Spitfire Mk II

A new mould Spitfire that almost anyone can afford. That's the good news. The bad news is it will need some fixes to be right. Starting with the cockpit, the armor plate is missing behind the seat and the seat padding is incorrect. These were corrected by making the armor from plastic card and the padding was sanded off of the seatback and replaced with a correctly shaped pad made from Milliput epoxy putty. Next up are the ailerons which should be fabric covered but the kit ones represent metal covered units used on later aircraft. I corrected this by by gluing thin plastic strips over the rivet lines, painting thick primer between them and sanded with a 800 grit sanding pad. Once painted it gave a good imitation of fabric covering. The oil cooler is a Mk.5 unit and is too wide so I split it down the middle and sanded the halves until they matched the drawing I used for reference. The spinner profile looks a little off but I can live with it for now. The kit decals are thin and settled in with just a touch of decal set. This is a vast improvement over the old Sixties kit or the cobbled together Hasegawa Mk.II from about 30 years ago. Hopefully Revell will make a re-issue with parts to backdate it to a Battle of Britain Mk.I