Early 2020
Right after finishing my Yak-3, I felt like going back to a familiar territory, called Airfix.
My childhood was based on Revell, Matchbox, Heller and Airfix kits. I could only dream of Tamiya, or anything else for that matter. In fact, the only way I knew the brand Tamiya existed was through a friend who had a catalog from them. I don’t know how and why he had it, as he never built anything.
Anyway, Airfix was a familiar territory as my very first kit, a MiG-21, was from them.
Buying it with my pocket money at a village fair, running home and building it right out of the box.
Using my mom’s scissors and the tube of Humbrol glue I got with it.
No cleaning. No sanding. No decals as I didn’t knew how to put them on.
Just a big lump of plastic, resembling to a plane, with huge leftover plastic nubs, clumps of glue…
It was the most beautiful thing I ever made.
After that I had a couple more Airfix.
A MiG-23, which I did paint with Humbrol silver and applied decals to it.
Then I had the infamous 1/76 scale Tiger I. Boy, oh boy! That was one horrible kit!
With these memories coming back to me, I reached for this Spitfire in my new starter stash.
(Also the black and white underbelly really intrigued me)
In general, it wasn’t a complex kit and I was pleasantly surprised by the overall details.
Cockpit is decently detailed, lot of panel lines and quite a handful of raised detail.
And a nice amount of decals to have some extra things to look at.
And of course, the most sought after detail. Closed landing gear. What else would one want from a kit?
I will praise Airfix for this every time as they understand the needs and wants of a plane modeller.
So far every plane I bought from them, or saw reviewed/built by others, did have this feature.
Except the egghead pilot. That is one horrendous fella!
I don’t know what was the person creating the figure drinking at that time, but that stuff needs to be banned.
Forgive me the broken decal and the missing antenna wire. Both were the result of cleaning off the dust.
And not using a final varnish top coat to seal the decals.
