The kit

The Classic Airframes kits are limited run, multimedia models for experienced modellers. In this case it means that in box you find plastic parts of fuselage halves, wings, stabilizers and rudder, resin interiors, main wheel bays and some small items and vac-formed canopy. All parts have flashes and need to be cleaned up before assembly. Fine engraved panel lines had to be rescribed in some places, decal sheet is well printed, but scheme for machine used by I.A.C. is totally wrong. Undersides should be in Sky or Duck Egg Blue or some one off light colour and not black as suggested. Also size and placement of colours on upper surfaces should be different.

Construction

As I said earlier, this is a "short-run", so building process is not as easy task as with new mass production injection molded kits and some test fitting, sanding and filling is required. There are 3 areas which needs special attention and lot of hard labor. These are wing - fuselage joints (wing halves are too narrow at their roots), joint between rear top fuselage and main fuselage itself (main fuselage is designed open-topped and top part is provided for every version and this part is too wide) and finally oil coolant resin mesh just won't fit in its position. My solution is visible on the left. I cut out whole section and rebuilt it.

The same I used on top fuselage part, here, I also made some ribs and glued them into fuselage halves. I don't have any pictures of the interior, so it is fantasy, but it looks better than just "hollow emptiness". About interiors: I am not quite sure about their positions, especially pilot's one, there is no proper marking on plastics parts and instructions doesn't help you too much either. Vac-formed canopy is OK and after careful trimming sits on its position without any hassle. The only thing I had to do is cut through it to separate parts to show them open. There are few more things to detail, for example: landing gear bays and wheels, flaps, landing lights, but it all depends on references you have.

Painting process

After careful sanding, filling and panel lines rescribing I was finally ready to grab my airbrush. In this point I checked C.A. colour instructions again and discovered that, colour scheme for I.A.C. Battle is totally wrong! I have only two original photographs of this machine. First portraits this aircraft in its original RAF marking, on the second has already Celtic bosses painted. I tried to reconstruct colour scheme I saw on those photographs, so there it is. I will not argue about underside colour is it Duck Egg Blue or Sky or Yellow perhaps? But it's not black for sure!

Firstly I sprayed underside colour. I made few mixes of different shades of Duck Egg Blue. Lighter shades were sprayed into centre of panels, darker around lines and then misted over all area, to bring some depth into otherwise very flat surface. After some drying time I masked off sharp demarcation line with help of Tamiya masking tape. And sprayed Dark Earth on upper surfaces, again more than one shade was used. I left it dry overnight and then green followed. I was trying to recreate beaten finish I saw on photograph of real machine, so some hard weathering and scrapes were applied.

Finished model

Model represents Battle V1222 of 4th Bombing and Gunnery School based in West Frengh, Scotland. After forced landing on Waterford racecourse on 24.4.1941, this plane became IAC No.92. As I said, it is very hard to find any pictures of this plane in its Irish marking and so the marking is not complete. IAC Battle had a Donald Duck nose art painted under the exhausts, but it was impossible to get any detail view on this from my only sources I have: Landfall Ireland (ISBN 1-904242-03-0) and IAC Celebrates 100 Years of Flight (ISBN 0-9546669-0-9), which is a "must have" for all Irish Air Corps modellers. All other marking is airbrushed over plotter cut masks and I used Max Decal sheet for colour match, my mixes are a bit brighter than on this sheet, but I like it like it is.


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