Tamiya 1/32 Spitfire XIVe Conversion

[Stikpusher]

Tough call to choose between the two IPs. Both look really good.

The lower left area of the kit IP just looks a tad bit empty in comparison.
But you did some mighty fine work there with the kit part.

[tempestjohnny]

Tough call to choose between the two IPs. Both look really good.

The lower left area of the kit IP just looks a tad bit empty in comparison.
But you did some mighty fine work there with the kit part.

[Stuart]

I wouldn't be unhappy with the kit part (especially how you've dressed it up) considering how little can generally be seen of WWII fighter cockpits once they're buttoned up*, but the AM looks superb also - you're spoilt for choice John.

*mind you, I have 0% experience with 1/32 so I maybe talking crap, you might be able to see loads of detail.

[jkim]

It's been a while but I think I can get back onto this build. After starting this build, I've learned that the XIVe cockpit differs in some ways from the XVIe and I wanted to attempt to address some of those differences. The most significant is a big control panel that resides on the port sidewall.


A rectangular box can be a relatively simple thing to scratchbuild but I personally have trouble getting square corners on boxes. When I saw that Mathieu at Laminar Flow Design was developing a set of XIV-specific cockpit details including the control panel, I decided to wait for it to save me some work. It took a while but I finally got it...


Like his other 3D-printed products, Mathieu incorporates a protective crate around the printed parts. He graciously include an entire spare set and I found that the spare set was definitely needed.



Here are the parts still attached to the base but with the protective walls removed. Many of these parts are super tiny and lots of patience and care needs to be taken when removing the parts for use.


I tried to be careful but I still managed to lose and/or break a few parts. Mathieu includes two copies of the especially small or fragile parts in each set so sometimes I had four copies to work with.


After the parts were freed completely from their printed supports, I glued together the sub-assemblies. These included the pilot door and crowbar, throttle quadrant, landing gear control quadrant, cylinder priming pump. The control panel, waffle-style foot guards, canopy crank and a small trim wheel are stand alone items.


The parts were given a light coat of primer (Mr Primer Surfacer 1000).


I've got a lot of Spitfire cockpit stuff from Barracuda as well so I'll to sort out which bits I'll be using. One of these is a resin seat with the backrest cushion, which looks to be a nice upgrade from the kit parts.

[KSaarni]

Really great looking 3D printouts there!
And agree, the seat cushion is outstanding!

Some of those 3D printed pieces are so tiny and fragile, one can wonder if the designers/makers really have the engineering skills to put some effort in user friendliness, aka how to remove them from "sprues" (or whatever the correct terminology is for 3D resin printouts).
Of course really good and service minded from this maker to add a spare set (or for some pieces even 4 "copies").


- Kari

[jkim]

Hello SPAm community!  It's been a while since I've spent meaningful time at my modeling bench but I'm getting that urge again.  Not sure what project I want to continue on at the moment but as I'm contemplating, I thought I'd crack open the Spitfire build again and try to re-orient myself.  I left off exploring the 3D-printed cockpit upgrades from Laminar Flow Designs.  I'm trying to mix the Tamiya XVIe cockpit parts with the LFD XIVe-specific upgrades and adding Barracuda resin on top of that, where applicable.  As usual, I am not going to claim great accuracy with what I'm doing but will use the resources that I have available to make a reasonable facsimile of an XIVe cockpit.  One of these resources has been previous Spitfire builds, most notably NGBZ's VIII build from 2020 over at LSP.  From what I know, the XIVe cockpit is based on the VIII and Gary's build does a great job of capturing some of those differences with some help of Vincent K's past scratchbuilding work. Of course, there are differences between the XIVe and VIII so I have to pay attention to that too.

I started modifying the Tamiya kit parts to accommodate the LFD upgrades.  The biggest change is the big electrical box that needs to be added to the port sidewall.  Some surgery is needed on the kit part to make room for the electrical box.




After making most of the necessary modifications like moving the voltage regulator, making a jackplate for the gun camera film footage indicator out of sheet styrene and filling in ejector pin marks, I've tacked the rest of the port sidewall components into place just to get a feel for the wiring that I'll be adding later.


There is a big fuel tank directly behind the seat, which will block the view off from the seat bulkhead to the rear. This will limit visibility into the rear bottom area of the cockpit so I'm not going to bother with trying to replicate the flying control linkage wires that run under the pilot, which I was previously considering.


I've done similar modifications to the starboard side, which features a resin sidewall replacement from Barracuda.



My plan is to separate the cockpit into subassemblies... the port and starboard sides as presented above, the instrument panel/cockpit floor and the seat/rear bulkhead. Once these subassemblies are assembled and painted separately, I'll put them together as the fuselage halves come together.

[LyleW]

Wow, looking good on the mods. Been keeping up on FB, blad to see you back at the bench!

[Stikpusher]

Oh I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next in the cockpit!



Good to see your back on here and at the bench again John!

[Medicman71]

That's gonna be a really nice looking cockpit!

Welcome back John!!

[tempestjohnny]

Details details. Lots of great stuff happening in the cockpit