southerndoug
Airman
OK so I know the Chippy isn't a WW2 aircraft, but it's often been referred to as "the poor man's Spitfire", so here it is. I've painted this one in civil registration for an aircraft in Malaysia in the early 1970s that my dad used to fly, and have been racing to complete it before Christmas as a present for him (he's 92 years old).
My dad and Mr T Rix broke the Malaysian single engine altitude record in this aircraft on the 18 June 1972, reaching a height of 15,200 feet. The Chippy was owned by the Royal Selangor Flying Club's CFI, Mr S "Ted" Baillie-Reynolds, who my 10 year old self remembers as a real larger than life character, more Biggles than Biggles.
I used Experts-Choice decal film sheet to ink-jet print the 9M-ANA registration, with less success than I'd hoped for. It was probably operator error, and I may not have selected the appropriate paper medium for the print. Instead of a solid grey, the underlying yellow shows through quite a lot. Ideally I would have created stencils and painted the reg the same silver-grey as elsewhere, but I was both in a hurry as well as being a bit technically challenged with the old Cameo Silhouette that we had lying around, and never quite got my act together on that one…
The kit itself I had long been anticipating, and was sort-of happy with it. The main annoyance for me was the multi-pieced canopy, which was fiddly and came out less than perfectly. I can see why Airfix had to make it like that to replicate the slightly "blown" rear panels at the back, but it's a complete bastard to align, even with the funky little jig they provide. More competent modelers will no doubt do better than I did. The other less than satisfactory bit of the kit is the trailing edges of the wings: way too thick. I tried to slim them down, but at the expense of some wing detail.
Pics of the finished model, and some real-life ones from the 1970's. Hope my old man likes it! Cheers…
My dad and Mr T Rix broke the Malaysian single engine altitude record in this aircraft on the 18 June 1972, reaching a height of 15,200 feet. The Chippy was owned by the Royal Selangor Flying Club's CFI, Mr S "Ted" Baillie-Reynolds, who my 10 year old self remembers as a real larger than life character, more Biggles than Biggles.
I used Experts-Choice decal film sheet to ink-jet print the 9M-ANA registration, with less success than I'd hoped for. It was probably operator error, and I may not have selected the appropriate paper medium for the print. Instead of a solid grey, the underlying yellow shows through quite a lot. Ideally I would have created stencils and painted the reg the same silver-grey as elsewhere, but I was both in a hurry as well as being a bit technically challenged with the old Cameo Silhouette that we had lying around, and never quite got my act together on that one…
The kit itself I had long been anticipating, and was sort-of happy with it. The main annoyance for me was the multi-pieced canopy, which was fiddly and came out less than perfectly. I can see why Airfix had to make it like that to replicate the slightly "blown" rear panels at the back, but it's a complete bastard to align, even with the funky little jig they provide. More competent modelers will no doubt do better than I did. The other less than satisfactory bit of the kit is the trailing edges of the wings: way too thick. I tried to slim them down, but at the expense of some wing detail.
Pics of the finished model, and some real-life ones from the 1970's. Hope my old man likes it! Cheers…
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