RW PR Spitfire, or nearly....Ready for take-off!

[PR19_Kit]

As it's the 90 th anniversary of the Spitfire's first flight this year, I thought I'd build one that I've been thinking of for some time, but a RW aircraft for a change. (I can't actually remember the last time I built a RW aircraft........)

I recently bought both of the IBG 1/72 PR Spitfire kits, the latest being the PR1C.



It's a BIG box for a 1/72 Spitfire, easily large enough for a Beaufighter etc. but it's STUFFED with sprues and numerous optional parts. There are no less than SEVEN different cockpit canopies, SIX props, three fuselage sides even (no, I've no idea why....)



With two of the kits I reckon you could build, three aircraft. 

As my Dad flew PR1Cs at one time I thought I'd make one he could have flown, but I've no idea of any serials of 'his' aircraft, but he did mention 'R7011' a few times, so that one it will be, and it'll be in a generic scheme as I can't find a single pic of R7011 anywhere. It'll be as he flew it from St. Eval. the airfield way down in west Cornwall, just a bit north of St. Mawgan of more modern times. St. Eval is still there, with all of its three runways crossing on one spot, but now it's just a communications site, stuffed with aerials and Portakabins.

As with many such kits you start with the cockpit, and mine came with an optional 3D printed cockpit interior, which looks like this out of the box.



No, I can't figure out which bist are meant to be there and which aren't either! 

These 3D printed things are very confusing I find, and I had no idea which bits to trim off and which to leave, but after a while I managed to figure it out. The kit also includes two different interiors, for different aircraft, one with a metal ,seat and one with a plastic one (Bakelite in the RW IIRC) so I started off building a later one of those, the plastic seat, to compare with the resin one.



Obviously the nearer one is the styrene/PE version and the further one is the 3D resin one. The styrene was a real fiddle to get together, there's six parts in that pic, and as usual the Czechs didn't get the hole clearances right. The seat supports needed some filing before the location arms would fit through the holes in the PE armour plate. (Don't they ever test build them???)

That's only the seat I've done so far, and there's lots more, mostly VERY small parts to add yet, and I may yet go with the 3D resin one for the actual build. I really needed my new Optivisor to make that seat up, and I'm sure it'll come in handy later on too.

That's as far as it's got now, but I'll bash on slowly while doing more of my current Whiff builds as well.

[DeeBob]

It's hard to beat a PR spit. The whiffing disease is a strong one, because i read Seven canopies, Six props and three fuselages and thought "I need to get me one of those!"

[PR19_Kit]

This is THE most complicated kit I think I've ever built! For a 1/72 scale Spitfire it's LUDICROUSLY complex, having far too many parts for sense, but of course it does mean it's incredibly detailed.

It's like no other 1/72 Spitfire kit I, or anyone else, has ever built, in that you build the cockpit and all interior parts first, inside a shell, and insert that fully built shell into the fuselage outer shell from underneath! 

I'm ploughing through doing the cockpit, and have got so far now....



As you can see I decided to go with the styrene cockpit, and I'll save the resin one for another model, and so far there are 22 parts in that pic above! But some of them are just STUPIDLY small, and they would have been a lot better moulded onto the item to which they have to be glued. The throttle lever, only about 2.5 mm long, is a separate part that's glued to the inner side of the shell, but it would have saved tooling, time and money to mould it as part of the shell.

The red arrow in the pic points to the gap between two fuselage bulkheads which have a short strut glued between them at the top. It's about 0.5 mm x 0.25 mm in section and maybe 5 mm long, and it's almost impossible to glue into place as you can't hold it. The tweezers which you end up using get the glue on their tips and then you can't let go of the damn thing!   

So far I've tried three times to get it in position, and failed every time. Considering that it'll be totally invisible when the model's finished I may not bother with it.............

[Charlie_c67]

Do you think they planned it to be 1/32 and someone had a spot of number blindness?

[PR19_Kit]

Do you think they planned it to be 1/32 and someone had a spot of number blindness?

Could be, maybe it's a pantographed down Kotare kit?

[NARSES2]

Very interested in seeing how this goes Kit. I've one of the PR kits and one of the early Mk I's in the stash. When I come round to starting them I've already decided to omit some of the tiny parts so as to try and preserve my sanity. (Any dorogatory comments re that last phrase will result in a "booking"  )

[PR19_Kit]

You'll have most of the PR parts in the Mk 1 kit Chris, it looks like they only use specialised bits on separate sprues, all the rest are common.

I reckon they'll be doing a PRXI too, from some of the extra the bits I've got in the PR1C, and that means a Mk IX for sure too.

[steelpillow]

Three planes from two eh? You can never have enough Spitfires!

But that printed cockpit, OOB it looks like something from an Alien series film set. If you put a pilot in, you'll have to have a monster leaping out of his tummy. 

[PR19_Kit]

But that printed cockpit, OOB it looks like something from an Alien series film set. If you put a pilot in, you'll have to have a monster leaping out of his tummy. 

My thoughts when I first got the 3D cockpit out of its cage were similar. I could NOT figure what the devil it was. 

[PR19_Kit]

Well, I've finished 'building' the cockpit without losing my marbles totally, and I've even Whiffed it a bit, just because I could. 



There are no less than FORTY parts in that pic, amazingly, and the extra one, the Whiffy bit, is the oblique camera that's sitting in the very last bay at the right hand end. PR1Cs didn't carry them to start with, and didn't have the oblique camera window on the port side of the fuselage either, but they were updated later, along with a lot of other upgrades to the fuel tankage, other camera positions etc.

As the kit comes with all those bits anyway I thought I'd add a few here and there, and I haven't decided on the final camera fit under the wings as yet. There's plenty of time.

What I have to do now is paint the cockpit bathtub, which won't be easy. IBG give you all the colour details, but it's getting at the different areas that's the problem. Not only that, they give you LOADS of tiny decals which are meant to splattered all over the interior of the cockpit, many of them only 0.5 mm x 1.0 mm. FAR too small to be practical, and who could see them anyway, even with the canopy open, which mine will be? I may put a few in there, but not many.

[Robomog]

Nice looking kit,  it's worth buying for all the extra parts !!

Not surprised your modelling it with an open canopy, got to see all the work on the internal detail !!!

Mog
>^-.-^<

[Gondor]

if I ever buy one of their Spitfires, I am definitely going to paint the parts as I go along through the build stages, as it looks like the only way to get at some parts.

[PR19_Kit]

Nice looking kit,  it's worth buying for all the extra parts !!

As a kit, it's truly magnificent, just such a pain to put together. On the extra parts front, it comes with FIVE props as well! 

if I ever buy one of their Spitfires, I am definitely going to paint the parts as I go along through the build stages, as it looks like the only way to get at some parts.

I think you're right Alastair, but then you have to scrape some of the paint back off again to glue the bits together. Six of one and half a dozen of the other.

I'll be struggling through with the single bristle brush later on.

[steelpillow]

IBG give you all the colour details, but it's getting at the different areas that's the problem. Not only that, they give you LOADS of tiny decals which are meant to splattered all over the interior of the cockpit, many of them only 0.5 mm x 1.0 mm. FAR too small to be practical, and who could see them anyway, even with the canopy open, which mine will be? I may put a few in there, but not many.

There are people who detail their models using fly-tyers' lenses, clamps and tweezers. They have precision glue droppers that defy the laws of physics. They also have far steadier hands, far better eyesight, and far greater patience than us mere mortals. Oh, yes, and they know exactly which bits to finish perfectly before applying that perfect spot of glue and setting in the perfect position with a single delicate nudge.

[PR19_Kit]

And they must have staff to do all the mundane stuff like cooking and cleaning etc. so as not to be distracted from their main purpose in life, to MODEL, eh?