ICM Spitfire beer delivery

[yak face]

Heres one Ive had in the stash a while and finally plucked up the courage ( beer , geddit ? Ok I’ll get me coat ) to start it. Its the 1/48 Spitfire mk IX from ICM with the addition of some wooden beer barrels for this boxing .Incredibly several Spitfires and later Typhoons were adapted to carry beer to the troops in France just after D Day. Look it up ,its a brilliant story of ingenuity , it caught my attention - spitfire , beer , not surprising really !- so I had to have it. Its a nice looking kit BUT by all accounts can be a pig to get together. Looking at the complete Merlin engine and very fragile, delicate nature of the nose area once the panels have been cut off , I,m going to build it without the engine if I can. It still looks like it will be tricky as the fuselage halves are a little warped and dont feature any locating pegs . That said the cockpit looks very nicely done , just some belts to add so thats where im going to start ( note ,instructions stages 1- 25 skipped straight over ! ) .
Ive a feeling this is going to put up a fight but deep breath , here we go.

[HAWKERHUNTER]

Very interesting model Tony. Love the idea of beer being sent over to the chaps via a Spifire.

[Geoffers]

Nice one Tony 👍

I built an ICM Spitfire a few years ago and left the engine out. It was tricky as I recall but definitely doable.

Geoff.

[PaulTRose]

Theres a famous pic of this somewhere

[Jim R]

Very unusual model. Looking forward to it. I had never heard of beer being delivered by Spitfire. A great story, just Googled it.

[papa 695]

Nice one Tony, I’ve just pulled up my seat, I hope there’s some beer left though.

[yak face]

After priming yesterday , I got some colour on . The instrument panel is beautifully tooled but needs careful painting to bring out the best of it . The rest of the cockpit is nicely done, just needing the etched belts which I had in the spares box .These were only plain brass so needed painting.

[papa 695]

A cracking start Tony.

[yak face]

Got the belts fitted now and assembled the various parts of the cockpit. This has now been glued to the port side fuselage , the cables for the inertia reel of the sutton harness being added with fuse wire . As I mentioned earlier , the fuselage halves are a bit warped . Combined with the lack of locating pins and the fact that forward of the firewall theres nothing that joins together , its going to have to be glued a bit at a time . The first stage of this is the fuselage top in front of the windscreen .

[HAWKERHUNTER]

Nice work on the office Tony.

[flyjoe180]

Lovely cockpit work Tony

[Nicko]

Interior looking really nice Tony. Shame about the warping. Am I right in thinking this is one of ICM's earlier offerings?

Nick

[yak face]

Interior looking really nice Tony. Shame about the warping. Am I right in thinking this is one of ICM's earlier offerings?

Nick

Cheers nick, yes youre right its an early tooling ( 2001 i believe ) , its got quite a bit of flash and i’m having to fettle a lot of areas to get a good fit , the kits reputation for being a bugger to build is not exaggerated !

[scottie3158]

Tony,
Looking very tasty.

[yak face]

Dry fitted the wing bottom and found a couple of problems. First the bottom edge of the firewall was too low , stopping the wing from closing up , so about 2mm was sanded off . Next the rear of the moulding for the signal lamp under the wing was coming into contact with an ejector pin on the underside of the cockpit floor, do these were both sanded back so they werent touching. After this the gap closed up but a dry fit showed the wing to be perfectly flat , whereas the spitfire ( up till the mk22/24 ) famously had a pronounced dihedral . To sort this I glued the front edge and rear fillet but left the wing joints unglued and left it to set overnight. Today I applied liquid cement to the wing joints and taped them up tight to set at the correct angle .