Tamiya's New Spitfire Mk I N3200 of 19 Squadron

[Crimea_River]

I made a bit of an impulse buy two days ago. I went out to the LHS to buy some paint and ended up leaving the store with the paint and a new kit, the beautiful new-tooled Tamiya Spitfire Mk I.

A year ago, I may have tut-tutted the fact that yet another new-tooled Spitfire was hitting the market and I do still feel that way. However, there's no mistaking the fact that this kit raised the bar for 1/48 models of this mark and, as you will see, it's a worth-while replacement of the 1993 release which even today is a decent kit. Comparisons have been made with the new-tooled Airfix Mk I and I won't do that here, since I don't have that kit nor do I intend to get one. However, I am building the new Airfix Mk XIV now and so thought it would be interesting to build this Tamiya kit in parallel.

The kit decals allow one to model one of 3 different early Spitfires and I've chosen to do mine as s/n N3200, the famous Spitfire that was dug out of a beach in France and is now flying in the UK. I have no RAF models in my collection with the black and white undersides so I want to take this opportunity to do one. I'll post some sprue shots in the next frame shortly.

 

[Crimea_River]

Damn, I had written 80% of this post and accidentally closed the window and lost everything. Seems that when you use the Edit function, there is no autosave feature that saves a draft of the post as happens with replies. So, here we go again.......

There are just 4 sprues with this kit including the clear parts. Below is sprue B which contains mostly the fuselage. You can see right away that there are large sections left out of the fuselage sides indicating a potential future Mk V release. There are 4 inserts provided, 2 each side for either an open or closed canopy.

Surface detail is the usual high Tamiya standard and there is absolutely NO flash. Note the tiny sprue gate located at a point where it's least likely to mar the visible surface, a feature that Geo will appreciate. Note also the absence of a provision for the small bulge for the Coffman started featured on Mk IIs. This, along with a second prop option discussed later could have been an easy addition to allow the kit to include Mk II options.

This area of sprue B is interesting in that it shows both undercarriage legs to be moulded together as a single unit. There will be no fussing with angles to worry about symmetry here.

These are the fuselage inserts for the closed canopy option. Oddly, the crash bar is moulded into the door whereas, as you will see later, the kit provides two doors for the open position, one with the bar and one without. In my opinion, Tamiya should have moulded a separate crash bar that could be glued on as an option. Separate ones look more convincing anyway.

The clear parts are the usual high quality we've come to expect. The armoured windscreens are separate and should be entertaining to fasten to the forward canopy without hindering transparency.

This is sprue G (4 sprues, A, B, E, and G...go figure) which contains mostly the main wings.

The underside of the wing shows once again the clean details. The inspection hatches either side of the center line are accurately depicted, with only one on the port side and four on the starboard.

The exhausts are beautiful and feature realistic weld seams down the center. The sprue gates attach to points that will be hidden once the separate fish tails are glued in place. The only thing preventing full marks here is that the exhaust will need to be drilled out.

As mentioned earlier, only one prop and spinner option is provided. Though the correct Mk I de Havilland units are included, a Rotol option would have been nice.

The insides of the gear wells feature the recesses for the tires and these coincide with the bulges on the upper surfaces. The trailing edge of the wing is moulded into the upper halves which allows a sharp edge to be displayed. However, this comes at the price of having to deal with a seam in the flap, though I don't expect this to be much of an issue given Tamiya's typically outstanding fit.

Continued....

 

[Crimea_River]

The ailerons are moulded separately, though they don't appear to have the ability to be easily posed deflected up or down. The surface detail features delicate rib stitching and fabric pinking details.

This is sprue A with the cockpit and remaining miscellaneous bits.

The seat comes in three main parts and looks to be a thing of beauty. The flare rack is moulded in with the flare cartridge butts showing. The lightening holes on the support members can be drilled out for added realism.

I'm scratching my head over the rudder pedal bars a bit as these are moulded in a tapered rather than in a parallel fashion. I've always thought these were parallel. Framing for the area behind the seat is provided as is typical of almost all other kits and the lightening holes are solid, as always.

The elevators are fixed to the horizontal stab, a pet peeve of mine. They feature the same delicate fabric details as on the ailerons. Note the separate wing tips which, in my view, make a clipped wing Mk V possible.

This is the lower part of the cockpit. At top right you can just make out the 5 spoke wheel hubs. The tires are not flattened, something that I wish kit manufacturers would rectify.

As mentioned earlier, two entry door options are included, one with the crash bar and one without. I think the moulded crash bar looks lousy and will go with the bare door.

The Mk I Spitfire saw the transition from the early hand pumped undercarriage retraction system to the engine driven type featured on all later versions. Both types are provided here as can be seen at lower right below. Though I'll be using the hand pump, it's nice to see that Tamiya moulded the gear selector with the lever in the gear DOWN position this time since 99% of all models seem to be built this way. However, all of the hydraulic tubes that emanate from the selector are missing.

Here's the decal sheet which looks to be very nicely printed. Note that the roundels for the wing undersides include a cutout for the gun heating air exits. This is VERY thoughtful as I've always had trouble getting my decals to conform to these large bulges. Even with copious amounts of Solvaset, I have usually ended up cutting a slit in the decals. A welcome omission is those stupid decal seatbelts that Tamiya used to provide because......

......they are included on a PE fret! The fret also includes some rather nice looking grilles for the radiators, a compass support, rudder pedal foot straps, a target ring gun sight, and some other stuff. I do worry about the apparent stiffness of these parts though. It may make draping the seatbelts a bit of a challenge

Continued....

 

[Crimea_River]

Another welcome addition is a set of canopy masks and an unusual card of stickers. A and B are to be stuck onto each side of the fuel tank panel for the prewar option. D is to be stuck on the clear view panel on the sliding canopy. I haven't figured out where C goes yet.

Incidentally, we are stuck with a fuel tank armour plate that is moulded into the kit fuselage halves. It appears that the armour was added in early 1940 so it may be that the inclusion of a prewar Spitfire option is a bit dubious with this armour plating. No non-armoured option is possible and the purists may find themselves cursing that they have to sand down this raised detail if they are building the prewar Spit.

There's a nice colour legend included that shows all three marking options. DW-K is shown in 1/48 scale and the other two are smaller. Colour call outs are, of course, for Tamiya paints. I'll need to check what they have recommended this time around but past colours and mixes have been questionable in terms of accuracy of colour. I'll continue to use my own proven blends.

Now, a word of warning: if you are someone who tends to give the instructions a cursory look and who thinks they've done this all before and therefore doesn't need to follow them carefully, then BEWARE! You are at once obliged to chose your subject as there are bits to be removed, holes to be opened, and part location options to be sorted at the very first stage. I consider myself an experienced modeller and I've already screwed up twice. I'll get to that in the next post. So, decide on your option, read the instructions through, and when you are done, READ THEM AGAIN until you understand! (I still don't)

Below is an example of what I'm talking about, and this is just step 1. Look at all the cuts, drills and the two insert options. At the bottom left, it calls out 2 holes to be drilled in the cowl, one 0.6mm in diameter and one at 0.8. I've gone through the instructions a couple of times and can't figure out why these are there so until I understand this better, I will leave them closed and will need to revisit this step before closing the fuselage.

Here's step 2 showing, once again, the need to track which option you are building and to watch carefully. One issue I have here is that what appears to be the IFF remote contactor, part A24, is called out for all of the options, including a prewar Spit. Now, I'm not an expert but I don't think this piece of equipment was around at until toward the end of the BoB and even then was not featured on all aircraft. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

At the bottom of the picture, you can see the top of step 3 that shows a slot to be cut in the fuselage side to accommodate the open door. This is supposed to be done BEFORE you glue in the insert. Take a guess what numpty did....

Step 3 and more of the same. Hope you get the message!

So that's it for what's in the box. Let's step into the build.

 

[Crimea_River]

So last night's escapade resulted in the warning in the above post and I'll go through what I did to give you a flavour.

As stated, I'll be doing the 19 Squadron Spitfire N3200 which is option C for the purpose of the instructions. I also decided to show off Tamiya's nice interior so will pose the canopy and entry door open. Before I cut the fuselage half from the sprue, I thought it worth showing how these are attached. I mentioned this earlier above but check out the tiny gates on the fuselage bottoms. These join at the glue seam and do not encroach on the visible surface so removing these properly results in no marks being present on the exterior. I like this, something that Eduard also does on some kits.

So here we have the first step and the first cock-up. For option C, the 3 pins at left are to be removed - done, no problem. Also, the equipment below that location under the longeron between the two ribs also needs to be cut out - check. For the circled part, you need to open a hole and cut out something else circled at right below. That something else actually turns out to be the piece of sprue that's left behind when you cut the part away. Well, I've never had instructions tell me to remove sprue residue so I though this was something else and ended up opening two holes, one of them being wrong.

Here you see the insert piece with the 3 pins and lower equipment removed. The hole that I opened by mistake has been plugged with a CA-glued chunk of card. Problem is, where I added the fill is where a tab from the other side is supposed to slot in, so I'll need to either cut the slot back in or remove the tab. Fun times.

On the plus side, the insert fit beautifully and the seams on the outside follow the panel lines:

It's important to mention here that you need to be REALLY careful when applying glue and aligning the joints here so that you don't end up squeezing glue or melted plastic out onto the outer skin and ruining the panel line.

The other side came out nice too, except that I didn't cut that slot like I was suppose to. Not sure how it's supposed to look now so I'll need to check how the door attaches.

Enough posting for one day! Thanks for your interest.

 

[pbehn]

Great stuff, Ive actually seen it.

 

[Wurger]

 

[fubar57]

Great review

 

[Tony Hill]

Nice stuff Andy... feel free to ask any questions relating to early Spitfires.

as to pipes off the handpump... two from behind, side by side, bending downwards and heading forwards attached to frame 8 and one from the right side of the unit heading rearward and then up to the fluid tank mounted high on the starboard behind frame 11.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Darryl and I will be picking your brains. I was actually talking about the lack of hydraulic tubing on the kit-supplied later selector unit rather than the hand pump but your info is still useful for my depiction of the hand pump. What are your thoughts on whether N3200 would have had part A24, the IFF remote contactor? I suspect no as N3200 was shot down over Dunkirk on 26 May, 1940.

BTW, please feel free to correct any errors you see me make as I want to depict this model as accurately as possible. I'm going to use the modern restoration cockpit pics as I understand that it was quite meticulously replicated to represent the aircraft's operational condition.

 

[Tony Hill]

Oh... and you need to get rid of that ridiculous "Ground Power" plug cover on the port side below the canopy!!! And make sure there is a door on the port oiltank cover/chin for the inlet.
Very slack research buy Tamiya!

 

[Tony Hill]

No, no Remote Contactor Andy. In the place where that would be you need the Height & Airspeed Computor Holder that I've been building.

A few small errors in P9374 and N3200 but either not visible at 1/48 or easily corrected.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good stuff Darryl. Thanks for the confirmation on the contactor. Yes, looking at photos of both N3200 and P9374, I see the Computor there. Easily replicated and I'll get on that tout suite.

So if I understand you, the ground power socket cover on the port wing fairing is to be filled in and moved to the starboard side near the forward wing root. I take it that's what you mean by the "door on the port oiltank cover/chin".

 

[Tony Hill]

Correct Andy. The Trolley Acc plugs in there rather than the later "ground power" inlet on the port wing root fillet. It is also a plain round port, not shell shaped like the later one.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks again. What a great pic! And now I think I see the holes that I'm supposed to drill out, though the one near the front seems to be called out incorrectly on the instruction sheet. Should probably be the top one.

 

[Tony Hill]

The hole near the spinner base/ exhaust stub is the relief valve hole for the cooling system. this is where steam is released when the coolant reaches above 120C.
The rear hole is the hand starting gear insert. A crank handle is carried fitted to the rear of Frame 11 and that is inserted here to start the engine in an emergency. (difficult, hard work, not practical and soon restricted to hand turning for servicing only).

 

[Crimea_River]

......The rear hole is the hand starting gear insert. A crank handle is carried fitted to the rear of Frame 11 and that is inserted here to start the engine in an emergency. (difficult, hard work, not practical and soon restricted to hand turning for servicing only).

Tell me about it! I've turned the one on our Hurricane many times to check the magneto timing and valve clearances. The Hurricane at least has provision for two people to crank. The crank location is offset and chain driven to the starter gear.

 

[Tony Hill]

Don't envy you!!!!

 

[Crimea_River]

Loved every minute. Not everyone gets to work on a real warbird.

I did a bit more last night mainly to catch up to where my Mk XIV build is and plan to do some more today - what the hell else is there to do these days?!? Pics later.

 

[Airframes]

Great review Andy, and thanks for the warning to ensure the instructions are thoroughly studied - I'll probably be getting a couple of these for my BoB collection.
You're right to omit the crow bar on the cockpit door - this didn't arrive until after the BoB. Also, beneath the hole for the hand crank, there was a rectangular brass plate, engraved with a warning to ensure a rope was attached to the airman and the undercart leg (precaution against falling into the prop !). I have the exact wording and font in a drawing, but in this scale, it wouldn't be visible anyway.
Looks like the kit has been designed to allow a Mk.V and possibly a Mk.II at some stage - the Coffman blister could be just a surface mounted item perhaps. Certainly looks like a nice kit, although I've always been wary of fuselage insert sections, but these seem to have been well designed and engineered.