Halinski 1:33 Spitfire Mk 1a

[rifleman]

this is a work of art great build

[Mike1158]

A marvelous result from painstaking and talented building. Great airframe, Sir.

[chris190]

A beautiful job, Erik, very envious of your skill and ability, plus I can't see any glue marks or dents - how is that done!!!?? The wing reinforcement is a good idea, I really must try that, thank you!

Best wishes

Chris

[mor54]

Great modelling Erik,it really looks great!! A very nice idea to do an open canopy.

Shalom Mor

[Llaut Mallorquin]

Museum work
Beautiful
Congratulations

[cgutzmer]

WOW! this is amazing. I have tried and failed numerous times on canopies. How do you glue the paper to the plastic so cleanly?

[MacSongLi]

Amazing work on the canopy Erik. It looks great with all of your additional work.


Gary

[Erik Zwaan]

Wow, that's a lot of reactions! Thank you Kevin, Isaac, Tom, thunderbolt13, David, Dan, Yoav, rifleman, Mike, Chris, Mor, Llaut Mallorquin, agutzmer and Gary!

It's in fact not so difficult to glue the frames on the clear parts. Use a skewer or toothpick, acetate glue like UHU and try to glue small bits at a time, not the entire frame in one go. Once part of the frame is in place, wait a minute or two and then remove any excess of glue with a tooth pick. Rub it away gently into a small glue ball and remove from the frames or canopy. Then the next part of the frame and repeat the same process. It's time consuming but "rewarding" and you may wish to practice on pieces of plastic and paper first. And before forgetting to mention it, it pays off if you purchase the pre-molded canopy along with the model. For most aircraft canopies are available.

The main landing gear is pretty straight forward. No fancy details. The core of each strut is a metal pin with thin paper tightly wrapped around it. Then, the assemblies are wrapped with the actual colored strut skins and I was amazed that it all fit without any tricks.

The wheels are basically cardboard circles glued together and sanded. I simply used my all-purpose drilling machine. Before painting the tires (Tamiya Rubber Black) I used a flat brush with slightly diluted white paper glue to seal off the surface.
To have a better fit of the wheels to the strut axles, I glued small pieces of a brass tube inside each hub. As the inside diameter is 1mm and the metal core of the struts 0.8mm I wrapped a tiny piece of thin paper (thickness 0.1mm - see the red arrow in one of the pictures) around the axles and then the wheels could be easily slid over the axles.

Finally, I used enlarged copies of the instruction drawings to help proper aligning of the landing gear, let it dry overnight and only then allowed the model to stand on its own legs. Always an exciting moment during the build of any aircraft!

Almost there, still to do the propeller, flaps, antenna and remaining details .

Erik

[Erik Zwaan]

Next are the propeller and flaps - the model's in fact almost finished now.

The propeller blades consist of a metal core with paper tightly wrapped around it. To get a better grip of the propeller blade shaft to the inside core I extended the collar at the lower end by a few millimeters. The pin sticks inside the hub and the remaining visible white collar inserts into a collar glued onto the axle inside the hub. It's quite a strong construction. I enlarged part of the instruction drawings to get a 1:1 scale with the model and used that as template for proper alignment of the propeller blades.
The entire assembly runs very smoothly inside the brass tube fitted in the nose section and as you can see the engine run-up was successful .

Flaps down are almost at a 90 degrees angle (one position only). Not difficult to make but cutting out those small ribs was, how can I say, a bit of an unpleasant job. Note the small indicators on both wings - to provide clue to the pilot that the flaps were indeed down. Indicator lights on the instrument panel were not in fashion yet in those days as it seems.

Well, what's left? The antenna, position lights, final touchups, a bit of weathering/dirt to add and a coat of matt varnish.

Erik

[MacSongLi]

Beautiful work on the propeller. Nice photo with the prop spinning, very realistic. Erik, that is a heck of a lot of work to make the flaps in the down position. Amazing.


Gary