Let's start with something familiar.

I think I've built a dozen of Spitfire kits in my life. Mostly Airfix ones. This Hasegawa one will work great to familiarize myself with the new generation of kits.

First of all, the cockpit interior is a bit better than the classic Airfix Mk.I one. There's a decal for the instruments panel and the stick is finely molded. No side details, but the kit will have a closed canopy, so that won't be too noticeable in 1:72.

For reference, here's what a real Spitfire interior looks like:

And this is what I am working on:

And this is how it looks when I'm calling it done:

I know. Early days :)

Now that the interior is done, let's tackle the rest of the aircraft.

Putting together the fuselage was not particularly difficult. I took advantage of Citadel's Liquid Green Stuff to fill up the usual gaps, now I'm just waiting for everything to be bone dry before starting to sand.

While waiting, I decided that my airbrushing needs would be better served with a gravity-fed one, rather than a siphon one like the Paasche VL0912 that I own now.

So, in a couple of days I'll be the proud owner of a new Neo CN for Iwata. I'll let you know how that works :)

Well, look at that.

Glued, filled, sanded, masked, primed and painted fuselage is drying now.

Already the best Spitfire I've ever built, the new airbrush is really making a difference :)

Forgot to take pictures during the painting and finishing stages, so here they are:

First of all, here's the plane, finished with Tamiya Semi-Gloss Clear TS-79 and Tamiya Weathering Master D:

Then I decided to build a little simple display base, using three figures from the Airfix RAF Airfield set.

Figures were primed, painted with Vallejo Model Color Prussian Blue (70.965) and shaded with Citadel Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade. The pavement was made by finding a concrete pattern online, importing it in Word (yeah, sophisticated tools here :) ), adding a dashed line and printing it on a B&W laser printer.

Then went with a yellow highlighter on the dashed line, cut and glued on a 7.5" x 7.5" wood board.

Crazy glued the figure on top, et voila'!

Raw photos of this build, with no commentary