ICM 1/48 - ICM Spitfire Mk.VIII

[jjp_nl]

After getting some help from T Bolt and Crimea River with obtaining the instructions for the ICM Spitfire Mk.VIII kit I felt like having a crack at it right away. I've had the ICM MK.IX (which also holds parts need for the MK.VIII) kit sitting in the stash for quite some time. Even though being aware of the fact that it prolly makes into the most accurate Mk.IX in this scale, the rather complicated construction (in certain areas that is) and somewhat ragged looking molding kinda made me put it back in the stash a few times. But...no more of that, and sofar I'm quite glad I didn't put it back in the stash as it comes together surprisingly well.

Construction started with the interior. Not half bad as far as details go. From looking at his build for the Commonwealth GB it seems Terry (Airframes) took it a step further and added some extra scratch-build details here and there, but for this build I didn't quite feel like going down that road, fairly little can be seen of it anyway, so spicing up an interior will be saved for another time. A few seatbelts will be added, but that's about it as far as extra interior detailing goes.

Anyway...I blasted a coat of flat black over the parts first and then shot a RAF interior-green like color at an angle so as to create some shadow effects.

Rest of the interior received basic paint coats. Details are picked out by means of some drybrushing (not visible in this picture)

Because the interior turns into a quite dark hole once the fuselage is closed up I tend to overdo it a tad on the shadow/grimy effect by means of some artist-oils. Basically seal the underlying paint with a coat or so of future (see pic 1 for the glossy effect of the future after sprayed on) and then roughly apply some artist oil paints (Van Dyke Brown in this case) and clean it up with a bunch of cottonbuds until I get the desired effect. Let it dry for a bit and then spray a flat coat over it which blends it togeter very nicely. Note that in this pic the oil paint is still wett and no flat coat is sprayed on yet, so the contrast is still VERY stark (gone by now I might add)

On to some other things. Put some fairings over the gun bays. Careful cleaning up of the parts and lining up lead to a pretty decent join all in all. Might need some careful sanding down, but came out alright sofar (especially since I have the incredible gift of mis-aligning things like this no matter how careful I am)

Took care of one of the main defects of this kits. Some bl**dy serious sinkmarks near the ailerons, and some minor ones at various spot on the upper wing.

Same goes to a lesser degree for the lower wing. In particular the area around the gunbays suffers from sink marks. Took care of it as best as I could with Mr.Surfacer and some fine sanding paper. Down the line when the kit is ready for painting I hope to shoot a few light coats of Mr.Surfacer or Alclad Primer over the entire model to take care of minor surface imperfections left (there's a quite a few left all over the model due to the somewhat rough ICM molding quality)

On to joining fuselage halves. The office, the rudder and the horizontal stabilizers have been dry-fitted.

Here comes the interesting part. I read through Airframes build report and noticed he had to work his way through quite a bit of surgery and filling/sanding to get the wings in place with the right dihedral. So I figured it might be useful to check out what I might need to do. So I taped the wings and cowl together to see how this general area might come out. Overall the joins look very nice indeed. No excess filling or sanding required I think.

Dihedral seems quite OK to me as well. Nowhere near the 'Hurricane-like' zero-dihedral mentioned in Airframes thread, oh well...all the better for me And even it it need to be increased a bit, it is taped together fairly loosly in this pic with enough room left to increase the dihedral as needed. Cowl panel might need a little persuasion though 8)

 

[T Bolt]

Looking real good Jelmer! I didn't have any trouble with the dihedral in my build, although I did have to be careful how I glued the nose together. Maybe the quality from kit to kit differs. One thing to keep in mind is that the tail wheel in these kits is the fixed type and the Mk. VIII had the retractable type. Not too difficult to modify it though.

 

[jjp_nl]

Ye, I noticed the tailwheel thing and fiddly nose construction in your and Terry's build report. Dry fitting revealed that the nose section of my kit should come together pretty good though

 

[Crimea_River]

Coming together quickly and nicely Jelmer. I had the dihedral problem on my Spit IX build and also an interference with the cockpit tub that required some bits to be cut off.

 

[Airframes]

Good going so far Jelmer. A bit of pre-warning for when you get to the stage - the windscreen upper horizontal frame is far to thick. Shave or sand it off, the polish and mask for painting.

 

[Nxthanos]

A real treat seeing you work on this one Jelmer, i have the exact same kit and am considering building it for the foreign service build (as an Aussie machine) but am still a little chicken to start because it will require some extra work!

 

[Wayne Little]

Lookin' good Jelmer!

 

[jjp_nl]

Thanks guys! I have a SEAC scheme in mind for this one. Either a No152 Sqn kite (with a leaping black panther on the side just above the fuselage roundel) or a No155 Sqn a/c which has some sort of Chindit badge on the nose. Ever since I got to do a simple Airfix Hurricane Mk.II kit in SEAC scheme earlier this year I've been thinking about doing more a/c in DE/DG over MSG with these nice blue roundels and white ID bands. The windscreen indeed looks a bit funny Terry, thanks for the heads up.

Another issue I want to look into is the nose intake. The ICM kit comes with a one part lower cowl piece (see last pic above where I had it taped to the fuselage for conveniece reasons) that can be used to build versions with a smaller intake (which is provided as seperate sub-assembly). The larger intake version is provided as a two piece lower cowl/intake assembly. First or all, it will be a b*tch to put those parts together, fill/sand the join absolutely smooth with an ugly join remaining visible inside the intake anyway. Another thing I noticed is that the intake itself looks a tad skinny compared to scale drawings. Another thing is one half of the two part assembly is shot short and is basically missing a piece of the intake all together.

Terry also mentioned something in his thread about how strange the parts breakdown in this area is, which got me thinking a bit. What if I use the one piece lower cowl part of the ICM kit and fabricate a seperate larger intake of sorts. Going through the spares box (mainly trying to find out if I might had a spare windscreen to deal with the windscreen issue Terry mentioned) I came across an Airfix MK.IX larger intake (I think it comes as spare part with their MK.I kit, 'cause I haven't build the Airfix MK.IX, nor do I have it in the stash) So I took that one out. And sure enough it's a drop fit really. Might need to thin it down slightly 'cause it's quite a bit thicker then the ICM part, but this could be a decent solution.

 

[Wurger]

Taking the model dimensions and a shape into consideration, this is the best Spitfire kit of the scale. Because of a way of assembling it can't be recommended to begginers. There are still cavities at some areas what can be noticed in Jelmer's pictures above. Also a few of small bits needs of more attention. Fortunately ICM changed a kind of a styrene for the kit. The first batch of the kit had parts looked like being bitten by termites.

A nice job so far Jelmer.

 

[T Bolt]

That mouth of that lower intake needed to be rebuilt for my build, but once I did that the lower nose assembly fit pretty good.

 

[jjp_nl]

Minor update of a few major steps in this build.

Going by the dry fitting session I posted earlier all the major parts of the wings nose section would line up and fit very nicely, so time to glue them in place. A few areas that need to some extra attention. Especially where the trailing edges of the wings go into the wing fillets there is some work left to be done (on one side the fillets is shot short slightly and VERY thin) In addition there's a few spots that need some sanding/filling etc. but overall I think this is coming together very good indeed. After all the major surgery is done I hope to be able to do some minor cleaning up of joins etc. and start working on the under wing radiators, wingtips and ailerons. Note the rudder and elevators are still taped/tacked in place.

I went through the spares box again and came across a few leftover bits and pieces of a failed attempt at the Hasegawa (Revell rebox) MK.IX/XVI kit from when I was first getting back into modelling in late 2009. This kit also seems to hold certain parts for the MK.VIII. Among them a retractable tail wheel, so that solves the tailwheel problem. I might also look into using the prop backplate of the Hasegawa kit because the ICM kit part is shot short/way too small in my case whereas the Hasegawa part is a little oversized but can be sanded into shape/size and used with the ICM spinner. Same goes for the wheels. The ICM kit parts are seriously deformed/shot short and the Hasegawa leftovers could provide a nice set of wheels and three or four-spoked hubs.

 

[Airframes]

Sounds good. Try to use the whole of the spare prop if possible, as the ICM parts are somewhat lacking, mainly the blades.

 

[jjp_nl]

Been thinking about doing that as well Terry. Using the Hasegawa prop blades shoud be no problem. At best I need to slightly enlarge the holes in the ICM spinner cap a little bit so the Hasegawa prop fits. I'm still in doubt wether I should use the Hasegawa spinner cap as well or use the ICM cap. The ICM cap seems a tad skinny if I go by scale drawings I have, but the Hasegawa spinner cap appears to be a little too long (although that should be easy to take care of as well)

 

[Crimea_River]

Good info Jelmer. Surprised to hear about all your short shots. Didn't have that on mine.

Another solution to the intake issue is that you could hide half of it in a slipper tank. I think the kit provides the extra large ferrying tank but it's possible to scatch build one. See pic below from my Ian Kelty Spit IX build and send me a PM if you're interested in the plans.

 

[jjp_nl]

Sofar the short shot/deformed parts are mostly the smaller bits and pieces which (after discovering the remnants of my Hasegawa MK.IX kit) can fairly easy be replaced. The major parts (fuselage/wings/rudder/stabilizer etc.) are OK (thank God)

The idea of using a slipper tank is rather appealing I must say...good thinking . The ICM kit indeed does provide a (very) large slipper tank and come to think of if, my recently aquired Academy Spitfire XIVe kit seems to hold a smaller version of it. Was the MK.VIII able to carry these slipper tanks, and if so, could they carry all sizes? I'll drop you a line on the plans.

 

[Airframes]

Standard location points on all MkVIIIs and late MkIXs for the tanks - although SEAC Spits used them only on long-range escort for re-supply drops. The period/Sqn/Role will determine whether or not a tank would be fitted.

 

[Crimea_River]

Jelmer, the drop tank plans have been sent, along with some other files for reference.

Here's a rather nifty scheme I'll be doing for my Mk VIII. Masks for this arrived today from Ad Astra Masks

EDIT: Crediting this profile to, I think, Spitfire - The Canadians by Robert Bracken.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Sweet!

 

[jjp_nl]

Thanks for the plans Andy! I'm considering a SEAC spit from the same unit. DG-C which is about the same without the yellow nose section. It does have the Chindit-like badge (with a black dragon rather then red) on the nose though.

Standard location points on all MkVIIIs and late MkIXs for the tanks - although SEAC Spits used them only on long-range escort for re-supply drops. The period/Sqn/Role will determine whether or not a tank would be fitted.

Thanks for the information on that Terry! Since the MK.VIII had these location points, would the MK.VIII be able to carry all the different types/sizes of slipper tanks? The one that comes with the ICM kit is HUGE for example. While I'm very seriously considering using a slipper tank if I can't work out a suitable solution for the intake defect, the size of the ICM slipper tanks would (imho) slightly ruin the overall shape/profile of the a/c so a smaller one (in terms of size similar to the one that comes with the Academy Spitfire XIVe kit) It seems I would have to slightly modify the cut away where the intake 'comes out' of the slipper tank maybe due to the different shapes of the intakes of Merlin engined Spits and Griffon engined Spits (rounded vs. more squared)

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Nice Jelmer