Halinski 1:33 Spitfire Mk 1a

[romanmodels]

good start on the wings Erik.

[mor54]

This model looks great Erik!! Hoping to see more of it.

Shalom Mor

[Erik Zwaan]

Thanks again gents for your continued interest, I really appreciate it! And thanks Tom (Olo) for sending the link. It's an interesting story about the Poles who joined the RAF and I had heard of the name Jan Zumbach already before. Read about him in James Holland's book The Battle of Britain. A real tragedy that these brave men didn't get the honours they deserved during the victory parade, all because of political reasons. A shame.

Well, it's been a good weekend for modelling. Next come the wing skins, which are I think the most critical part of the build. The shape of the wings is elliptical, with no straight leading and trailing edges. For this reason the upper and lower wing skins are separate parts that have to be connected like the two halves of a shell. The central skin folds like an envelope, as here the leading edge at the wing roots is straight.

Before starting to glue I lightly sandpapered the leading edge of the reinforcement surfaces in between the wing profile formers into a tapered shape. To already mitigate the risk that both wing skin shells may not mate well it's better to leave just a bit of room in between.

I glued both bottom skins to the central section and checked for alignment with the wing structure. You might expect some sort of slight misfit but in fact I didn't discover anything like that. Good for morale .

Then the landing gear wells. No gluing tabs here so everything is glued edge to edge. For proper placement at the wing skins I glued small pieces of thin board to hold the wells in place. They nicely fit within the wing structure. Finally I glued the bottom side wing surface to the internal structure, using the aft spars at the aileron locations as reference point as the wing skin does not overlap at this part of the spars. Note that I glued the central section and right (white) underside first, and finally the left (black) one. Doing everything at once is too risky. It's all about span of control.

The recession at the right wing is the location where the air cooler will be placed. Part of the reverse side of the skin is printed light grey but that seems to be somehow forgotten at the gluing tab of the air cooler recession, refer to the red circle. Not a big deal as you won't see anything of it once the wing has been fully assembled, as I found out a bit later.

Next will be the upper skins.

Regards,
Erik

[Isaac]

Erik

This is really where precision comes in. The construction of an elliptical wing leading edge is always a challenge.

As an aside, I was always baffled at the rational of paining the lower wings black on one side and light blue or white on the other underside. The art of camouflage is always a function of artistry and pseudo science.

Isaac

[cwiokster]

Issac wrote "I was always baffled at the rational of painting the lower wings black on one side and light blue or white on the other underside."

Ah... that's just the point. The black/white undersides was a RECOGNITION feature, to avoid antiaircraft gunners shooting at their own aircraft in the dark days of spring 1940. This idea was revived (possibly by the same group at the Air Ministry) in 1944, becoming 'invasion stripes'. So actually "anti-camouflage". This helps make more sense of this models' color scheme!

Jeff C.

[Isaac]

Originally Posted by cwiokster

Issac wrote "I was always baffled at the rational of painting the lower wings black on one side and light blue or white on the other underside."

Ah... that's just the point. The black/white undersides was a RECOGNITION feature, to avoid antiaircraft gunners shooting at their own aircraft in the dark days of spring 1940. This idea was revived (possibly by the same group at the Air Ministry) in 1944, becoming 'invasion stripes'. So actually "anti-camouflage". This helps make more sense of this models' color scheme!

Jeff C.

I wonder how effective this scheme was in the prevention of friendly fire?


Isaac

[ashevilleangler]

The half black underwings were an identification aide to curtail friendly aa fire.

An Introduction to Spitfire Markings and Camouflage

Curt

[ashevilleangler]

I guess I was a little late to the explanation party, LOL!

[cwiokster]

Originally Posted by ashevilleangler

I guess I was a little late to the explanation party, LOL!

Better late than never, and thanks for the handy link. I read all this in a Spitfire book I have, "big as a brick", which quotes Air Ministry specs etc. on all this, but it's kind of buried at the moment & would take a month to find it!

And as to how useful this was, I would say It wasn't considered "useless", more valuable to the plane spotters, but once the action moved overseas it was discontinued.

Jeff C.

[Leif Ohlsson]

Many thanks, Erik, for an exemplary build report. So much to learn, so many useful tricks, such calm confidence from your vast building experience. A pleasure to read and watch.

Kind regards, Leif