Completed Review - Tamiya Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb/Mk.Vb Trop (60756) - Part 2

Continuing from Part 1, let talk about decals. In fact, bear with me, I'm going to rave about a decal sheet. Yes really!

The decals in question are from Xtradecal, set X72187. I have never seen such a comprehensive set of decals with an equally comprehensive instruction sheet.


This particular set contains decals for a Spitfire Mark 5s only, there are a total of 12 options, from both the European and African theatres. As well as roundels and identification numbers there's a huge number of stencils and demarcation lines. I think, if you choose carefully, you can probably get five or six complete aircraft from this set.

Application was fairly straight forward although some of the long and very thin decals for the "don't walk" lines pushed my decal skills to the limit. It took me the best part of a week (in the evenings) to apply them, mostly, due to the number of them.

Now in previous builds this would be me about done, but with this build I'd decided it was time to raise my game. I wanted the panel lines to show and some weathering, especially as this was an aircraft in use and in flight.

After spraying the whole model with a gloss coat it was time to apply a wash. The wash I'd chosen was from Flory Models. After watching the tutorial video on their website, several times, I got stuck into the whole wash process. The actual moment of applying the wash is well captured in my Instgram post taken at the point where I was really wondering what I'd done.

However, it all turned out well and so the build was complete. For me it was most satisfying, the kit was excellent and I'd managed to move my modelling on to the next level. It's no competition winner but for me it marks a significant step forward. Take a look at the pictures below and see what you think.

With the final picture I'm reminded of something I'd forgot to previously mention. This kit doesn't allow for a "wheels up" option. The wheels you see actually come from an Airfix kit (the one I sacrificed as a paint tester) and they fitted perfectly.

And so onto the final matter of my score for this kit

Overall Build Score: 4.5 out of 5, another excellent Tamiya kit as to be expected. A good choice of variants exemplified by the 3 types of air filters and 2 canopies included in the box. If I had to pick a fault it's the lack of choice when it comes to portraying the aircraft in flight.

Build Review - Tamiya Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb/Mk.Vb Trop (60756) - Part 1

Time to get back on track with my aircraft building, where better to start than with another Tamiya kit. The kit, Tamiya's 1:72 Spitfire Mk.Vb/Mk.Vb Trop (kit number 60756) in a North African colour scheme.

Assembly, as so often it the case begins with the cockpit and the two halves of the fuselage. For a change I'd decided not to use a photo-etch set, this model was going to be in flight and so a pilot would be filling the cockpit space. Having said that I think the interior of the kit was reasonably well detailed as is, you can see from the picture below.

The out of the box interior

Cockpit & (Airfix) pilot

The pilot figure was taken from my spares box, in this case an Airfix pilot. Tamiya, for some reason, don't include pilot figures in their 1:72 kits (although this may have changed since their latest F-16 releases at this scale). I find this a little odd, as the 1:48 scale kits, of which some of the 1:72 scale kits are scaled down versions of, do contain pilot figures.

With the insides painted, using a home-brew interior green mix, it was time to assemble the two halves and the cockpit.

This was done by gluing the two halves together and pushing the cockpit assembly up through the bottom. This works well and prevents an uneven cockpit. By comparison I was building an older Airfix Spitfire at the same time. This model used the typical method of trying to glue a floor piece in-between the two halves and it sank leaving it uneven and consigning the model to being used for testing paint colours.

I decided that as this was a model in flight it would need to look used and so wanted to use the hairspray method of weathering and so selected areas were sprayed silver.

To be honest this didn't really work and I'm at a bit of a loss as to why. Not enough hairspray? Too much paint over the top? Either way, in the end only a small part of the wing roots weathered but it look OK. The rest was touched in using a Citadel silver paint.

On to the painting, starting with the underside. I used Vallejo's UK Azure (71.108) but felt that this was too blue. I over sprayed that with a 50/50 coat of UK Azure and Pale Blue Grey (71.046) and this seemed to be a better match.

I've written before about problems with the accuracy of Vallejo's colours and once again this proved to be an issue. I had bought the Vallejo RAF Desert colours box set and that was why I'd chosen a desert colour scheme. However the colour were, once again, not even close. I tried mix after mix with no success before giving up and deciding to use Tamiya paints. This for me wasn't a decision taken lightly as I'd had mixed success with Tamiya paints, finding them too watery, especially combined with my masking.


However my fears were unfounded, I managed to use them and use them well (for me). No paint leaked under my masks which was result! So Vallejo's loss is Tamiya's gain, in the future I won't be quite so afraid of using them.

Colours were straight from instruction sheet. Middle stone sprayed over the whole upper surface, this was a 1:1 mix of XF-59, Desert Yellow and XF-60, Dark Yellow. I then masked of the areas that were to retain this colour and over sprayed the Dark Earth colour. This too was a mix, 1:1 of XF-52, Flat Earth and XF-64 Red Brown.

With the painting done, the next step was the decals, which I'll write about next time.