Cheap 1:48 Spitfire by New Ray.

[Remington]

This week, due to a horrible lack of time, I pointed my attention to a prepainted 1:48 Spitfire by a company (unknown to me till about two weeks ago) called NewRay. A buddy bought it for me at his local toy shop and it only cost 5 €. It needs only little assembly and everything is screwed into place. Now the detail is not that perfect, but the cost is unbeatable, so that you could even build mission markers in the form of downed planes and what not. And even in this state...it's not that bad really.The wheels are retractable, which means you could use it as a flying or as a parked plane.

I decided to paint up the pilot as he was only plastic grey...  It was nice to paint something at all this weekend and it gave me time to try out a new recipe for the English uniform brown and go from cars to humans.

New Ray has other planes on its catalogue as well, but I am not sure which ones. One thing I do know though is that their biplanes are 1:35, so be careful there.



EDIT: The price was wrong. It only cost 5€.

[Westfalia Chris]

Nice find! Maybe it could be improved by toning down those rather bright colours with thinned black paint run directly into the crevices, painting the cockpit struts, and adding some drybrushed smoke spots behind the exhausts and gun locations?

As for the pilot, very, nice work, but I think the jacket should be blue grey (at least for the Battle of Britain, if I'm not mistaken). But the face is superbly defined, yet smooth at the same time.

EDIT: Just saw that it's a late-war Spit, so the jacket comment above might not be correct.

[carlos marighela]

Nice work on the pilot but I'd consider giving the plane a repaint too. Bit of a mongrel model really. Looks like a Griffin engined MkXVIII at the front mated with a much earlier mark at the rear, maybe a MkIX. At any rate it would be greatly improved if painted in sea gray and green. Put some big black and white invasion stripes on the bugger and it will draw attention away from the obvious faults of the kit.

[Remington]

It is quite interesting for a fiver, right? I was well impressed.

Oh, to be honest I have no idea what color the uniform should be. I googled "spitfire pilot" and went from there.    The ones I found were all brown.

So you really think I should repaint huh? I had just managed to convice myself that I could avoid that and that this plane isn't worth it anyway. I guess I should start informing myself about the paint patterns.

[carlos marighela]

Your toy and not bad for a fiver. Just say it's an experimental version. Sea grey/ Green is a much more typical paint combo. Don't worry about the uniform, the leather flying jacket was dark brown.

[Calimero]

Well since you made a grey plastic figures turn into that beautifully painted pilot, I think that you should paint the plane too…

[Remington]

Thanks Callimero.

Ok, so brown is alright. The detail on the figure wasn't that excellent anyway. No idea what they wanted to sculpt.

I guess I'll check out the ospreys and give it a try. Never painter a plane before. If it goes wrong... It was only a fiver!