The Land of Black Gold (Supermarine Spitfire)

There's something about taking another Academy kit out of my stash... so comfy. 

I've never built a Spitfire before, but the general Academy sprues layout stle makes me feel like this is very familiar, regardless. 

Not spending a ton of time on the cockpit interior. With a pilot in place, you won't see much, and besides the little pink leaflets I've got planned will either make or break this project. 

Normally I'd have sealed the paint job before applying a wash, but I just really wanted a bit of texture, nothing more. 

Fuselage glued together, so now it's time to seat the DC motor that will power the propellor. I used a slightly different one that I usually do. Not sure why I have a bit more of a cube-shaped one, but it doesn't really matter. It'll do the job. 

Fit in place. The spinner will sit quite snuggly to the engine cowling, so you won't even be able to see the motor. 

After some more careful consideration, I realized that the Spitfire Mk. XIV, with its long nose, just wasn't going to "look right". The Tintin album reference picture can be interpreted several ways, I think, but it's clearly NOT a Mk.. XIV. So, I had to choose between the Italeri Mk. IX and this Revell Mk. V. In the end, I chose the 3-blade propellor rather than the 4... simple as that. 

The spures are nice and crisp, but they don't have that "welcome home" feeling I associate with the classic Academy kits. Oh, well... let's get cracking and catch up to the rest of this project. 

Yeah. I was right. the Spitfire Mk. V is a better choice for this project. 

Same deal on the cockpit inside. You won't see anything at all, so I'm not wasting my time on the details. I also used a smaller motor. The inset for the exhaust stack on the Revell is deeper and thicker than on the Academy kit, so the bigger motor would just get in the way. 

The fuselage is all buttoned up. Time for a propellor test. It spins! 

I decided that the Academy kit would still have a part to play in this project. Part of the difference between the Mk. V and Mk. IX is the underside air intakes. I decided to carefully remove and reuse the Academy ones and fit them in place on the Mk. V. Not a bad fit, if I do say so myself. 

I won't be using all of the canopy bits - and the canopy will be open - but for painting purposes, let's mount the whole thing for now.  

Herge's depiction of the Spitfire canopy is non-standard. Some theorize that he was using a Hurricane as reference, and I can see that being a distinct possibility. However, I didn't want to just scavenge part of a perfectly fine canopy for this. If I had trying to get the canopy to be closed, that might've been the best option, but with the canopy open, the thickness would have been quite noticeable. So, instead, I decided to use part of the clear plastic blister pack from some pills.  

The Spitfire in the Tintin album is bright yellow, and a real Spitfire in desert operations would be much more sandy in colour. So again, it's up to interpretation. Finding the balance between what you see on the page and what your eye would expect. To compromise, I decided to paint it with a 1:1 ration of Tamiya XF-60 and XF-3. 

The 1:1 ratio was still a bit too heavy on the bright yellow, so I switched to a 3:1 ratio and the colour is much "sandier" now. I like it. However, I screwed up the middle part of the canopy. That frame is WAY too thick. Have to try again. 

Much better. The canopy frame is much more in scale. I also sanded down the backs of the Academy exhaust stacks (I need the 6 instead of the 3 that come with the Revell kit). It was a bit of a tight fit, but with a bit of patience, I was able to massage it into place. 

Once again, the Blue Rider decals proved to be a bit fiddly. I did manage to break one, but luckily I had the option and decided to put it on the "hidden" side. And yes, before you ask, the roundels aren't facing the same direction on purpose. That's the way they are in the album, so that's the way they are on my model. 

Still a bit of fiddling with the propellor to do - I misjudged the depth of the propellor, so I'll need to hollow out the spinner a bit to get it to fit snug to the engine cowling. However, let's start thinking about how to accomplish an in-flight drop of hundreds of pink leaflets. 

I think the "fishing line" is going to be too thick. They look like flags... 

Ok. I got an idea. First, step one... get some pink paper. 

Step two... tun that paper into a small pile of pink confetti - the good square shaped ones... not that run-of-the-mill round stuff. 😉 

Then comes the "hot glue and pull through the pile of confetti" part of the operation. A bit messy and you need to work quickly. I only got 1-2 decent pulls on the hot glue drop before it cooled and wasn't sticky anymore. Part of the trick was to drag the line back and forth through the pile. 

Then, I tried to carefully assemble the mass of glued paper into a bit more of the proper shape. I tried to cut out any bits of paper that were too mashed together. I also tried to cut any stray wisps of glue that weren't actually holding up any paper. Then I got a bit of clear plastic rod to hoist the mass off the ground a bit and lend some support. Finally I spray it VERY carefully (and VERY far away) with a matt finish to try and secure the paper bits as well as I could. Finally, I dabbed some leftover confetti through a bit of white glue and then carefully applied them to the "bare spots". It's not perfect and you can still see the strings, but the hot glue strands were about the thinnest you could expect that would still hold onto and hold up the paper. 

After a few comments from the guys on Scalemates.com, I decided to take another run at the leaflets... this time with "Read Tintin in the Land of Black Gold" printed in Arabic on a 2x3mm square. Despite a near disaster when I managed to snap the main support tube, in the end I think the leaflets look better, so it was worth the extra effort.