Airfix 1/24 DH Mosquito - Part Five, the finished product

After putting the fuselage and wings together it was time to turn attention to the engines. These go together really well so I just took my time painting all the different components and then putting them together. Nothing tricky here.

The undercarriage components came from Scale Aircraft Conversions. All items were a direct replacement for the kit parts. I did struggle a bit to make these fit though. It felt like the metal parts were slightly smaller than the kit parts. They needed persuading to get them in to position.

When it came time to install the engine into the nacelle one thing I learnt which I think would help other modelers is to not glue the rear L shaped part of the engine mount until the next stage when the nacelles are fitted to the wing. These L shaped pieces fit into slots on the wing so it makes the whole job easier of they are not glued until that time.

Next up was the browning machine guns. The brass barrels from Mast Model are gorgeous, in fact they are may favorite upgrade. All you need to do is remove the kit barrel, drill a hole in the plastic part to receive the post on the end of the brass barrel and you are done. Once these are in position they look awesome.

 



The 20 mm Hispano cannons are also terrific add-ons but need a little more work to install. Once installed though the business end with the recoil springs really looks the business.







With these components installed it was finally time to put some paint on the bird. The whole model was primed with Mr Surfacer 1000 and then given a couple of light coats of Humbrol Medium Sea Grey.

In order to do the camouflage I took the kit paint guide down to my local Staples and had them enlarge it by 333%. This gave me a pattern that was just about the right size for the model - I think 335% might have been dead on. 

I cut out the patterns so that I could spray on the Dark Green and used rolls of tacky putty to mount them on the aircraft. Copious amounts of masking tape were used to keep the lot spray proof. I had already decided to glue in position one set of engine covers, the others I mounted in place with masking resin so I could peel them off later.

After spraying the camouflage scheme there was still much to do. I replaced the kit fuel tanks with the Paragon Design after market items. These were just so much better than the skinny items in the kit. They were relatively easy to put together and sand to shape too.

Another Paragon Design after market item I used was their wheel well doors. Check out the picture - major improvement over the kit items.

 

I think I was running out of steam at this point. I did have a very hard time with the decals. They didn't go on well having a very thick film. Not sure if I did something to cause it but it didn't seem to matter how much Micro Sol and Set I used I couldn't get them to bond well. In fact about a week after putting them on one of the fuselage codes peeled off!

Fortunately I was able to procure some stencils from Mal Mayfields Custom Masks so I am going to spray these codes on to fix the problem. Many, many  thanks to Mal who "came out of retirement" to make them for me.

So that was that - I tried to do some real weathering on the model especially from the exhausts over the wings and down the nacelles. I also did a lot of paint chipping and weathering on the propeller blades and wing leading edges. The tyres too got the treatment with some weathering powders.

While I was doing this I discovered Jamie Haggo's blog where he showcases his weathering work. Highly recommended, good work and a great sense of humor. Definitely worth a visit. Here's the link http://haggismodels.blogspot.com/

So that's it done. One last item - the canopy is an amazingly good fit so need to mess around there! Now just need to find somewhere to display it.

Airfix 1/24 DH Mosquito - Part Four, Radiators, fuselage and wing tapes

Before putting the wings together I prepared the radiator parts per the instructions provided with the RB Productions radiator etch. This was very straightforward. After painting the components black I then "glued" the etches to the plastic using Future.

After installing the radiators I installed the two wing landing lights inserting a piece of silver foil in to the clear part and fixing it in place with future.The clear part was then protected with some Liquid Mask. Gluing the wings together was again straightforward the fit of the parts is good. One important thing to do was to pre-paint the inside of the radiator intakes and clamp everything around the radiators to ensure good alignment.

You can see in the photograph here I also painted the inside of the wing structure white which is consistent with my references.

At this point I embarked on creating representations of the fuselage tapes and wing strengthening that can be seen in photographs but is absent from the model. If you have The De Haviland Mosquito. A comprehensive guide for the modeller - Richard A Franks, book the position of the tapes is shown in the 1/48 drawings at the rear of the book.

Following the technique described by Steve Abbey in Airfix Model World #5 I taped off the seams along the fuselage center lines, around the rear of the wings and the wing strengtheners with Tamiya masking tape. I then proceeded to fill in the area between the tape with successive layers of Mr Surfacer 1200. After about 6 coats the level of the filler was just proud of the tape edges.

Next step was to sand down  the filler level with the tape. On the fuselage this was easily achieved using my Flex-I-File. The wing strengtheners I did mainly with sanding sticks.

The wing and fuselage assemblies were now ready to be joined together. The fit is very good and results in the largest model to ever sit on my workbench and it's only about 30% done. Maneuvering this around is going to be tricky.

Airfix 1/24 DH Mosquito - Part Three, Cockpit closed up

The cockpit parts provided paint up nicely especially if you follow you references (Airfix's recommendations are a bit basic)and the Airscale control panel set includes decals for the compass and the bomb aiming device so you quickly get a good looking "office" with little effort.

When looking at the throttle box though I just didn't like the moulded control rods so I cut them off and made my own from brass rod.

I also made two rudder actuators from plasticard and hung them down the side of the pedals. I then ran two pieces of stretched sprue back under the pilots seat to represent the rudder control wires.

You can see in the shots here they add a nice touch when looking down in to the cockpit and when looking up through the crew hatch.

Dry fitting the fuselage halves together showed there were going to be no problems so with the halves taped and clamped I ran solvent down the seams. Job done.

I am very happy with the final shot. I haven't done any weathering at this point but I do expect to put some wear in to the floor area with some oil filters later on.

For now though I am going to turn to the wing and get it ready for joining with the fuselage.

Airfix 1/24 DH Mosquito - Part Two, Cockpit

The cockpit build followed the instructions. The following improvements were made over the standard build

1. Representation of melamine floorboards.
2. Use of the Airscale Instrument panel
3. Seat cushion changed
4. Installation of RB Productions Sutton Harnesses
5. Scratchbuilt Engine Control Rods
6. Navigator seat supports
7. Fuel cock panel
8. Control column cables
9. Elevator Rod
10. Rudder wires

The references show a red,brown melamine foot board at the pilots position. This is represented in the kit but the instructions recommend painting this cockpit green.. To improve this I took my smallest drill bit .014" and drilled representation of screw heads around the outer edge. I used Games Workshop Dark Flesh as the paint colour and then painted the screw heads Chain mail silver.

I didn't like the seat cushions in the kit so I figured my pilot had come up with his own set up consisting of an old cushion in the seat well. The RB Production seat belts were a joy to put together and look terrific.

When it came to the instrument panel I was impressed with the kit provided part. In the end I installed the Airscale panel but really this was because I had it, Frankly the Airfix rendition is very good. In the picture below you can see the Airfix component on the left and the Airscale transfer on the right.

Behind the seats run the engine control rods. These are not present in the kit at all and I felt they should be so I made a scratch version of them from rod and card. Once installed behind the seat they can be seen from above and from the front so I think they are a worthwhile addition. Similarly the supports for the Navigator seat back were added to provide more clutter.

While at the Navigator station I added a small piece of card with two red buttons to represent the fuel cocks that were to the Navigators left hand side mounted on the seat back. They can just be seen in the picture above.

I have seen in another persons build where they cut the control column in order to remount it slightly leaning to the left. I did this as swell as removing the two moulded cables and replacing them with lead wire. In addition I used masking tape to represent the bindings that can be seen in reference photos on the column handle. (Looking at the photo they need a little more glue)

Extending out of the front of the control column and reaching back under the pilots seat is the elevator control rod. This is absent in the kit but easily represented with a piece of plastic rod.

The final mod to the cockpit area will be the addition of wires from the rudder pedals to the pulley under the pilots seat. I haven't done this yet as I plan to do it just before I button up the fuselage.

So that's the cockpit. I'm currently working on the fuselage halves which includes painting the cockpit walls and mounting the various instruments. This will be done as per the instructions so the next shots of the model should be of a closed up fuselage.

One final note here. There are a lot of mould ejector pin markings on this model. All of them are being handled with Mr Surfacer and various sanding sticks. No magic there just tedious work but it needs to be done as many of them would be clearly visible in the finished model.

Airfix 1/24 DH Mosquito build - Part One

Airfix in my mind returned to the arena of plastic construction kits when they announced the planned introduction of the 1/24 scale DH Mosquito. This wasn't going to be your Grandmother's Spitfire or Me109, this was going to be a full on twin engine fighter/bomber bringing back memories of 633 Squadron and all that.

And what a purchase. Easily the largest kit box I had ever come across measuring a clear two feet long by x and y deep. The contents are enormous, tons of sprues a book of instructions and some color sheets for painting guides.

Even though this would make a terrific out of the box build I knew I was going to have to put some extra effort in to this one so first up here are the references I obtained to help with detailing.

1. Mosquito FB.VI Airframe, systems and RAF war time usage - Dave Brown, SAM Publications
2. The De Haviland Mosquito. A comprehensive guide for the modeller - Richard A Franks, SAM Publications

And on top of that this kit has garnered a large number of after market items so I splurged on most of them. In no particular order they are:

Scale Aircraft Conversion - replacement metal undercarriage

MasterCasters intake gilles

Master Model - .303 Browing Guns

Master Model 20mm Hispano Cannon

RB Productions Radiator grilles

Airscale Instrument Panel decal

RB Productions Sutton QK Harness

Paragon Design Undercarriage doors, ammo chutes and 100g tanks

Mastercaster Wheels

The majority of these I obtained from White Ensign Models however the resin parts I found at Mid Tenn Hobbies and the Master Caster and Airscale parts were purchased direct.

So that's it. I'm ready for the off. First off the focus will be on the cockpit.

Airfix 1/72nd P-51D build

There are any number of builds and reviews of this fine kit from Airfix so I'm not going to dwell on the fact that it is probably the best 1/72 scale kit available today of the P-51D.

This build is a special one for me because I am going to build it in the scheme of a plane flown by the father of a friend of mine during 1944.

Lieutenant Jesse G Fuller flying with the 308th Squadron, 31st FG out of San Severo, Italy was on an escort mission to Munich on 16th November 1944 when his plane was hit by flak over Udine. With a damaged tail section Lieutenant Fuller bailed out over Donji Zemunik, Yugoslavia. He was picked up by some of Tito's resistance fighters and shepherded by some British handlers before getting on a British naval destroyer for the trip back to San Severo some 6 weeks later.

The plane he was flying carried the codes HL-N and had an interesting history itself originally being one of the aircraft flown by Mustang Ace Lieutenant Bob Goebels.  (Later promoted) While Goebels flew the plane it carried the name "Flying Dutchman". A restored P51-D can still be seen today painted as the "Flying Dutchman" which is fortunate for me because I was able to obtain a decal set from Eagle Editionsof this aircraft.

However, after Goebels left Italy the plane was handed on to George Kennedy who had the name changed to "Man-o-War". My primary reference for this build is a photograph Mr Kennedy sent to my friend of his father in the actual aircraft teasing that Lieutenant Fuller "crashed the best damn plane on the line".

I originally thought I would go with a straight Out of the Box build because the kit is so good but I  just couldn't leave it alone so with the help of Squadron's Walk around P-51D reference book and a few other books on the subject I decided to enhance the model as follows:

1. Remove the small cover on the left hand side of the fuselage
2. Add brake pipe to tail wheel
3. Add brake pipes to main undercarriage legs
4. Add wires to the cockpit radio set
5. Modify 75 gallon fuel tanks to create raised joint between tank halves

Undercarriage
I purchased metal replacement legs from Scale Aircraft Conversions and then using 0.2mm lead wire from UMM I added pipe using my references to match the original aircraft.

Cockpit

The cockpit interior was enhanced by adding cables to the  radio equipment behind the pilots seat using 0.2 mm lead wire. I also used a set of Eduard etched seat belts. Other than that everything else was done with paint. The floor was painted to represent the typical worn wooden floor. The rest of the cockpit got the US Interior Green finish that was then washed with sepia ink the bring out the detail and tone down the green. Equipment was painted based on reference photographs - mostly black, Wear was then represented by use of a lead pencil.

Fuel Tanks

The 75 gallon tanks commonly carried by the P-51D had a noticeable seam around the center line. This is missing from the kit moldings. To recreate these seams I used .010" plastic card. After drawing round a tank half as a pattern I cut out two pieces of card that were just slightly larger than the circumference of the tanks. I sandwiched these pieces of card between the two halves of the tanks. I then finished it off by sanding the card to create the impression of the seam that I was looking for.

So that's it for the mods. Construction was straightforward. The fuselage halves and wing fit was very good with very little filler needed anywhere. The fuselage was primed and then sprayed with both Aluminum (American spelling) and Aircraft Aluminium (British Version) Alclad paints.

The exhaust are resin after market items from xxxxxx and although they were added later I used Scale Aircraft conversion undercarriage legs.

The photograph I have shows a well worn P-51 so I decided to go heavy on the weathering. After sealing the Alclad with Future I positioned all the decals and then sealed them in place with more Future. I used the Eagle Editions primary decals and then the Airfix stencils. I found the Eagle Editions to be a little stiff but use of Micro Set and Micro Sol solved that. The Airfix stencils are terrific.

The weathering was achieved with a Dark Wash and then use of Tamiya weathering powders.

The display base is a used CD covered with Acrylic resin and then painted and flocked.

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So finally after over 6 months it's done. I spent a lot of time on other projects during that period but I am glad now that this is done and I can get it in the mail and off to it's new home.

Next up will be the Airfix 1/24 scale Mosquito!