiring coming out of a former under the instrument panel and disappearing under the floor, so I bundled up some wire and shoved that in too. All that effort, and still hardly any of it is visible in the final article!
The wings on the kit were new mouldings, and the fuselage was old with raised panel lines, which necessitated rescribing the whole fuselage. Still a new skill to me, that, and some of the panel lines weren’t quite as uniform in depth as they should be, a fact which came to light when I used the water/pastel/soap mixture to accent them. Still, better luck next time.
I also tried masking the camouflage colours with the trick of rolls of Blu-Tak to give the feathered edge. Had to re-do that a few times, as it’s obviously a knack one needs to develop. Once all the camouflage was applied, it was on with the Johnson’s ready for decals. This is where I found out that the Revell decal guide is pure fiction. My normal technique is to place the fuselage roundels first to give a reference for others such as the code letters. Do the codes looks squashed up to you? That’s because the decal guide tells you to place the roundels too far forward, if you follow the panel lines. The underwing roundels were the wrong size completely, but in the absence of any spares I had to live with the undersized ones. (Anyway, in the early war years all sorts of colour schemes and roundel placements were tried to prevent “friendly fire” incidents, so it’s possible that there was a Spit with this arrangement.) One amusing misprint was in the decal for the side hatch. Instead of reading “make sure door is locked before flight” it actually read “NAKED door is locked…” Frostbite, anyone?
Once everything was sealed in, it was time for weathering. Panel lines were accented with the aforementioned water/pastel/soap mixture, and then fasteners and edges of panels around the gun bays and cowling were chipped with Tamiya flat aluminium. I didn’t want to go overboard with the weathering on this Spit, as BofB planes didn’t tend to last that long, and anyway, I wanted a plane that was in the early stages of the battle. Then I held my breath, loaded the airbrush up with matt black, and sprayed on the exhaust and the gunsmoke stains. I’ve always shied away from doing this in the past, as after all the effort that goes into getting a decent paint job it seems a pity to disfigure it, and if you get it wrong, it’s pretty much irreversible. Still, it all seemed to go OK, if a bit heavy on the gunsmoke streaks. I’ll be more careful next time.
The undercarriage was strengthened with steel wire into drilled holes, various lights were painted, the elevators were separated and dropped slightly, antennae and pitots were attached, and the prop was fitted. That was about it, really. Some people will always complain about accuracy of the Revell kit, but to my mind it looks pretty good, especially in its early colours. I’ve got a Bf 109E in 1/32 scale in the stash somewhere…maybe I’ll do that soon to complement the Spit.
This one is for the pilots on both sides during the summer of 1940.
© 2005 Dean Large
This article was published on Wednesday, July 20 2011; Last modified on Thursday, January 04 2018