Beacon Models 1/144 Spitfire Mk. I

The Spitfire Mk. I is one of Beacon Model‘s first production model kits. The company was founded started in 2021. with a Kickstarter, which I supported, but it unfortunately failed. Thankfully, Beacon didn’t give up and they went ahead and produced the model kit anyway!

This is part of the Dogfight double (Bf 109 E vs. Spitfire Mk. I) set in 1/144 scale. I personally am very much interested in their story and I am happy that they succeeded in making their kit.

The build

The kit was fairly straightforward to build as it doesn’t have many parts, roughtly two dozen in total. What I very much appreciate is the fact that is has cockpit details and it’s quite detailed as well. So we finally have have a proper 1/144 Bf 109 and Spitfire kit with details! WOOOO!!

This means that we can have the canopy opened up and see the inside of the cockpt which will make for an interesting diorama.

It also has a lot of extras like different wing types, bombs, and fuel tanks which you can put on the. The quality of the details on the kit is superb for the scale and I like the slightly thicker panel lines and rivets as they can hold a lot more weathering than the Eduard panel lines which are as thick as a hair strand and you lose them as soon as you sand down the model a bit.

This is also the first 1/144 build that I free-handed. I used MRP paints and I think it turned out great. For the decals, I of course used Sol+Set to great success as the decals are made by Cartograf.

Thoughts

I really have to commend Beacon Models for their venture into the modelling world with a 1/144 scale kit. It’s not a big market, but the quality of the kit which they produced is better than some of the established members of the 144 club. If I had to describe the kit in 3 words, it would be “Profipack, but small” as they give you a lot of the features present in the Profipacks from Eduard, such as the masks, painting choices, sheer quality of parts and coloured instructions that it really does feel high quality.

The quality of the Spirfire is superb and there was almost no cleanup needed on the parts.

I will support the company in the future and I hope they prosper!

Rest of my models can be found HERE