Internet Modeler : Features : Aviation RSS News Feed

Building the 1/72 Eduard Profipack Spitfire Mk. 21

By Alan Smithee

The four-cannon Spitfire 21 was so different from the Spitfires that came before it that there had been talk of naming it the "Victor," rather than retaining the Spitfire name. The aircraft arrived almost too late to see any action during the Second World War, being used by 91 Squadron, RAF Fighter Command, for anti-shipping strikes off the Dutch coast during the last two weeks of April, 1945. With massive contracts for thousands more cancelled after the war, the Spitfire 21 flew on with the "weekend warriors" of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force until 1949.

Just released by Eduard as a "Profipack" kit, this 1:72 Spitfire 21 includes separate cast resin rudder, elevators, bulged tires, pilot's seat, and an impressive photo-etchmetal detailing set. Decals for four aircraft are provided: an operation 91 Squadron airplane, an aircraft serving with 41 Squadron immediately post-war, as well as the silver with red trim airplane flown by 41 Squadron in post-war airshows, and an R.Aux.A.F. airplane of 600 "City of London" squadron in 1946.

Rip off the shrink wrap, open the box, and at first glance you can feel the CA flowing in your veins. The kit has all the graceful lines of the Spitfire and enough incised surface detail to make anyone happy, even if the panel lines are a trifle wide for the scale. This is when a lamp with a central magnifying lens will prove its worth. It's a good idea to hold your breath when cutting free some of the miniscule photo-etch parts, and don't even think about sneezing. Some doubled-over drafting tape stuck to your bench top is a handy way to safely store these parts until you can attach them to the model. You might even want to cut some of the parts free after sticking the fret to some masking tape. That way the small parts won't fly off into the same Neverland that claims one sock out of each washing machine load.

The lap belts for the seat harness are two parts each which requires you to shape how the belts will lie on the seat before you laminate them, otherwise they become too stiff to bend -- this after you let common sense takes precedence over somewhat confusing instructions and figure out how to position them. Opting for a single piece for each belt would have made more sense in this scale as would scaling up some of the diagrams to make them more legible.

The first three steps of assembly are pretty straightforward, but it's a good idea to be thinking ahead. Before you cut out the molded cokpit door, prepare the resin replacement to make sure both the part and where it goes come out to the same dimensions. The photo-etched structural interior looks great, but is a little off around the door. However, a bead of mid-cure CA will blend it in nicely. Step four contains an error in locating the propellor pitch/fuel mixture controls too far forward and too high. Placed where the diagram shows, the assembly will be in the way when you install the forward bulkhead and instrument panel. I learned this the hard way and had to break loose the part and reposition it. The diagram for Step 5 is accurate, but the photo-etch part is not. Lacking the ends of the rectangular box brace, it doesn't reach to the fuselage sides. This requires cutting two small bits of scrap from the fret and piecing them in place.

The instrument panel and forward bulkhead are made out of a sandwich of four photo-etch parts and three pieces of film, imprinted with the instruments. The easiest way to laminate the film is to rough cut it out, line up the photo-etch panel on top, then touch a bead of CA to the film close to the edge of the metal part. The glue will suck under nicely without shifting the parts. Once it's set up, trim the film to size. The result is an impressive, accurate instrument panel, but it is mostly hidden when installed inside the small-scale cockpit. Before gluing the bulkhead assembly into the right half of the fuselage, tape the fuselage together and make sure it all fits. The bulkhead on my kit required some filing to fit properly, but the deck was a perfect fit. When ready to attach the map case to the deck piece in Step 7, make sure it will line up properly with the left side of the fuselage before you glue it permanently.

The resin seat is a work of art, but I had to sand off all the precisely-molded side details to get the resin and photo-etch parts to fit together. I also had to cut down the sides of the photo-etch panel that backs the seat. The next step has you installing the open cockpit door -- don't, unless you plan to permanently affix it in the closed position. My reasoning will be apparent when I discuss painting and decaling.

When it comes to actually assembling the fuselage halves and attaching the wings, the kit's failings become apparent. There are no guide pins to line up the halves, which don't quite mate smoothly. Puttying and filing are the order of the day -- especially where Eduard made the peculiar decision to make the fuselage in four parts instead of two. Although the extra parts assemble on natural panel lines, it's difficult to get these assembly seams to match the other panel lines. You will also need to pay extra attention to both leading and trailing edges of the wings where they fair into the fuselage. Wide gaps between the wing halves in the wheel wells have to be filled. The nose will have to be sanded true. A more difficult problem is the air scoop, which incorrectly angles off to the left. I had to attach the front part #13 slightly to the right and then putty and sand to correctly align the scoop. This was a case where the rather thick injection molding came to the rescue by leaving enough material to shave away. But the related underside panel lines are still off kilter. Cutting a tiny slot makes it considerably easier to attach the photo-etch pitot tube.

I made the version with the contra-rotating props which involved lining up eleven separate parts and cutting a missing slot for one of the blades. I recommend gluing each hub and spinner together and then temporarily tacking the two units together to facilitate sanding the resulting cone into a uniform shape. The reason not to just go ahead and glue the whole thing together is that you'd lose the separation line between the two parts when you sand it into shape. Of course you could rescribe that line later, but why set yourself up for the extra work? It's easiest to paint the blades and hubs separately and then pop the blades into position.

The resin rudder and elevators are clean and greatly enhance the model. It's a simple matter to thin down the radiator scoops from the inside and square off the corners, and the exhaust stacks, which are still styrene, have to be drilled out as do the cannons. I recommend attaching the exhaust stacks after the decals are applied if you decide to do version LA 214 or LA 232, on which a red stripe goes right over that spot. I also recommend you attach the radiator scoops after painting the model. That way you don't risk damaging the tiny internal braces when you mask for painting.

Although adding a vacuum-formed canopy to replace the cast one would have been closer to scale, the injection molded parts are delicate and clear and give you the options of a single-piece closed canopy and a three-piece open canopy. I chose to make mine with the open canopy, partly because it's already too hard to see all the photo-etched interior detail without further closing it in. I used Mask-It Easy, a liquid friskit material, to tack down the one-piece canopy and to temporarily install the cockpit door in the closed position to mask the interior prior to painting the exterior. Version LA 232 required a simple overall painted-aluminum finish. Non-buffing metalizer nicely fills the bill. The decals are thin but strong enough to enable positioning the stripes without tearing them, although I recommend holding off using a setting solution until after they've tacked themselves down. The wing stripes protested having to conform to the high wing blisters by splitting in a few places. This, however, was easy to touch up later with some matching red paint. Red stripe deacals Nos. 61 and 62 need to be a hair over one millimeter longer to both push the side rondels back a bit and so the aft stripe reaches all the way to the rudder. Also, the thin red stripes that complete the red surrounding the exhaust stacks need to be about three times their width. But, again, red paint made for a simple fix.

After painting and decaling, I popped off the canopy, carefully sliced through the decal along the cockpit door seams and then permanently glued the door in the open position. Finally, I finished it off with the three-part open canopy after decaling the canopy frame and coating the parts with Future -- at least I thought I was finished. This is where a vacuum-formed canopy would have been a welcome addition. The sliding canopy section was too narrow, making it sit ridiculously high when slid back. A vacuum-formed piece would have been flexible enough to fit. An attempt to soften the styrene part in hot water, so I could spread it, initially failed and then shrank up the plastic on the starboard side, rendering the part unusable. Luckily, I still had the closed canopy from which I could saw out the center section for a replacement. This time, I scraped out the inside to get a close, though not exact, fit, and I really was done.

In conclusion, the kit fit and engineering decisions are definitely a mixed bag. Sometimes, building a kit that provides no illusions as to its quality ends up more enjoyable to build. You know ahead of time that some parts won't fit and others are inaccurate. So you take your time, do the best you can and then marvel that the finished product looks as good as it does. The Eduard Spitfire Mk.21 looks great in the box and actually has a high "Gee Whiz" quotient after it's built up, but getting there is another story. I also question the reasoning behind putting in so much hidden detail. I would not recommend the kit for beginners or the faint of heart, but if you sweat it through (which I literally did when the temperature in my shop reached 102 degrees!) it makes a sprightly-looking addition to your 1:72 scale collection.