1:32 Spitfire Mk.Ia (for Hobby 2000 kit)

The Spitfire of the summer of 1940

The Mark I was the Spitfire that climbed over southern England during the Battle of Britain. It was powered by a Merlin III of around a thousand horsepower, the armament consisted of eight machine guns of 7.7 mm caliber in the wing, and the letter in the designation meant precisely this machine-gun arrangement. The cabin was austere compared with the later versions: instruments arranged in vertical columns, a reflector gunsight above the panel, a control column ending in a characteristic arc with the firing button, and on the left side the throttle and mixture controls on a single console. It was exactly this machine that became the symbol of the defense of the islands.

Set contents

The package covers the main instrument panel, both side walls of the fuselage with their controls and the pilot's seat belts. Everything is printed in its final colors, so it goes into the cabin without a single stroke of a brush. On the first batch the side walls have the form of a framework structure with the runs of cables and tubes, which injection-molded plastic deals with by nothing more than a shallow relief; a printed part adds the coloring and the small lettering to it.

Recommended order of work

Build the cabin first and paint it in the shade of interior green, then let the finish harden properly. Only onto a finished base does the instrument panel go, after it the side walls, and last of all the belts, which by the nature of the thing are laid over an already seated seat. Anyone who reverses the order risks shifting the smaller parts while inserting the larger ones. If you are planning a model with the door on the left side open, reckon with far more being visible inside, and give time to what is otherwise hidden as well.