This is the model that
turned me off of Hyperscale's discussion board. You see
I happened to comment to someone that I didn't think the
Academy Spitfire Mk. XlV was all that bad. Sure the radiators
are perpendicular to the ground instead of the bottom
of the wing, the leading edge of the fin needs a bit of
minor re-shaping, the edges of the carb intake and radiators
need thinning down, the cockpit door is too small and
the wing is a bit thick. All of which are fairly easy
to fix, and the Academy kit was less than a third of the
price of the Fujimi one at the time.
I ended up in a lengthy
debate with this fellow about the myriad errors with this
kit and decided that life was far too short to be wasting
my time discussing such trivial things with people who
are obviously far more worried about microscopic discrepancies
than I am.
Apart from the aforementioned
problems, apparently the wing fillet is wrong, the nose
is wrong and the cockpit is too wide, making it, in his
opinion, "a terrible kit". I was told the best
1/72 Spit XlV could be had by combining the Ventura &
Fujimi kits. At the time those kits were going for around
$25.00cdn a piece - the Academy kit was $7.99.
I've compared this kit
to three different scale plans and dozens of photos and
I can see nothing wrong with either the nose or the wing
fillet. If they are off, then it can't be more than a
few thousands of an inch which is far too pedantic for
me! The cockpit is a bit too wide, I'll give him
that, but it hardly puts it in the "terrible kit"
category.
I fixed the radiators,
re-shaped the fin, rescribed the cockpit door, refined
the leading edges of the carb intake and radiators, and
added the fuel filler cap in front of the windscreen.
I also converted it to an 'e' wing as I wanted to model
a 402 squadron RCAF machine.
I'm not sure if it should
have the red fabric patches where the outboard .303 guns
would be (not installed in the 'e' wing) but I do have
one photo of an 'e' wing with those patches so I stuck
'em on.
In spite of what the nay-sayer
on Hyperscale said, I think it looks every inch a Spit
XlV and at a fraction of the price of his Ventura/Fujimi
hybrid. So there!
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