Fujimi has had a mixed reputation with its kits. Many of them are the finest examples of the type around with good fit and quality molding. Some are horrid, out of scale and not worth the plastic they are made with. Yet others look great in the box, but when it comes time to build them, they are filler nightmares. Not having built this particular kit, I can't tell you which category it belongs. I can tell you that the surface detailing is superb with fine and crisply molded engraved detailing. There are no sink areas that I could easily spot. Only a tad of flash on a couple of parts and ejector pin marks were only found on the back of the wheels, upper main gear legs and the inside of the gear doors. All these should be relatively simple to fix.

The sprues are marked as 'Spitfire XIV', though some of the additional sections look to be peculiar to the PR.19. As you may expect, the builder is going to be doing a lot of drilling, scribing, and filling on this one. The various camera windows on the fuselage and lower wing will have to be opened up. On the upper wing surface, the gun access panels will need to be filled, some 'bumps' removed, and a couple of new panel lines scribed in place. What appears to be an anti-collision light on the box art, but a cooling scoop in the instructions that goes on the upper spine will need to be fabricated by the builder. The kit provides both 'clipped' and full wing tips, but only the full ones are appropriate. A long range fuel tank seems to be the only real option.

Instructions are quite good, providing all the needed info for doing the needed conversion, for really, that is what you are doing; converting an FR.14 into a PR.19. Colors are given using Gunze paints and apparently PRU Blue isn't in the catalogue as there is a mixture chart given for this. All the four options are painted in overall PRU Blue. These planes were not very colorful as Spitfires go, generally differing only in serial and perhaps an aircraft number. No upper or lower wing roundels so the decal sheet isn't missing anything. You have 'I' from 682 Sq in Italy during 1945 (the box art plane), 6C*W from PRDU in England during 1947-48, 'Z' and 'Y' from 541 Sq in the UK during 1944. These planes both had D-Day stripes on the fuselage. The decals themselves are well printed, thick and with white markings that are actually closer to ivory. In other words, standard Japanese kit decals.

For those of you used to Spit kits that have a dozen parts, this one will be a bit of a surprise. In order to do the usual multiple variations, Fujimi has made this one a bit fiddly. Separate wing tips, separate aft spine, an upper cowl that is in two halves and separate prop blades add to the parts count in this one. However, Fujimi has its heart in the right place and it definitely fills a gap in the long list of Spitfire variants.

Review kit courtesy of me and the sales table!

December 2004