well this comes about from having an old broken aircraft kit , that was a present off a sweet ex girlfriend , the sort of thing i didn't want to throw away ( awwwww bless !! ) it was originaly made in 71 ( eagle squadron )colours , although a difrent one to the intended machine !!

have done some rudimentary work to the airframe ie bent around with boiling water ( it was never going to be square again anyway )

scribing panel lines ,opening canopy up and denting the prop spinner

the aircraft is spitfire vb no AA855 code XR*C of 71 eagle squadron

it is going to be portrayed force landed with german troops inspecting it

cool so far. I love the mixing of AC and ground scenes. Did you bend the fuselage at all, it looks like it has a big hump/bend in it.

fuselage and wings are buckled to show a hard landing the stbd wing seems to be ripped at the wing root so i may model that too

i have bent the port wing down as that was some of the damage to the previously built aircraft

even though it isn't in the photo !!

Really looking forward to seeing the weathering that you'll do to this. Some great scope there for some cool smoke and burn stains

Cutting out subtle panels of damaged areas on the belly and the wings and blending in small buckelled panels of thin tin foil would maybe help to depict the roughed up areas of the spit. Replacing the prop nose fairing with a crumpled piece of tin foil could give more of the texture seen in the pic.

Like the dio idea.

Nige

some additional work done !! airfix kits are not known for correct detail
( but they are reasonably priced and good fun on rainy days !! )

but with a little old fashioned modellers effort they can be improved , this model was built 12 yrs ago ( when i was less fussy !! )

so the first thing to go was the awful airfix raised panel lines ( sanded off ) then new ones scribed on from a 1/48 spitfire vb plan

the cannons have been scratch built from cocktail sticks and plasto filler , and the ammo panels chain drilled then cut out ( as in the photo )

the starboard wing has been cut and softened with boiling water to pull back a little for accident damage ( i will be trying tin foil for a first !! )

all repairs now done and some of the alterations . and basic painting underway

looked up the fate of this aircraft on the internet !! , ironicly it was struck by debris from a train leading to a forced landing

so presumably it was doing some railway straffing on enemyy trains at the time

must have been close in for a debris strike !!

painting and markings now done , work to the model now includes , sanding down raised and rescribing recessed all panel lines , opening up machine gun doors and making representations of the guns , new prop blades to replace missing items bent for crash damage , canopy cut and re mounted to the open position , scratchbuilt cannons to replace missing items , ditto the ariel , fuselage buckled for accident damage , wing cut and tin foiled for accident damage , re painted and marked to represent a genuine crashed machine and weathered

now for the base and figures !!

have now found the tamiya 1/48 troops i required only model zone stock near me ( a 25 mile round trip )

part way through painting although during assembly of the figures i discovered a new method ( to me anyway ) don't know if others use the technique

but i removed each figure so that the sprue that joins at the sole of the boots remained intact as a handling handle during painting ( as seen in the photo's ) makes life easier with no added materials used

won the pilot figure i wanted on ebay !! modelling the captured pilot with the germans ,no solid proof this was the case , although as it was obviously in german held land it is a probable outcome

This Spit looks spot on, it has the heavily damaged look. I look forward to see the figures.

recieved the pilot figures off ebay today , so now have all required to finnish inc a photoframe base

adapted a figure to look difrent to the norm by building two of the figures into one to give something out of the ordinary by blindly following instructions

the two suggested figures are pictured i now have the components to make another difrent spit dio !!

the spit is now firmly down !!

dio is now complete !!





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