seiran01

My goodness, I really need to read this forum more frequently. Marvelous job of the build so far! I’ve never seen an MFH build thread and this one is certainly a treat 😁

What, it’s been 48 hours since I left and you haven’t finished the Paralyser yet?! 🤨 Thanks for the kind words Ern. The build progress photos of the beast up to this point can be found in these three imgur albums: https://imgur.com/a/sGB9hm9 https://imgur.com/a/u1PbhZa https://imgur.com/a/PrJkBRL

Beautiful! How strong (or how weak) do the main landing gear feel? I think with my build I will probably add plastic blocks to the inside of the nacelle to give it more support when I do my build

Bloody superb progress!

Very nice start. You may want to consider adding some plastic tabs inside the rear fuselage to strengthen the join when you glue the sides together. The plastic is pretty thin and it can be easy to make things worse when cleaning up seams if you’re not careful. Ask me how I know…

Beautiful job on this build!

Smitty, which printer did you get?

Best gift in a very long time!! Gavin has always done amazing photography, but this is several steps beyond his nicest previous work. Even had a full-page cockpit photo of each aircraft.

Alrighty, count me in, will donate a new Airfix 1/24 spitfire mk9

Great review Fran. Two things I noticed when playing with my kit a few weeks ago that are worth mentioning in addition… An area that immediately worries me is how the landing gear connects to the wing spar. Two tiny pins are the only points that really hold the weight of the model- and I do mean tiny. The diagonal arm connecting from the back of the wheel well to the axle will make getting the alignment very easy, but it won’t add any strength where it counts. In fairness there are some small diagonal parts I did not glue in, but as they’re also very small and not connecting directly where it matters, I don’t believe they will help to add any significant strength either. Short of the gear legs being redone in wire or cast metal, it looks like the easiest fix will be to use scrap plastic to make shims between the strut assembly and the nacelle “roof”. It’s not a deal breaker and I’m still delighted to have this model in 1/48, but it is a detail worth considering before you start the build. I had to look back over my Japanese references to check the interior color, remembering that the Japanese army and navy loved to use different paints for pretty much everything. A detail I had forgotten was that many army aircraft in the late 30s and into the early 40s had a dark blue-gray interior for all crew areas. None of that nice bamboo green that you’d see in a Betty, no - and ICM got their colour callout pretty close to right. MRP # 417 (Hai Ran Shoku) is the right color to use for the interior of the whole fuselage, or anything matching this in your preferred paint. It’s gonna be a black hole of boring to look at inside all those windows! 🤣

Is build that if they did, and have a bit of fun with markings

Based on other published photos of the Border spitfire, it’s a very hard pass for me. From an accuracy angle it seems to gather all of the worst parts of both the 1/24 Trumpeter and 1/32 Hobby Boss kits including cockpit floor that shouldn’t be there, the fabric effect on top of the tailplane and the noticeably-too-fat spine and canopy. ☹️

It’s indeed an awesome one, but a heads up that this is not the same aircraft as the Piper PA-48 Enforcer which seems would be the more popular choice with the wraparound euro/lizard camo. No kit or conversion for that one yet… fingers crossed!