Wanna read a short history and see what is in the box ?  Go here.

I had heard about how poor the quality control was on this kit prior to starting. Taking a good close look, I was quite pleased that there were a number of aftermarket bits for this one. In fact, were it not for the Ultracast  resin bits that I had been sent to review, this kit would never have gotten started. There is not a large part that doesn't have sink marks on it. Some of them are really bad, such as on the wheels illustrated to the right. There was also quite a bit of flash on a few parts. Hopefully ICM has gotten these problems under control. I don't recall the Yaks having this big a problem.

OK, so now on to the construction part. I started with the interior and the engine. The major components of the interior were glued together. In place of the kit seat, I used  Ultracast 48068 as it is just a nicer molding and includes the harness. The kit seat adjustment lever was glued to the side of the Ultracast seat.

At this time, I also glued together the basic engine. I have no plans on displaying the engine, but wanted something to stick the prop and exhausts onto. It is great that ICM provides a complete Merlin and it is quite well detailed. I have seen this kit built with the engine properly painted and wired and it is a thing of beauty. ICM should be congratulated for including these items. The engine mounts fit well to the firewall, though the lower one has a lot of flash on it and won't be fun to clean up. The largest of the sink marks on the wings and fuselage were filled with my old standby 3M Acryl-Blue Glazing Putty. The interior and other bits were then painted with Testors RAF Interior Green enamel. This included the engine assembly. They were then washed using Rustall black wash. This materiel is water based so won't harm even acrylic paint when it is fully cured. It is also relatively thin so it may take a few applications to get the effect you want.

Meanwhile, I had decided to use Ultracast 48062 replacement elevators for the late Spit IX. That meant removing the kit ones. Now this is not something that I do very often so am not really that good at it, but I figured, why not! I started by lightly scribing along the hinge line with my Xacto. Thanks to the soft plastic, no sawing was done. Just three or four heavy scribes on each side allowed me to flex the part until it came away. I would suggest scribing/sawing on one side for a bit and then switching to the other side to prevent accidentally cutting things at the wrong angle. This is experience speaking! Anyway, removing the elevators wasn't that tough a job and you could even use the kit ones if you wanted, however, I had these great aftermarket ones so will use them.

Once the fuselage had all the bits and pieces installed, painted and washed, the engine block and firewall assembly was glue in and left to dry. Then the fuselage halves were glued together. This kit has the interior installed from the underside, which is a great help in construction as you don't have to worry about it getting in the way. There is a smaller brace in the back that I almost forgot to glue in place, so make sure that you don't miss it. The fit of the fuselage halves around the engine assembly is very tight. I used clamps to hold the halves together while they dried. The only reason I went through the trouble of installing the engine is that I wanted something to stick the prop onto when done. I have no intention of displaying the plane with all the covers off, though you can easily do that as there are extra engine side covers in the kit.

Underside of fuselage

Upper side showing engine block

Next, the wings were glued together. You have the option of installing the guns (actually a couple of variants of the guns) in the wings and having the gun bay access covers open to see your handiwork. There are two types of wing bulges depending on if you have drum or belt feed guns installed. The larger bulges are for the drum fed cannon and were used on early Mk.IXs. Since I am doing an early version, These wing bulges were glued into the upper wing. Fit is fair and I did have to use the ever popular filler on the joins.

While all this was curing, work was continued on the interior. A few parts that were not attached during the initial construction and painting were removed from the sprues and glued in place. It seems that every part of any thickness at all has sink marks in it. This does nothing but take away from the pleasure of building this kit. While I understand that the poor quality control issue has been taken care of, the fact is that there are many, many kits out there (like this one) that are just a nightmare because of all the sink marks. To ICM's credit, they are offering to replace any parts that have been poorly molded. I did not take advantage of that offer on this kit because: a) I wanted to see how much the poor parts impacted the kit and if they could be overcome, b) I'm a masochist and revel in this stuff, and c) I'm fortunate enough to have many aftermarket parts that will take care of some of the problems.

With the interior complete and the fuselage relatively whole, the interior was glued in place (actually, it sort of snaps in, but additional gluing is recommended). Then the wing was glued to the bottom. Fit here wasn't the greatest and when dry, it took several applications of filler to get rid of the gaps. Then the wing tips were glued on. Like almost every other relatively thick part on this kit, it had sink marks on it that needed filled. Several applications were required and detail in the area was lost during the process. 

The tailplanes (which had the elevators removed, remember?) were glue in and actually fit quite well. Somehow these thick pieces (thankfully) had no sink marks in them. Then the lower engine cover was glued in (after some trimming on the back section). The radiator covers were then glued in place. These did not fit well, being a bit too narrow and they didn't sink all the way into the proffered slots in the lower wing. The lower cover was puttied and smoothed and the guns installed. The guns had HUGE sink marks on both sides. I filled them a couple of times, but fear that they are still going to be visible when the kit is done. These and the little caps didn't fit too well, either. 

I used Aeromaster sheet 48-465 for this aircraft as it had the Mk IX of Lt Horbaczewski of  'Skalski's Circus'. Lt Horbaczewski was an exceptional fighter pilot and rose to command 315 Sq with the rank of Squadron Leader. He met his death in August of 1944 in a battle with Fw-190s. He managed to down three of them, bringing his confirmed kill score to 16 1/2; fourth in the ranking of Polish WW2 aces.

The Aeromaster decals are just superb and reacted well with the Solvaset I used. Deciding not to waste the good stencil decals on this kit, I used the ICM ones. They worked fairly well but have a lot of carrier that needs to be trimmed. Some of them also silvered despite all precautions. There was a bit of a delay in finishing the kit as the two colors of code provided for this plane were both wrong and I sent away to Aeromaster to get the correct ones. After waiting what seemed like months (it was only about 3 and a half weeks), with no update sheet in sight, I went ahead and used the too-dark blue codes. ("Sir, this is the Color Police, put down the decals and step away from the model"). 

With the decals in place, the kit was given a matte coat to seal them in. I have used Future and Tamiya Flat Base for years and swear by it (not at it!). The masking was removed and then the fishtail exhausts (Ultracast # 48060), the replacement resin wheels (Ultracast # 48065), gear doors, underwing pitot tube, prop and small clear landing and upper anti-collision light were glued in place. The final step was to add exhaust staining and some final paint touchups and the model was complete. 

For those of you who think that I forgot the radio antenna longwire, the Spit  IX didn't use a long wire. A VHF radio set was developed that used a short wire antenna. As you know, the Mk IX was based on the Mk V fuselage and many Mk V airframes that had been damaged or crashed were converted. This means that you will see both the old style antenna mast and a newer one. In the old mast the radio wire was inserted in the antenna mast so is not visible.