Ok, so we are off! I have been making steady progress (for me) on this, but real world disruptions have intruded somewhat. Anyway, this is a very nice kit from Airfix and has gone together quite well. Most of the parts and time so far has gone into the cockpits. They are quite well detailed, however much of that detail disappears once the fuselage half's go together
Cockpit parts all painted up
And assembled
I used the kit instrument panel decals cut apart and applied separately to the instrument panels and then a drop of UV resin for the glass. They came out quite acceptable in my opinion. The instructions call for the seats to be painted with interior green instead of the rust brown color usually called for. I opted for a compromise and painted the seats interior green and added some light chipping with a red / brown color to simulate the color of the underlaying material.
I also added some wires to the back of the rear instrument panel as photos indicated these will be visible through the small fixed portion of canopy behind the sliding hood of the front cockpit. So, if anyone looks, there that are!
They only other aftermarket accessory added aside from the Quinta seat belts was new hollowed out exhaust stubs. In his build video, Jamie Haggo pointed out the the Eduard Spitfire Mk.IX exhausts made for the Eduard kit were a nearly perfect drop in fit to the Airfix kit, so these were duly ordered and arrived on the Friday morning just passed.
It took only a few minutes to remove the mounting area for the Airfix exhausts and drop in the new Eduard pieces.
The modified fuselage is on the left, and the stock, unmodified fuselage is on the right.
Once that was done, it was just a matter of following the instructions until a Spitfire appeared!
The seam cleanup is actually quite minimal and mostly done, I need to restore some surface detail in a few areas but otherwise things are looking good. The canopy sections have been masked today as well, and hopefully sometime this week I can get those painted and installed. I would like to get to the painting next weekend, however there is some stuff already planned so might not be able to happen until the following weekend. All in all though this has been a nice build so far,
Thank you for following along.