I have a couple of aftermarket decal sheets for Spitfire Vc's, so I picked up a couple of conversion sets for the Tamiya Vb kit over the years. I decided to bite the bullet and try to use one, namely Aeromaster 48-667. I've used some resin in the past, but this one was going to be major surgery. I ended up botching the attempt, so I decided to just use the decals on a stock Vb - thus this build does not represent historical accuracy.

Nothing special about the build. The colors were Model Master Enamel RLM 76 (to represent RAAF Sky Blue) for the spinner and fuselage band, and Azure Blue from the same line for the bottom. The top was Tamiya XF-72 Brown/JGSDF for the RAF Dark Earth and XF-27 Black Green for the RAAF Foilage Green. My understanding is that the planes came from the North Africa theater, where they had been painted in the standard RAF Tropical scheme of Middlestone and Dark Earth over Azure Blue, and the Australians just painted Foilage Green over the Middlestone. However, the profile included with the decal sheet didn't match the standard RAF painting, in that the top colors reached farther down over the Vokes Filter. Since I was already using the wrong wing type, I just used the standard RAF demarcation.

There was quite a bit of silvering under the decals. It's been almost seventeen years since I returned to this hobby, and I still can't get a smooth coat of paint down. I used Montex SM 48024 mini mask for the canopy, which fit quite well.

Page last updated June 15, 2023.