Supermarine Spitfire FR. Mk.XIVe WIP #1

I have been meaning to start this WIP posting for the Spitfire for the last couple of weeks, but a holiday, family days out and a deadline to get the Mercedes G4 finished has delayed this.

This project is a quick build for our clubs September competition which theme for this month is "Spitfire". I had a couple of other Spitfire kits lying around, but these did not have the correct decal  sheets for them, so I picked up a couple more Spitfire kits at our recent trip to Midland Expo at the end of July. The other kit was an Italeri 1/72nd scale F. Mk.VII, but I decided to go with this below for my entry.

The kit is an Academy "Special Edition" which has the choice of seven different finish options ranging from a RAF SEAC aircraft from Burma in 1945-46, a RAF aircraft from Germany, two Royal Indian Air Force aircraft, one Belgium Air force aircraft, one Royal Thai Air Force aircraft and one that flew in the 1949 Cleveland air race. All aircraft except for the Burma one were all over silver, the Burma one was in dark green and ocean grey camouflage. I chose to do the Burma option.

This kit went together without any troubles, there was minimal flash and ejector pin marks. Assembly in my opinion has been one of the easiest builds for a long while. Below it was at the stage when the main construction minus the tailplanes and wing tips. The undercarriage and prop were only test fitted to get the stance for the photo. 

After the first coat of primer went down, only a couple of joint lines were visible which needed sorting out, very pleasing for this to happen. First I spray the whole upper side of the fuselage with Xtracrylix XA1004 RAF Dark Sea Grey then using my 3-in-1 printer, enlarged the painting diagrams on the instructions to make templates for the camouflage scheme. The grey areas were cut out from both side and upper elevations then matched the templates up to form the complete scheme. Each template part was laid in place on the model using thin sausages of Blutac to hold them in position. Next I spray the exposed areas with Xtracrylix XA1001 RAF Dark Green and removed the template once it was dry. This was the first attempt for me to use this method and I was surprised how good it came out, there was only a couple of little spots that needed to be touched up afterwards.

After drying overnight, the upper surfaces were masked up before receiving a coat of Xtracrylix XA1003 RAF Med. Sea Grey. The masking was removed once this coat was dry and the model was given a couple of coats of gloss clear from Xtracrylix. Next I am going to start on the decals, hopefully this will be tonight if I have time then give the model a coat of gloss clear followed by a coat of matt.