Pleasantly Surprised
The pieces look a little flimsy on the sprues, and the surface detail is very lightly scribed, so my first impression of this kit was not particularly good. On the plus side, the kit provides two different spinners, two styles of wingtip (elliptical and clipped), and Vokes and Aboukir tropical filters to produce the three different versions. There's the Malta-based Spitfire of the box artwork, Ian Gleed's aircraft from 1943, and a USAAF Spit in the temperate scheme. The decals are crisply printed and work well enough. Construction requires some patience, but proves rewarding: matching the fuselage to the wings leaves a huge gap in need of filler, but maintains the cantilevered profile; the fit of the Vokes filter is similarly sloppy, but not impossible; the propeller consists of three individual blades mounted to a base, and to be honest I left them alone and decided to use a leftover Airfix prop instead, after some modifications. The landing gear fit neatly in to place, and the result, with the three-piece canopy posed open and the cockpit hatch hanging down, looks pretty good. It's not a perfect kit -- a little crude by today's high standards -- but I enjoyed building it.
