[k5083]

Having finished my last project I asked my son (8) what I should do next. "A Spitfire," he said, "and can I help?" So we set out to do a Spit together.

I had plenty of Spits on my hard drive but opted, as usual, for a new purchase, the Ladndad Mk.XIV. I'm guessing this is not an ecardmodels bestseller partly because of the product shot, which looks a bit ... weird. Was it a hastily built model or a bad kit? Only one way to find out, and anyway the Griffon Spits have not received their fair share of attention from other card model designers.

Day 0 (pic 1): The model comes on 2 sheets and looks nice enough. First task was for dad to do a little repainting. Ladndad's color scheme looked a little garish to me, so I toned down the camo colors and insignia red, borrowing the palette from a Marek Mk.IX. While I was at it I altered the codes to an RCAF 414 Sqn machine.

Day 1: Lad went to work building the radiators and gluing the bulkheads to thick card while dad built one of the wings. The wing airfoil as designed was too thick for my taste, so rather than align the trailing edges, I let the upper trailing edge hang 1.5mm past the lower and trimmed to fit. We'll see if this causes fit problems later. The boxed-in wheel wells are a nice touch.

Day 2 (pic 2): Lad got distracted by video games, but Dad built the first couple of fuselage tubes. Fuselage parts fit okay so far except I found bulkhead D a bit undersized.

Day 3: Both of us got distracted by video games.

More to come.