Tamiya 61035 1/48 Scale Spitfire MK.VB Tropical Plastic Mode

What a steal, I got this for $9! Typical excellent Tamiya quality.

Tamiya's 1/48 scale Supermarine Spitfire Mk Vb is the best Mk V kit out there. Period. And the Tropical variant is just icing on the cake. There's a legend among modelers, told in the dark of night in hushed tones to model builders huddled around styrene campfires about Ernie Fumblefingers. Old Ernie, so the story goes, who was a model builder from way back in the day, way back in the early 1960s, when model kits were regarded as little more than toys and not as serious replicas of armor, ships, or aircraft. once took out a Tamiya 1/48 scale Spitfire Mk Vb kit, opened the box, threw in a tube of glue, and then closed the lid again. He shook that kit for about ten minutes, then popped it in the over for another fifteen or so. When he took it out of the oven and lifted the lid, *POOF* -- there it was, a completely assembled Spitfire Mk Vb. Thus the legend of Tamiya's 1/48 scale World War II fighter series being "shake-and-bake" kits was born.... OK, so building the 1/48 Spitfire Mk Vb really isn't that easy, but it's close, and it doesn't involve an oven at any point, unless you're baking cookies while you wait for glue and/or paint to dry. The thing is, this kit is so perfectly engineered that the only way to screw it up is to deliberately try to do so. The fit is absolutely flawless, so much so that I never used so much as a hint of filler on any of the seams, not the fuselage, not the wing roots, not the nose or cowling. Just straight out of the box the cockpit has an almost unbelievable level of detail, to the point where needles and dials on the instrument panel are distinct and visible with a bit of drybrushing. The landing gear, an area where many an otherwise beautiful Spitfire model has come a-cropper, is so elegantly done that just by following the instructions you'll be able to get the slight forward caster of the main gear struts correct, along with the slightly splayed-looking camber, without even thinking about it. Too many other kits make it too easy to get those angles wrong, which makes the entire model look wrong as a result, but no worries with this kit -- as I said, you have to work at buggering it up. Broadly speaking, the overall level of detail on this kit is significantly better than any other Spitfire in this scale, and approaches the level of detail seen on some manufacturer's 1/32 scale Spitfires. Now there are some self-proclaimed "experten" who have denounced this kit because, they claim, the chord of the wings is at one point a bit too wide -- something on the order of 1/64th of an inch, if I recall correctly -- while others have claimed that the washout on the outer wing sections is incorrect. To those criticisms I reply, "Dude, if you're spending your time measuring the wing chord or washout on a 1/48 scale model airplane, you need to find yourself a girlfriend. Pronto." My point is that while it's possible to find something to quibble about on any kit, the potential quibbles with this one are so minute only the most anal-retentive AMS (Advanced Modeler Syndrome) sufferers will even suspect they exist, and let's face it, you aren't going to be inviting people like that over to your house for beer and pizza on movie night anyway.... Specific to this kit, what sets it apart from a standard Spiitfire Mk Vb is that the parts include two tropical air filter options, the big ugly -- but effective -- Vokes filter and the smaller, more streamlined -- but equally effective Aboukir filter, and the decals included are for three aircraft that saw action in North Africa or in defense of the island of Malta. While Tamiya's decals are often criticized -- and quite rightly for the most part -- as being overly thick compared to those made by, say, Cartograph, the decals included in the Mk V b Tropical kit are commendably thin, lay down and adhere very well, and are nicely opaque and on-register, and stand out very nicely against the brown and tan tones of the RAF's desert camouflage schemes. The bottom line is this: if you're going to add a Spitfire Mk Vb Tropical to your collection of 1/48 scale aircraft, make it this one. You'll thank me later. Right here. On this page....

よくできたモデルです。 コクピットガラスの透明度も申し分なしです。

the best way to past the time now a days build a spitfire

Excellent fit and detail.