with Ultracast resin prop and Xtradecals decals
631 Squadron, Royal Air Force, UK 1947
It’s an oft-repeated piece of modelling advice that when you’re stuck in a rut, you should build something from a different genre. That doesn’t work for me, but what does work as a nice palate cleanser between more involved projects is a single-engine prop aircraft, especially if it’s a Spitfire: I can bang one of these out in under a month. And so it was that after making one fairly complicated Ukrainian kit (by Mars Models), the next should also be Ukrainian, although rather simpler: ICM’s 1/48 Spitfire Mk.XVI.
At this point the author usually gives a little history of the subject, but I have neither the expertise nor interest (sacrilege!) to go into that. What I do know is that this kit traces its lineage back to 2000 and an earlier Mk.IX version, which at the time was considered the best on the market in terms of accuracy, lauded by no less than Neil Robinson in this very magazine. Times have changed and ICM’s moulds have been superseded by Eduard’s releases, but what we have here is a perfectly workable model.
My version was a Revell boxing from 2013, but the sprues are all stamped ‘ICM’. You get quite a lot in the box: a full engine, gun bays and interior. The mouldings are not a patch on what ICM can do now, but favourably compare with Airfix’s efforts in this arena with quite nice surface detail and moderate flash. There are no signs of the moulding defects that plagued the first boxings made by ICM. The interior mouldings are quite chunky and some of the surfaces have quite a rough texture that needs sanding out, especially on the tail planes. For a quick build I felt no need to add any aftermarket, save for an Ultracast prop and spinner I found super cheap at a show, some Eduard belts from a generic set, and an Xtradecals set.
Having decided to model SL614, my first step was to try and find a photograph. I could only find one in this camouflage scheme, and another in silver, but these confirmed that I could omit the canopy mirror, use the four spoke wheels and that the wing was correct as supplied. Changes I needed to make were to cut down the outer guns to stubs and replace the exhausts with the cylindrical type. The latter were a bit of a challenge and I ended up cutting the individual stacks from exhausts I found in the spares box and sticking them to the ICM backplate.
The cockpit is good enough by my standards for a closed canopy. The included oxygen bottles can be dispensed with since they’re invisible behind the seat bulkhead and I think they are incorrect for a Mk.XVI anyway. It’s nice that the cockpit tub can be built, painted and then added after the fuselage halves have been closed. In order to get some more contrast into the confined space, I used black and white paints to preshade the cockpit and a very thin coat of Mr Color 364 Aircraft Grey Green airbrushed over the top. Post-shading was effected by daubing on neat Abteilung 502 Dark Mud in the nooks and crannies and then blending it out over the paint with a dry paint brush.
The main components of the airframe fitted together pretty well. I like to use superglue for all the main joints because of the speed with which it sets and there being no risk of ghost seams appearing later on. More superglue acts as a filler as and where required. The wings fitted together very well, but the gun panels are an extremely tight fit and the apertures needed opening up just a little. With the fuselage halves together, the cockpit can be inserted from underneath and consideration given to dealing with the surface texture.
As with many modern kits, the plastic has a texture to it. This afflicts kits from many manufacturers and I think this is one of the few areas in which model production has regressed a little from the pinnacle of the late 90s and kits moulded by some of the Japanese companies. It was significant enough on this model to need polishing out, and so I sprayed on a generous coat of Mr Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black as a good base from which to start. An Infini 1500 grit sanding sponge was then used to sand the primer down; once it was all gone the surface could be considered smooth enough.
Whilst the fit of the fuselage and wing halves was pretty good, bringing them together was more of a challenge, and the same is true of the tailplanes. Short shots and gaps were initially filled with my favourite combination of black CA and VMS’ CA Filler Powder. I mix this in a beer bottle cap (buy in bulk from Ebay for a plentiful supply!) into a black gloop which I then slop into the seam. It sets pretty quick and can be sanded very easily. The downside is that little air bubbles can appear which need a tiny drop of superglue to fill later. Once set and sanded it can be rescribed fairly easily.
After I had the wings on, I tried using two-part polyester car body filler for the gap at the root. This stuff is super-smelly and a bit unwieldy as it comes in a huge can. Only a small amount of hardner is required and once mixed it sets very fast, so the working time is quite limited. On the plus side, it sands very, very smoothly and is also relatively straightforward to scribe.
Bodywork is my favourite part of modelling, and so I didn’t mind that the radiators under the wing took quite a lot of fettling to seat properly to the wing. I eliminated the joints even though I’m well aware there should be a panel line here. However, I considered it too difficult to get the shape of the joint both accurate and neat, and so went with what looked good to my eye.
The clear parts were the last to add prior to paint. The sliding portion is moulded quite thick towards the rear end and so it sits a little proud over the fuselage spine. I should have fixed this really by thinning the clear plastic, but chickened out. As the framing was going to be silver in colour anyway, I hoped the strong contrast between that and the camouflage scheme would distract from the error.
The windscreen, similarly, didn’t seat very well over the fuselage curve. I applied many, many coats of Mr Surfacer 500 until the gaps were plugged, and then sanded it out gently with a 1000 grit Infini sanding stick. In general, the clear parts are not terribly clear and would have benefitted from a thorough polish.
I’ve been modelling aircraft for a very long time, and one of the changes over the years has been the increase in complexity of finish that is now possible. There are so many finishing products that it’s easy to be overwhelmed: paints, oils, washes, filters, shaders, pigments, pencils, inks, the list goes on. My own style and workflow has been evolving rapidly and is still in a state of flux as I am constantly inspired by people who are ahead of me in skill and vision. One of the big changes for me has been to blur the boundaries between different stages and to move back and forth between them. Different products and techniques can be laid over each other multiple times to try and obtain a more interesting and complicated finish, which makes it difficult to describe what I did in a step-by-step manner as the process was not linear, but somewhat circular, or spiral.
For me, I like to start with a black primer and then mottle the base colours on to get some depth and contrast in the paint. This will get polished back with fine sanding cloths in some places, and the mottle reapplied. My aim is not accuracy, but rather something I consider to be interesting to look at, and that can mean increasing the contrast quite a lot, especially as some of the variation won’t be picked up by the camera.
In addition to using a black base, further contrast can come from using different interpretations of the same colour by different paint brands. So for the Medium Sea Grey I used Mr Color C335 and Tamiya XF-83, for the Ocean Grey I used MRP-365 and Tamiya XF-82, and for the Dark Green Mr Color C330 and Tamiya XF-81. With very thin paint I can use these shades on top of each other using a freehand mottle or some of the many mottle masks I’ve acquired in recent years. For the first time I tried Tamiya Tape for Curves to delineate the camouflage scheme. This was a mistake as I could not get it to form tight enough curves and so the final camouflage shapes are too low in amplitude and frequency. It also pulled some paint off when I removed it, although that was no bad thing as it forced me to make touch-ups that added further interest to the finish.
I then began an iterative process of using oil paints (both thinned as a wash and applied neat from the tube) and adding the decals. I didn’t apply any gloss coats to the model, but did use some VMS Satin Varnish to get rid of the stains left by various decal setting solutions. One neat trick when using oils that I picked up from Mike Rinaldi’s YouTube videos is to squeeze them onto some cardboard and then store them in the freezer between modelling sessions. This keeps them useable for much longer – it really does work! I used a variety of shades from the Abteilung 502 range, mainly Dark Mud, Starship Filth, Field Grey and Sepia. When forming the streaks that are characteristic of the underside of a Spitfire I added more brown colours, like Engine Oil, Smoke and Burnt Umber.
The decals are from Xtradecal which label SL614 in this scheme from 1949. I think this is unlikely since SL614 was in a silver finish in 1948 and crashed in early 1949. It seems more plausible that this scheme is actually from 1947, which matches at least one caption I found via Google. The photos show it to be pretty weathered, although I cannot make out much of an exhaust stain at all, so didn’t bother replicating one. The decals are fine, especially those printed in a single colour, but the roundels took quite a lot of work to settle into the detail – I tried Mr Mark Softer, Microsol and UMP Extra Strong, but not with as much success as I would like. For better or worse I decided to use the kit-provided stencils, even though aside from the wing walkway markings, I couldn’t verify if they were applied or not. I blended the decals with the paint using VMS Satin Varnish; that was the only clear coat I used on the model.
Spitfires often show some paint wear on the port side wing root near the cockpit entrance. Over the camouflage I airbrushed a mixture of Alclad White Aluminium and Steel and then reapplied the green and grey with the Tamiya shades. This allowed me to barely moisten an old brush with some X-20A thinner and then chemically ‘sand’ the paint to make some metal chips. Muddy shades were then added over the top and on the starboard wing root with a couple of AK Interactive weathering pencils, applied wet. This can then be manipulated to taste with a brush dampened with water.
There are quite a few other colours that need to be painted: silver for the canopy frame, Sky for the fuselage band (Mr Color C368), yellow for the wing leading edges (MRP-122 RAF Marking Yellow) and red for the spinner (Hataka C-219 Insignia Red). The spinner is worth mentioning because the Ultracast moulding is not symmetrical. I did contact them and to their credit they posted a replacement from Canada which arrived within the week. Unfortunately, it too was asymmetrical. I have used it anyway, placed in an orientation where I hope the wonkiness is minimally visible. The props themselves are painted in MRP Black, NATO Black and Rubber Black, each being masked with some masking fluid applied with a sponge. Neat black oil paint blended over the top then reduced the contrast between the shades to a level I was happier with. The blades plug very positively into the spinner, but they are not quite orthogonal to each other.
As with any kit, there are a number of smaller items to attend to. ICM do not provide a clear part for the moulded recess between the radiators. I used some UV-setting clear resin for this, along with the wing tip lights that I cut out earlier in the build. A whip aerial was added to the spine made from stretched sprue. The undercarriage fits okay and the wheels are adequate. The oleo scissors are designed to be bent to shape, but mine snapped and were a little finicky to glue in place.
I said at the beginning I can usually get a Spitfire done in a month, but this one took six weeks due to spending longer on the finish than usual and the kit parts requiring a bit more prep work. It was, however, a lot of fun and great to see how ICM have developed over the past twenty years. Like many others, I’m hoping they continue to produce great kits.
Year bought: 2013 (Model Zone)
Year built: 2022 (New Addington, Croydon)
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