Building the Academy Spitfire Mk XIVc
by Jeff Herne
 

Academy’s Spitfire MK XIVc has been around for some time, and has gotten a bad wrap due to some inaccuracies with the spinner and nose. I got my XIVc at a very reasonable price ($5.00 at MosquitoCon 2003) and decided to overlook the problems with the nose and spinner I’d read about on the Internet.

The kit is typical Academy, flash-free, and everything fits nicely. Instructions are good, and the decals are acceptable. Cockpit detail is good, but there’s room for improvement.

I picked up a set of Eduard pre-painted RAF seatbelts, mostly because I was feeling lazy. I decided not to go crazy with cockpit details, since the model was being built for ‘fun’ (remember that?) and not for competition purposes. I added a few bits to the cockpit, some stretched sprue cables and wire bundles, a brass fuel priming lever, and a rebuilt seat. The cockpit was sprayed and washed, then drybrushed.

The model was built using Tenax 7R and a new filler I was introduced to called Porc-a-Filler…it’s a stupid name for a great product. It’s a toluene based porcelain filler used to repair damaged bathroom fixtures. It dries real fast, doesn’t shrink, takes paint real well, sands easily, and is very cheap, about $4.00 for large jar.

The wings fit nicely into the fuselage, and the joint required minimal filler. I added the rear stabilizers and filled them accordingly, again with a minimal amount of work.

The rest of the model was built as per the kit instructions, and the only area that gave me trouble was the prop and nose. The Griffon-engined Spitfires had large bulges on the nose to make room for the larger valve covers, and these are add-on parts in the kit, requiring perfect positioning and some filler to blend them into the fuselage. Academy would have been smart to mold them into the fuselage, especially since the longer nose required for the Griffon eliminates the chance of using the fuselage without the bulges, say, for a late mark Merlin version.

 The other trouble spot was the Rotol prop. With 5 individual prop blades, it was nearly impossible to get everything to line up correctly, so I eventually made a jig to keep the blades in the correct position. This guaranteed that the blades were in alignment with each other once dried.

The model was painted with Gunze Sangyo acrylics, and I immediately decided to discard the decals, as they were quite thick. I painted the invasion stripes, masked with blue striping tape, and used decals from an Aeromaster sheet.

The model was sprayed with Future floor wax, washed and drybrushed, then sprayed with Future mixed with Tamiya X-21 Flat Base.

It’s a nice model, with good detail, and in the end, despite it’s faults, it looks a lot like a Spitfire Mk XIVc. In my opinion, the Griffon engined Spitfires are the prettiest of the bunch, certainly the most menacing of the line. Academy also has a Mk XIVe, with clipped wings and bubble canopy. That model is about 90% complete, and will be the topic of an upcoming article.