Spitfire XIVe- Tamiya with Laminar Flow Design conversion

[BlrwestSiR]

When I heard about this conversion kit for the Tamiya Spitfire to make it into a Griffon engined variant, I just had to grab one. 

A peak at the contents. 

The donor kit:

[BlrwestSiR]

The parts are all 3D printed. They're encased in cages to protect them during shipping. 

The new nose:

Underwing rads, tailplanes and some of the templates for scribing new panels. 

New retractable tailwheel.

Prop blades and spinner.

[BlrwestSiR]

Last one is the camera setup for doing an FR variant. 

For markings, Laminar Flow includes vinyl masks for an RCAF versions and a Belgian one. I didn't grab pics of those as there isn't much to see. 

So first thing I did was cut the new nose free.

The surface finish is very smooth and doesn't seem to show any striations. I'll see what it looks like under a coat of paint. 

The inside has supports to aid in attaching it to the kit fuselage. 

Edited August 12, 2023 by BlrwestSiR
Fix typo

[BlrwestSiR]

Next up, the first cut to the fuselage. The instructions give fairly clear instructions on where to make the cuts. 

So razor saw in hand...

A quick test fit. 

More to come later. 

[GusMac]

That looks great Carl. The quality of the conversion looks very nice. The single piece nose might improve the Tamiya kit as I found getting the nose panels to fit neatly gave me fits.

[DocRob]

Seems to be a good fit Carl and the surfaces look pretty good to without the typical 3D-printing traces. I have only one full printed plane kit and it has some of these superficial traces. I have to see, how it looks under primer, but your pics look pretty convincing.

Cheers Rob

[Spitfire]

That looks amazingly good, even the packing is impressive.

Cheers

Dennis

[BlrwestSiR]

Thanks folks for checking in. 

I've finished the rest of the major fuselage cuts. 

LFD provides templates for cutting the new tailwheel opening as well as for the various new hatches and panel lines. You can see the tailwheel one taped in place below. 

There's lots on very clever engineering in this conversion. The inside of the cowl has legs moulded in place to attach the kit firewall.

This then attached to the kit fuselage halves and helps with alignment and getting a secure joint. 

No glue or tape holding it inplace but the fit is good overall.

[ScottsGT]

More temptations for me.  Stop it!  

[Peterpools]

Carl

Awesome conversion and the quality of the 3D Printed parts looks very impressive. Going to be intently following your progress.

 

[BlrwestSiR]

Peter, I have to say I'm really impressed by this conversion. The designer really thought of just about everything. 

For example, here's the templates included in the set for either scribing new panel lines/hatches.

Not only that but they have alignment tabs/cutouts so you get them in the right spot. 

This is the fuselage hatch one. The notch fits over an alignment peg on the kit part. 

The flipside. I will clean up the tiny stubs left before I engrave the hatch. 

It would be very hard to mess it up with these sorts of aids. Which I did on my XIX conversion. 

[Martinnfb]

I'm getting little jelly here

 

[Peterpools]

Carl

Absolutely first class conversion and completely agree the designer didn't leave a single stone unturned.

 

[Spitfire]

Wow, I though the Paragon conversions were good but this is conversions in overdrive, fantastic.

Cheers

Dennis

[ScottsGT]

4 hours ago, Spitfire said:

Wow, I though the Paragon conversions were good but this is conversions in overdrive, fantastic.

Cheers

Dennis

I can’t wait to see what else they bring to market as well. 

[GazzaS]

Wow!  I am impressed.  I'm not a Spitfire guy...   but the shape of these marks has always been intriguing.  And this has to be the best looking conversion set I have ever seen by a huge distance.  Now we just need a certain someone (Martin) to post some great pics of these machines.

[KevinM]

I'm in

[BlrwestSiR]

1 hour ago, ScottsGT said:

I can’t wait to see what else they bring to market as well. 

There's a high back XIV coming. Mainly a change to the vertical tailplane fillet. 

He's working on a P-51B conversion and he's started on a Spitfire XII. Which hopefully means a Seafire XV will follow along after that. 

[Peterpools]

Thanks Carl, some mighty good news. 

[Spitfire]

The Spitfire XII is one of my favourite aircraft subjects, I built my Paragon/Hasegawa version years ago, to me it combines the best of the Merlin Spitfire with that great big powerful Griffon engine added.

Cheers

Dennis

[BlrwestSiR]

Time for a very belated update. 

The hatches are all done. I chain drilled the perimeter and then after popping the centre out, filed them to shape. 

I then repeated the above with the port side. 

The interior was then painted with TruColor Metallic Silver.

 

[BlrwestSiR]

I painted as many of the cockpit parts in interior grey green at the same time as I did the fuselage insides. 

Then it was seatbelt time. Why? I dunno, just made sense at the time. 

Of course I made it a bit harder by doing three different sets at the same time. 

The Feelings set requires painting but I think they're still my preferred belt sets. 

The shoulder belts all together.

For the seat, I'm using a Barracuda resin one. I was a bit surprised that the casting wasn't as clean as I'm used to from Barracuda. Easy enough to fix. I did up a spare just in case. While I was at it, I started on the Sea Fury seat as well as the one for the Whirlwind.

The shoulder belts were attached to the bullkhead and then I added the seat.

[Martinnfb]

Nice and clean work Carl, can’t wait to see the final result. 

[shark64]

Amazing start. 

[CANicoll]

Carl,

Not sure how I missed this earlier, but amazing packaging.  I had not seen those seatbelts before.  Are they easier to put together than the HGW, or basically the same?  Looking good.

Chris