Early war camouflage…
Both aircraft were painted in the early war B pattern scheme which is a nice change to the more familiar A pattern, it also had a sky blue underside. Once the light grey primer had been applied a pre-shade along panel lines and areas where there would have been more wear and tear was added using black MRP-005. The underside then had thin layers of RAF Sky MRP-118 applied, the beauty of this paint system is that it goes on so finely that the layers are almost translucent, as a result the modeller has the opportunity to build up layers and effectively add another dimension of weathering on the initial use of the base colour. Once dry the lower fuselages were masked and the first camouflage colour was applied, in this case the lightest colour being dark brown MRP-161.
The next stage was to outline the camouflage pattern using white-tac in thin ‘sausages’ and mask over the dark brown areas. RAF Dark Green MRP-110 was then applied. After removing the masking further weathering was done by adding white MRP-004 to the base camouflage, allowing thin layers of post shading to be applied to panelling and areas of high wear. The Dark Brown (Dark Earth) was further lightened and was used for oil staining from the engine along the underside of the aircraft.
The canopies for both aircraft were also painted in the respective colours, the Hurricane was masked using Pmask’s masking system as it is a complex canopy. Tamiya provide a mask for the Spitfire, which is good apart from the fact you have to ‘cut’ the masks out, which could lead to some inaccuracy in the size and fit, I certainly had that issue with the smaller masking elements which had to be supplemented with further masking tape.
All painted sub-assemblies were now given a coat of gloss varnish MRP-279.
Gallery Grid
The Many and the Few.
All 10 of the Airfix air and ground crew figures were assembled, I was impressed with the level of detail and variety of poses offered. The only omission to this process were the thick plastic bases for each individual figure. I have successfully used clear plastic sheet bases for figures in the past and it worked well so I planned to use the same solution for this build as well.
I am not the greatest figure painter, I aim for a look rather than detailed accuracy: this is achieved through building layers of light and dark colours, followed by a dark grey wash. In this case the following base colours were used:-Lifecolour Flesh paint set CS13, Vallejo RAF blue 71.004, yellow 71.002, sandy brown 71.034, and black 71.057
601 Sqn & 602 Sqn Thoroughbreds…
The markings for LO-G and UF-H are not supplied with either kit. P/O Osgood’s aircraft markings can be obtained through Barracuda studios who do a lovely Battle of Britain set. P/O Fiske’s is not available so the codes and letters have been sourced using Xtradecals light grey number and black lettering decal sheets. These were applied in the standard format along with the lovely stencils supplied in the Tamiya kit and for the Airfix kit a set of Hurricane stencils was used from Techmod stencil decal set. There were no major issues with any of the decals, although it is important to remove as much excess film on the xtradecal letters and numbers as possible. All were set using a drop of micro sol and were sealed with thin coat of gloss varnish.
Gallery Grid
Howard Kilburn says
Just fantastic !!! and great model builds
regards Howard