Lancfan's Fantasy of Flight Spitfire ***FINISHED***

[lancfan]

This model will be the Spitfire LF.16e TE476 owned by the Fantasy of Flight Museum and built using the Heller LF.16e kit.


David.

[DazDaMan]

This is at least the third Mk.XVI in this GB! You can never have too many XVIs!

Funnily enough, I did the same aircraft recently, only with the Italeri 1/48 kit (since it came with the 349 Sqn codes anyway).

Will pay close attention to this build, as I'd like to incorporate some of your kit mods sometime.

[lancfan]

This cockpit does need a little work and my first job was to make Das Clay side inserts taken from Miliput impressions of the AZ cockpit sides first made for an earlier build but intended for repeated use.

When these had dried they were then sanded thin enough to fit into the kit fuselage, the inside faces of the cockpit were milled down to make room for the new interior and the inserts were then cyano'd into the fuselage.


David.

[PaulBradley]

Nice start, David!

[IronMan129]

Nice start mate, looking forwart to seeing more.

[lancfan]

With my RAAF mk Vc progressing nicely and the Lancaster build slowing down for a short while it is time to continue with my Fantasy of flight spitfire LFXVIe, the cockpit sides have been detailed and painted.


The next job was to assemble the fuselage and then fit plastic card blanks to the inside face of the lower wing half before cutting away the radiators.


When these had dried I then covered the surrounding areas of the wing with masking tape to protect the detail and I then filled the depressions in the wing.




David.

[K5083]

Clever idea for the cockpit. And I see you are out to do a proper job on this one, with the radiators and such.

August

[DazDaMan]

Good stuff.

I think I will take notes for my Heller Spit build later in the year.

[Molly-new]

Watching with interest (as always).

[lancfan]

The nose has a number of faults, the top cowling needs building up with filler and the lower cowling is the wrong shape- this can be corrected in a number of ways and in this build I have used scraps of thick plastic card to correct the lower cowling/oil tank fairing. These have both now been been modified and the fuselage is ready for assembly.


Before the wings can be joined together the plastic card blanking plates need sanding down to clear the wing upper halves.



David.

[lancfan]

The radiator locations have been sanded flush and here the wing halves have been joined up.


The wing is now attached to the fuselage and has been left aside to dry.



David.

[PaulBradley]

Nice work, David.

[lancfan]

Cheers Paul.

David.

[Molly-new]

Looking good David, will you have to rescribe the bottom of the wing after all that sanding?

[lancfan]

Yes I will Chip- now that the wing is in place it can be aligned to the fuselage detail.


David.