Tales from the Basement Lab by AndrewR

[AndrewR]

Sacrificing the Spit 22 for the Spiteful is paying off - makes a big difference.

I have the Freightdog Spitfire 22 upgrade set to replace the bits taken from that kit, so no sacrifices necessary

[AndrewR]

I remembered that I had an Eduard photoetch Zoom set for the Wildcat, which included seat belts.



When I looked at the set, I realised that I could trim the armoured backplate in the etch set to fit in the Spiteful. Yay! I used the atrociously bad Pegasus seat too, and a bit of plastic rod as the support strut.



Not bad. Paint some dark grey primer on:



Also silvered the wingtip lights and touched up the spinner.




And finally, added a tiny camera control box where the gunfight should be and painted the coaming:




The Airfix canopy has been test fitted and should fit reasonably well. It is fractionly too narrow.

Cheers

Andrew

[Jagewa]

Wow that is looking lovely Andrew.

[AndrewR]

Wow that is looking lovely Andrew.

Thanks Jim. This has been (still is) a fun build. Now I have the Airfix and Xtrakit Mk 22s to build! Somewhere there is also a very basic Pegasus Mk 22 as well. I may not have quite enough spares to do that one.

I have the canopy on now.

[Clashcityrocker]

Looks great. I like the colour.

Nigel

[ShaunW]

That is a most excellent Spiteful Andrew.

[AndrewR]

Looks great. I like the colour.

Nigel

It's Vallejo Air US Intermediate Blue, because my PRU blue went missing. The dark blue panel wash has darkened it a little. Accuracy schmaccuracy

[Stuart]

That Spitefull looks great Andrew!

[AndrewR]

Great spiteful! I'm to too familiar with this type? It looks like when a mummy Spitfire loves a daddy Mustang very much . . .!!

Which blue do you have there? Looks like a navy colour on my screen?


. . . R&D (who's stash couldn't stand piston powered fighters!!)

Vallejo US Intermediate Blue, but darkened by a steel blue wash. These photos are in natural light, so they give the best impression of the actual colour:




The navigation lights still need painting.





The Zlin is finished.






Neat little kit. There are some nice civvie schemes for it, so I might have to do another someday.

[AndrewR]

Meanwhile, I added Eduard seat belts to the Wildcat cockpit. The joystick was also added. It broke in two on the sprue, but was easy to put back together again, unlike Humpty Dumpty.

[Stuart]

Great work all round Andrew.

That Zlin is really smart - it's nice to see a GA build - great stuff.

[AndrewR]

Here's a bit of work on the Wildcat.

The cockpit gets put together and inserted into the fuselage. The two issues I have is that the cockpit floor sags, so the headrest does not locate in the fuselage "hump" properly.




The second is that the horizontal surfaces of the spars are a very tight fit into the holes in the fuselage halves. Definitely have no paint on, and even then I gently shaved a tad off both top and bottom.



The Good News is that it makes the Wildcat's "See through" undercarriage bay look absolutely superb, and worth the effort.

[Clashcityrocker]

Must add a Wildcat to the wants list, and that Zlin looks mighty fine too.

Nigel

[ShaunW]

The Zlin and Spiteful are a pair of excellent builds Andrew. It would seem the NT Wildcat features the closely engineered fit with lack of wriggle room that we are becoming used to in modern Airfix kits then. I hope to soon be trying the NT FW-190 A8 kit and will have to re-adjust my relatively sloppy approach again then. I recall the NT Lancaster catching me out on more than one occasion during the building process.

[AndrewR]

The Zlin and Spiteful are a pair of excellent builds Andrew. It would seem the NT Wildcat features the closely engineered fit with lack of wriggle room that we are becoming used to in modern Airfix kits then. I hope to soon be trying the NT FW-190 A8 kit and will have to re-adjust my relatively sloppy approach again then. I recall the NT Lancaster catching me out on more than one occasion during the building process.

When I get the Martlet, I will do a lot more construction before painting. The entire u/c assembly could be painted after construction and before attaching to the firewall.

Generally, I'd say the tolerances are too tight at the moment. Particularly true when you consider that their primary market is children, who may not have fully developed fine motor skills. It also makes it more difficult for ham-fisted older people like you and me!

The end result for the undercarriage promises to be excellent though, so I think the degree of difficulty is worth it. But make no mistake, this is not a beginners kit.

A much simpler kit is the Huma Klem-35,although not that easy to find.



Some more varnish needed, and I need to fix the sink hole in the prop. Only just noticed that.