A Seafire pair

Hello everyone,

After lurking on this forum for a couple of years and enjoying all the great work that people have been posting pics of I thought it made sense that having just finished the first two model planes I've made for myself in over ten years (normally I'm busy making model ships for the maritime industry) I should post some photos of the pair on here so others might enjoy them.



Both are 1/72nd scale and were built in unison to cut down on painting time. The Seafire 45 with the red spinner is the limited run Admiral kit built pretty much out of the box. I think the only changes I made were to drill out the exhaust stacks, add the rear view mirror on the canopy and the arrestor wire deflector in front of the tail wheel from some chopped up p.e. Oh and I swapped the fiddly kit prop and sink marked spinner for the bits from the rather nice new Airfix Spitfire Mk 22 seeing how that kit wouldn't miss them as it was being turned into a Seafire FR.47...




The FR.47 build happened as I had bought the Spitfire 22 kit out of curiosity about the improvements Airfix had been making with new toolings and couldn't let the spare contraprop that came with the Admiral Seafire 45 go to waste, because well hey I just like contraprops as my stash of Wyverns will testify too! Making a Seafire 46 would have been a breeze but the colour schemes for that mark aren't too thrilling in my eyes. Also in honesty when I made the choice I didn't really understand just how many changes I'd have to make to get a decent FR.47...ignorance is bliss!




Stem to stern the conversion meant (deep breath) the following: new contraprop (Admiral kit parts), new chin scoop/lower cowling carved from model board, new vacform canopy and windscreen, making underwing catapult spools, filling and rescribing wing panel lines and wing fold lines, making new larger overwing bulges and enlarged recesses inside undercarriage wells, shortening the cannon barrels, filling flaps and scribing new enlarged ones, shortening the underwing radiatiors, rescribing access panels on rear fuselage, making three camera ports in fuselage from turned acrylic, removing and replacing trim tabs on rudder, adding arrestor wire deflector and making the arrestor hook and stinger. I also made a new instrument panel and pilots seat with some p.e. seat belts scavenged from an old MPM Blenheim. Phew!




Both models were then shaded and airbrushed with Humbrol and glossed up with Tamiya clear before decaling. I raided the spares box for the roundels as the Admiral ones were out of register and I thought the Airfix ones a bit bright for an FAA machine. The rest of the FR.47's markings came from the excellent Airfix Spit 22 sheet for stencils with serials miraculously cobbled together from about 6 different sheets from my spares box. I then did a bit of light weathering and gave them both a final matt varnish courtesy of Vallejo, which I'd not used before but which I thought was brilliant stuff.

So then, hope you like the pics, though I know they're not the greatest. Currently I'm knocking an AZ Models Supermarine Attacker into shape... a hard slog for such a simple airframe! If I ever finish that I'll try to get better pictures and share those too.

Cheers,

Richard