Hi all
I’ve become involved in a project for a local school, the subject is ‘Spitfires’ This will involve me and the kids (10 yr olds) making a series of models illustrating the development of the Spitfire from K5054 through to the Attacker. each kid will get to make their own model so thats 26 planes to make – they will be roughly 1/32 scale and made from flat sheets of ply so nothing too complicated there 🙂
My problem is what marks to make, here is my proposed list (bearing in mind that these kids are only 10) so I need lots of variance in shape and colours – what do the rest of you think
1) Prototype
2) High Speed Spitfire
3) Mk 1a Battle of Britain colours
4) Mk 1a in ‘bounce’ colours
5) Mk 4 with griffon and six gun wing
6) Mk 5b Polish squadron (Polish kids in class)
7) Mk 5 with Volks filter and clipped wings
8) Captured Spitfire with DB 601
9) Mk 5 American Colours
10) Mk 7 extended wingtips
11) Mk8 two seater G-AIDN bright yellow colours
12) Mk 9 with under wing beer barrels
13) Mk 9 Indian Colours (Indian kids in class)
14) Spitfire Float Plane
15) Mk 11 in pink
16) Mk 12
17) Mk 14 post war racing colours silver and red
18) Seafire
19) Mk 16 low back
20) Mk 18 in far east colours
21) PR 19
22) Mk 21
23) Mk 24
24) Seafire 47
25) Spiteful
26) Attacker
Gez
By: XN923 - 25th September 2007 at 22:41
Looks like some good possibilities. Other options might be Irish 2-seat TrMkIX (apple green with yin-yang national markings), Dutch MkIX (silver), and how about a bright red G-FIRE? You could substitute a IIa for one of the Ias as well, or have an early MkI with either silver undersides or night/white and the straight top canopy.
If you are diverging sufficiently from the ‘true’ Spitfire bloodline to have the Attacker, why not start with the S6B or the F.4/34? They would be different alright!
By: Rich82 - 25th September 2007 at 22:39
Gez,
My answer to you would be, as you said, to keep it simple. I’m a teacher myself and regardless of project, 10yr olds can be very demanding. I think it would be most sensible to select 1 or 2 (3 atmost) Marks of Spitfire, make various templates etc and go down that route. Anything more and you risk children using the wrong bits, cutting out the wrong shapes, painting wrong colours etc, and you’ll need to put a fair amount of time into the construction of the models. It’s potentially so much hassle that could result in not many children having a completed poject.
Keep it simple. Have your 2 templates so you can get them all drawn up and cut out. You’ll have similar colour schemes for all models – I wouldn’t worry about having a variety of schemes and colours. Why not have a class “squadron” – 26 models painted up as a Big Wing squadron or something (I realise few if any squadrons had as many as 26 planes, but at least there’s one for each letter of the alphabet!). See how things go. I’m happy to lend you a hand over internet if you need anything (advice on behaviour management, lol) so keep me/the forum updated.
Good luck and enjoy it!
Rich.
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September 25, 2007 at 10:08 pm