Spitfire Mk IX’s have been the rage in recent months, what with the release first of Pacific Coast Models’ 1/32 early and late-mark Mk IX’s and then Tamiya’s 1/32 Mk IX. Both companies address the issue in this post’s title with representations of the first type of carb intake found on early production Mk IX’s. Depending on the sort of nomenclature you may find – Mk IXc, or Mk IXA or Mk IXB (The subtype letter is case sensitive in each designator) – you will probably find this early type of intake on an early Spitfire mark.

 I started beating my head against this particular issue about 10 years ago when I bought the Paragon Designs resin Mk IX conversion set for my Hasegawa Spitfire Mk V. At first, I thought I’d hit the mother lode and had an accurate Mk IX in my grasp.

Lest you think that all this was made moot by the latest PCM and Tamiya issues, I’m a cheap so-and-so and had already put some serious effort into the cockpit. Around that time, ICM had issued its 1/48 Spitfire Mk VII/VIII/IX/XVI series, and my examination of a Mk IX kit revealed some issues with Paragon’s resin.

Hasegawa’s molding of the underwing radiator – copied by Paragon for a symetrical replacement of the oil cooler housing – was designed for mold release ease. Thus, using the kit fairing and the Paragon fairing together would induce a double error. The solution? I measured the ICM Mk IX underwing radiator fairing, drew a new fairing planform and profile enlarged to 1/32 scale, built two new fairings and reworked the radiator/oil cooler/intercooler blocks accordingly.

But this is incidental to my then-main goal: to build an early Mk IX. That came from an article in Air Enthusiast (issue 95, Sept/Oct 2001, pp 14-31) and from a copy of Morgan and Shacklady’s Spitfire -The History. Both sources provide several fair pictures of the early carburetor intake – wider, deeper and shorter than the Mk V intake – but focus more on other Spitfire configuration issues. Up until Spit Mk IX’s got a better, more archaeological look from Robert Bracken and others in the 1990s, I think a lot of us pretty well assumed that Mk Ix’s first used a Mk I/II/V style carburetor intake until the Aero Vee filter unit was introduced from Mk VIII development.

A year after I got the Air Enthusiast article and Morgan-Shacklady book, I bought an Ultracast nose update for the ICM kit and began comprehending just what had been staring me in the face.

Recently, I was trolling for a little more information before carving a refined 1/32 carb intake for my stalled Hasegawa/Paragon project because I still felt I could make a decent F Mk IX. And there it was – Flight Magazine’s online archive with a series of press day photographs at Northolt with No. 306 Sqdn and Biggin Hill with No. 611 Sqdn in December 1942.

No. 611 Sqdn series: http://www.flightglobal.com/imagearchive/Image.aspx?GalleryName=Photo%20Archive/1939-1945&Image=FA_18353s

No. 611 Sqdn series: http://www.flightglobal.com/imagearchive/Image.aspx?GalleryName=Photo%20Archive/1939-1945&Image=FA_18386s

A few of these photos show up fairly frequently in print and on the web, but it’s amazing that they aren’t cited more often in popular modeling publications as firm evidence of details on the Mk IX.

Just a few examples: Early Mk IX’s were fitted with a port wingroot fuel cooler (cited nicely in Air Enthusiast Issue 95) to avoid problems with fuel system vapor lock in fast climbs. Flight Magazine detailed this quite well:

Also note the carb intake shape, slipper tank, configuration of wheels and tires, the radiator and intercooler block faces and the main gear legs.

And another No. 306 photo shows other cowling details:

No. 306 Sqdn F Mk IX starboard side nose view

One can see the teardrop-shaped Coffman starter housing just aft of the propeller spinner, the geometry of the radiator housing, and a bit more of the carb intake shape. Also, in the cockpit area – despite popular knowledge that headrest padding had been deleted from service Spitfires as an escape safety measure – there appears a headrest.

I posted a few in-progress photos about three years ago and, as soon as I finish up the new carb intake and some wing cleanup, I’ll run a sequel.

As a call center worker/student, I don’t have much time at home for model building.  Ironically, at my place of employment, I can’t bring textbooks to read but I can build models.

As a matter of practicality, I can’t use a Dremel tool or paint because or noise concerns and because you can’t even do detail painting let alone any large surface painting because of intermittent calls.

But one can still do the basic grunt work of modeling – cutting, filing, sanding, shaping, assembling – with a relative minimum of tools.

My kit fits in a Plano tackle tray module:

• X-acto and blades
• pin vise
• tube of drill bits
• files
• cement
• mini-clamps
• super glue
• dental pick
• tweezers
• steel engineer’s ruler
• scriber
• sandpaper
• wire

A few packets of Evergreen strip, rod and sheet styrene stock fit nicely in my cubicle drawer, and I rotate kits in and out as I complete whatever work can be done.

You can see one sample of what can be done with basic hand tools and ‘copious’ free time. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting little articles on a specific project that involved some one-off technique, intense application of some innocuous skill, or even something relevant on a new or old kit.

I figured this would be the last Revell 1/28 Fokker Triplane I’d ever build when I started it back in 1998 (a thought reinforced with Roden’s 1/32 release of a Fokker Dr. I and the pre-production F. I).

 Actually, this particular kit got started back in the 1980′s by my friend J.E. Morris. He handed it off to me back in the early 1990′s after having done most of the interior and the engine. My focus centered on making the exterior as neat and presentable as possible.

As for technique, there is really nothing that any competent modeler wouldn’t do.

 The highlight of this particular bird is the painting and decaling. I’d run across a decent three-view of Fritz Kempf’s plane and decided that his personal touches would offset nicely an attempt at Fokker’s factory finish.

I found a can of Krylon turquoise blue that looked the part for the underside blue, and I sprayed Model Master USAF SEA Dark Green as the base for the upper camouflage.  The streaky-doped finish came from brushing thinned layer variations of dark green, olive green and buff.

Kempf’s personal markings started as photocopy enlargements of the three-view. Once the copies were to the proper size, I coated the back with 3M Post-It adhesive stick, laid then on a glass plate and cut out the letters to make stencils. It was a relatively easy matter to spray the resulting markings.

The horizontal stabilizer was painted white, half-masked and sprayed black.

The national markings are from the kit decal sheet, while the plane serial numbers were made with a computer, photocopier and blank decal sheet.

The propeller is the kit plastic part. After painting it tan, I used shims and a pencil to mark the laminations and paint them with leather-colored enamel. Grain marks were added with Prismacolor pencils, and the entire propeller was dipped three times in Future floor polish. The Axial company logos were hand-painted, and the hud was capped with a scratchbuilt prop hub detailed with Grandt Line nut-bolt castings.

There are ways to correct it, since Hasegawa only did a partial job on its Mk V and Revell never saw fit to do so on its 1/32 classic.

 The best (or least worst) way (above photo) is to lay in your bulkheads and upper stringer and longeron detail and then cut to fit a couple of pieces of .010 sheet styrene for the space between the two bulkheads pictured above and for the space aft of those bulkheads. Pre-curl each section as part of the fitting.

Once they’re cut to shape and fit, use a file or sanding stick to bevel the top edge of each piece to almost a paper-thin edge. Super glue the top edge under the longeron shown above. (I wasn’t paying attention and set one of the sections in the lower photo below a different longeron.

Once that attachment sets, you can attach the lower edge of the section to the lower fuselage centerine joint with a hot liquid cement like Tenax, Ambroid Pro-Weld or – my witches’ brew of choice – straight methyl ethyl ketone.

If done carefully, you get two advantages from this.

- the visual effect is a lot more realistic

- the new inner skin sections give positive support to the fuselage frames you’ve cut and installed.

The next time around, I’ll show you how to get the same effect in the cockpit area between the seat frame and instrument panel.

In the conversion kit route, there’s two main alternatives: Paragon and Warbird. Frankly, based on my experience using the Paragon set, I wish I’d known about the Warbird conversion first.

But since the Paragon set was all I had access to, you work with what you’ve got.

I’ll be maintaining a separate page here on progression (slow as it has been), but here’s a sample of the initial cockpit work.

As basically right the Hasegawa Mk. V kit was, it lacks some necessary features for a contest-quality open-cockpit Spit. The Hasegawa designers got one point almost right with the lower cockpit sidewall liners between the seat bulkhead and the instrument panel. If you’re going to go head to head with modelers at a contest, however, those liners need to extend back at least two frames behind the cockpit if you’re going to defeat the penlight-and-mirror judges.

I didn’t, but I did make liners on a Revell Spit Mk I kit that’s on the assembly line. I’ll include some pics later to show the basic configuration.

Also, the Hasegawa fuselage includes no frame detail aft of the seat bulkhead. Simple strip may suffice for the visual effect, but T-section longerons are more to scale. I made t-section longerons by cementing thin flat strips and capping them with square-section strip.

This photo shows the T-longerons to better effect. I had to extend the stringers further aft on the starboard side since I had opened the radio hatch and thus the view inside.

The ES-3A Shadow came and went faster than probably any other U.S. Navy carrier jet with the possible exception of the F7U Cutlass or F-11F Tiger.

As for kits of this delightfully ugly twin jet, AMT-Ertl managed to issue a 1/48 scale kit based on the old ESCI 1/48 S-3A Viking before deciding that die cast John Deere and plastic car kits were their bread and butter. That was a crying shame, as most longtime modelers will attest, since AMT had come out with some really nice 1/48 and 1/72 aircraft models – both original moldings and repops – that were affordable and well detailed.

The original Viking issue featured good fit, great external detail and was a great palette for paint and markings schemes. The Shadow issue kept much of those qualities as well as all the parts needed to build a standard S-3A ASW bird.

The new parts for the Shadow were a bit more problematic. While there were a nice set of antennae to cover the forest of aerials and radomes cluttering the electronic ‘Hoover,’ the dorsal ‘canoe’ fairing takes a bit of trimming and beveling to achieve a close fit.

The canoe, however, does have the bonus effect of strengthening the upper fuselage seam from the weight of two substantial wings trying to pull it apart.

The kit’s new bulged electronic bay doors (which replace the S-3′s standard weapons bay doors) fit poorly, and the instructions don’t help. The louvers on each door should be on the side and not underneath, and they don’t really fit well even after proper alignment of the vents. Unless you’re doing one on the ground during electronics maintenance, you’re just going to have to gut your way through gluing and filling.

The new ES-3A sprue also contains a drop tank and a buddy refueling store. Both look a bit anemic.

 If you’re lucky enough to find an ES-3A kit out there, there’s a fair variety of research and imagery out there on the web.

Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center offers a nice little page on ES-3′s stored there. You can’t save the photos to disk, but they are well-captioned, clear and full of airframe and markings details.

The Federation of American Scientists offers a pretty compact little description of the Shadow as well as four of the most common photos you’ll find while trolling for info.

US Cockpits contains shots of the pilot’s and front-seat SENSO’s offices and the center console.

Modeling Madness and HyperScale each contain a few kit reviews and notes on decals available for the ES-3A, but the kit wasn’t quite as popular as you’d think or as it should have been.

What you’ll probably see at first will be a lot of mini-articles on prototype subjects, or the real thing. I don’t get to build as much as I like, but I sneak some time here and there to collect photos, articles and web links for those unbuilt kits that someday may feel the cut of my X-acto and the cool petroleum goodness from my airbrush.

At any rate, please feel free to comment, add input or ask questions.

FM (and that’s not Fonderie Miniature)