National Spitfire Monument

Southampton being the 'home of the Spitfire', there are ambitious plans for creating a National Spitfire Monument in the city, visible from afar.

The centrepiece of the monument is a 1.5 scale model of a Spitfire, soaring into the sky.

Very recently, the first tangible evidence of 'work in progress' on the monument was displayed in public, at Southampton Airport to be precise: a 1/40 scale model of the final monument.

Needless to say that I quickly popped into the departure area of the airport ....

The base will feature roundels of all air forces that flew Spitfires.

It will look absolutely fantastic once the actual monument is in place; can't wait to see it!!

Spit in civil service

Nearly all my Spitfire models are diecast models. The one exception is the model of a Spitfire 'Floatplane', which is a plastic kit, but which I got off eBay fully built.

From there, it's one small step to looking at plastic kits of Spitfires, see if I can find Spitfire versions that are not available as diecast models, and then build them from scratch, right?

So here's the first one: a model of a Mk IX Spitfire with civil livery.

And here is the completed model:

In addition to what's stated on the box, here is more on the history of the airplane.

It was fun to go back to building model kits again, something I used to do quite a lot many many years ago. There will no doubt be more!

Spitfire Lighthouse

Over the years, Southampton has been livened up by a number of 'sculpture trails', and several of them had Spitfire-inspired sculptures! Another trail, Light the South, recently featured 40 large (8ft) and 40 small sculptures of lighthouses. And, sure enough, one of the lighthouses was inspired by the Spitfire!

I wonder what will be next ...