Built in a hotel… part 1

Last month work shipped me to Seattle for a week of training classes. Being stuck in Tukwilla didn’t sound too exciting, so I decided to grab a couple kits out of my stash and build them as I spent time in my hotel room. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t waste the opportunity to explore my surroundings, but without a rental car, and darkness still coming early, I found myself indoors by about 8pm.

Looking through my piles of model boxes, I limited myself to models that a) weren’t too big, b) could survive being packed in my checked luggage, c) simple enough to be built up to the painting stage in a couple hours. My choice was this Spitfire and a Turbo Mentor (see part 2).

I’ve been planning this model for a dozen years. The Academy kit had just been released, and I’d just discovered an air racing example that was owned ‘locally’ by a group in Edmonton. Always a fan of non-camouflaged, non-military airplanes, it was a natural candidate. I tried starting this kit once before, but a major problem in the early painting stages caused me to chuck that try in the trash.

History:

Spitfire Mk. XIVe TZ138 was built in 1945, just as the war in Europe was winding down. Rather than being posted to an operational squadron, TZ138 was instead sent to Rolls Royce and prepared for a career in cold weather testing.

Disassembled, the Spitfire arrived in Canada by ship on November 11, 1945. The journey to Edmonton was completed on December 20 on the back of a rail car. Between the end of January 1946 and the late July 1949, TZ138 logged a mere 150 hours of flight time. Based in Edmonton with the North West Air Command, TZ138 crisscrossed the country, from Churchill, Manitoba, to Fort Nelson, BC. On February 17, 1947 the propeller was damaged at The Pas, Manitoba. To bring the fighter back to Churchill, the group modified a set of Tiger Moth skis. The main wheels were then placed inside two boxes. The idea being the skis would fall away after liftoff. For the first (and probably only time) a Spitfire was equipped with skis. One wheel popped out of its box early, lightly damaging the tail, while the other worked as intended.

In July 1949, TZ138 was released for disposal, and on August 4 it was purchased by Ken Brown and James McArthur. The plan was to convert the fighter into an air racer, a sport that had emerged from WW2 with renewed vigor, no doubt because of the high performance fighters on the surplus market. Brown was a wartime RAF bomber pilot, famous for his participation in the famous Dam Busters’ raid. After the war, he’d served with the Winter Experimental Unit in Edmonton. McArthur was the Commanding Officer at RCAF Station Edmonton, and it’s generally thought that his participation in the $1,250 venture was to primarily appease any reservations the government may have had releasing a hot fighter plane to a private individual.

Three weeks after being sold, TZ138 was registered CF-GMZ, and sponsorship from the venture was secured from the Imperial Oil Company. The paint stripped, yet basically stock Spitfire was flown to Cleveland for the National Air Races. McArther flew ‘GMZ to a third place finish in the Tinnerman Air Races. While Brown and the rest of the crew slept late following the previous day’s excitement, McArther, the Spitfire, and the $1,050 winner's purse departed Cleveland at 6am for an undisclosed destination.

A couple days later the Spitfire was sold to a buyer in Florida for $1,000. Florida at the time was a haven for shady arms dealers, and it appears that the buyer expected to quickly flip the fighter to a Central American country. It appears this almost happened in 1952 when a sale was arranged to a buyer in the Dominican Republic. But the sale was sabotaged by someone hitting the propeller with a truck and US Customs officials stepped in to confiscate the plane.

Over the next 50 years the Spitfire passed from one collector to another. It was rebuilt once in 1970, but crashed on its first test flight. Eventually it ended up with the Lone Star Flight Museum, who traded it for a P-40. In 1994, restoration was completed, and it was purchased by Vancouver aircraft collector Robert Jens. Although it’s airworthy, Jens does not fly his historic planes.

The Kit:

As I mentioned before, I knew what I was going to do with this project as soon as I spotted that first photograph and the Academy Mk.XVIe kit. When I started the first time, there weren’t even decals and I planned on doing this all myself – more on that later.

According to Spitfire purists, Academy basically got everything wrong when they made this model. The fuselage is too deep and too wide, the wing camber too thick, and the distinctive Spitfire scalloped underside subdued. That may be true, but the assembled model does look like a Spitfire Mk.XVIe, and its way better than the Hobbycraft kit, the only other bubbletop Mk. XIVe I know about.

If you’re not willing to believe someone can still want to build a model from this misshapen kit, please stop reading now.

For those continuing on, the kit is molded in light grey plastic, features nice recessed details, and no flash. Details were sufficient for my almost out of the box build. Decals are low quality and most modelers will swap them out for some aftermarket.

Construction:

As I said at the beginning, this model was basically built in a hotel room. The cockpit had been painted a couple years ago while I was a passenger on a 6 hour road trip.

I followed the instructions, using a combination of Tamiya super thin liquid glue, and super glue. When I tried to glue the pilot’s seat to the support frames the whole assembly crumbled in my fingers. I ended up gluing a piece of sprue between the seat and bulkhead to wedge it into position.

The wings were glued together. To minimize the impact the glue had on the surface, I applied it to the backside of the gun panels. The cannon holes in the leading edge were plugged with styrene plastic rod. These and the shell ejector ports on the underside of the wing were filled with Gunze Mr. Surfacer. These were the extent of my demilitarized modifications.

This is where I left Seattle and packed the model into my checked luggage. When I got it home the only damage I discovered was a broken horizontal stabilizer. Next time I’ll put the glue and Mr. Surfacer in separate boxes. Total construction time to this point was about 6 hours, spent while also watching a couple movies.

Now home, I attached the landing gear was installed, the canopy masked and the whole model polished.

One modification done to the original was swapping out the wartime wheels with larger brakes used on late-model Spitfires. No one does a set of these in aftermarket, but luckily Tom Calbury provided a spare set from his Airfix Spitfire Mk.22/24 kit.

Painting and Markings:

When Ken Brown bought TZ138 one of the first modifications was to hastily remove the standard RAF camouflage paint. The metal was polished, and some minor trim and sponsorship logos applied. Remember they only had one month to get it ready for the race.

I started by painting this model with Alclad II’s Polished Aluminum. The paint stinks to high heaven, but it sure gives a beautiful shiny metallic finish. Unfortunately it showed that my polish job wasn’t good enough. The solution was to spray a coat of Future floor wax on everything, then apply a coat of Airframe Aluminum. Another coat of Future sealed the finish. A couple panels were picked out and highlighted with Alclad II’s White Aluminum shade.

The propeller blades, spinner and sliding rear canopy were painted with Polly Scale Isreali Camouflage Blue.

I originally planned to make all the markings myself, but in the years that followed, Mike Belcher (Belcher Bits) made a small number of decal sets that I managed to scoop up. I understand someone in England now produces a set as well.

The decals responded very well to Gunze Mr. Marksofter. To make the lightning bolt, I followed the instructions and cut a spare length of decal to match a guide supplied on the instructions. I first noticed that by doing so, I had an angled portion that was too long. No problem I thought, I’ll just trim off about 3/32”. That worked fine. I discovered later that my left and right stripes reach different points on the canopy. Even with care lining the decals up, I still had a mismatch. No wonder people hate decaling stripes.

I experimented with another technique for the natural metal finish. After the sealer coat of Future, I applied Polly Scale clear satin acrylic to several panels, and clear flat to the fabric elevators. The tonal difference is subtle, but there.

Weathering was limited to a light panel line wash with acrylic paint. Again, the only wear this scheme would have seen was the flight from Edmonton to Cleveland.

Conclusions:

After a dozen years, and one false start, I finally have my Edmonton air racer. Compared to the other camouflaged Spitfires in my collection, it not only stands out, but it has an interesting ‘local’ connection.

When the Academy kit debuted I didn’t know about the accuracy issues. I’ve since learned about them but I’ve also learned that no one has bothered to produce an accurate 1/48th scale Mk. XIVe. I’m happy with my model and will certainly live with the inaccuracies in exchange for finally having my model sitting on my shelf.

As I was writing this article, I discovered that Academy has released the Mk.XVIe bubbletop in a ‘special edition’ boxing that includes decals for seven aircraft. There are a couple RAF machines, Indian and Belgian plus, they’ve also included marking for CF-GMZ in its air racing finish. I haven’t seen the decals, but it’s now possible to build the same plane I have without having to hunt down the aftermarket decals.