Supermarine Seafire III

Max Otten
My take on the Seafire III with folded wings, the Special Hobby kit with Airwaves PE wing fold. Much more difficult than the styrene folded wings of the Seafire XV, XVII and 47 I did before. Fit of the PE is poor. I figure from the instructions that the PE parts need to be against the cut of the wings, not recessed as it should be. Also the shape of the Special Hobby-kit wings apparently is different from the Airfix kit. Nonetheless the wing-tip fold is too wide (PE 3.1mm, Airfix 2.8, Special Hobby and spare parts 2.2). So lots of careful sanding required.
I put a bent piece of 0.5mm bronze rod in the wing fold to support the upturned wings. I was afraid the wing-tip fold PE would succumb to fatigue during all the handling so I put a blob of superglue inside the hinge. Later I could remove it as it all came through undamaged.
Somehow I lost one of the inner upper wings. I could replace both with Airfix Seafire XVII left-overs with some surface detail removed. Very late (after painting) I discovered I had double sets of flap actuator panels. On the early Seafires these are outboard of the wing fold, on the late ones inboard. So that needed fixing.