This beautiful model has been built to enter in indoor scale cometitions, so has a very sparse structure, made with tough, springy wood. Despite the low number of ribs, stringers etc., I think the model captures the shape and charactor of the Spitfire Mk.1 extremely well. It is also amazingly light for such a detailed model. All the tissue is pre-shrunk to avoid warps, hence the slight roughness visible in the close-ups. Chris describes this as a wrinkly model, but I feel this is overstating the case considerably!
Here are Chris's notes on various aspects of the model's construction:
Spitfire Mk.I from scratch, 1/24 scale which is about 18" span. Scale vertical tail, 112% linear (so 1.12 X 1.12 overall) enlargement of the tailplane - which looks a little small for FF.
The tissue is all pre-shrunk Esaki pre-finished with chalk and krylon. The roundels are chalked tissue of various colors and are spliced into the background with about 1 mm overlap. The N-FY is gray chalked tissue on top of the cammo. The little guy is supposed to be carrying a sword of some sort over his shoulder. It was the symbol for Duncan-Smith. I copied it from the Aeromaster decals I saw.
Actual tubes for the guns per FAC rules. They are 1 mm long, 1/32" I.D. and maybe 3/64" O.D.. Little thin tubes.
Flex-o antenna mast and lycra "wire". Way flexy tailwheel from EVA foam with 10# Mason holding it to the fuse. Oh, EVA mast base and Mason 10# holding the mast to the fuse too. Same for the pitot tube.
All-balsa details otherwise: gunsight, mirror, headrest, lights, exhaust, and the underwing stuff. Everything is chalk and tissue except for the exhausts which have a custom filler (Red Devil "One Time" and acrylic paint mixed) and a top coat of brown and various chalk dust.
Panel lines are all Pantone TRIA "Cool Gray #11", and #10 on the bottom. Black lines are mostly Itoya .3 pen, with the 'do not walk here' line on top of the wing made from tissue. All tissue stuck with UHU.
Spinner is a vacform, probably from GAR. It has a plywood insert so that it is stuck to the rear ring and thus the prop with UHU. Easy to remove. Tern prop for now.
It weighs 18 grams With about 2/3 gram in the nose. this will balance the initial motor.
The pilot is a Lindsey Smith 1/24 vac-form.
The vent on the canopy is just a piece of unchalked white Esaki soaked in laquer to get it clearer, then attached with UHU - screws are TRIA "Cool Gray #11" dots. All canopy trim is UHU attached tissue with a Krylon seal around the edges of everything.
Ryan STA
Hawker Typhoon
Nieuport 24 bis
Republic P-47M Thunderbolt
Laird Solution
Nieuport 16
Peanut Scale Martynside S.1
Back to Chris Parent index page
Back to home page