PeteF

Had to scratch build the exhaust shrouds. Thinking about this plane, the exhaust stacks were well shrouded so wouldn't have rusted as much as, say, a Spitfire so I went for heat colors.

So much of the detail in this plane is on the bottom that I’m going to display it on a mirror.

Couple more shots. Muddy fenders, extended stencil decals from Barracuda and double the trouble.

Finished the landing gear (other than adding the brake tube to the wheels and the gear door guards). Fiddly...even knowing it was fiddly it was a 2 day grind to get it all right. Had issues with the resin wheels/tires with paint lifting even though I'd primered them so had to fix that with a brush and had to sleeve the axles to fit the wheels...lots of scratch built detail that was missing from the wheel wells. Broke parts that had to be fixed in-situ...yeah this would never have lasted as all-plastic gear. Pretty satisfying to have it done though. Have to finish one of the engines then can put the nacelles together.

Test fitting the most fiddly landing gear ever. There are still 4 additional parts!

Scratch building parts has its challenges. The Mossy has more of the same part in each nacelle than "mirrored" parts. I keep screwing up left and right. Made progress with the wheel wells. Note the retract piston is on the same side of each nacelle.

You’re a better man than I am. I’m already getting sick of building two of all the fiddly bits on a twin rngine plane!

Got some resin tires and more stencil decals from Barracuda today. Also made the rear gear door springs by winding .010 lead wire around .02 lead wire.

I've spent a lot of time looking at the Tamiya kit for reference...and the aftermarket engine kits. That is a really beautiful model. I'm finding the Airfix one is a good blank canvas...it has decent detail in some areas and NO detail in others...which is fine as long as you want to wrestle with scratch-building all the detail. The Tamiya kit has all the detail so looks like an enjoyable model build without having to do all the extra work.

I only have patience to rivet one side of one nacelle today so I went back and finished scratch building the detail on the right side of the engines.

I tried...the largest one they make is 1mm and it was about half the size I needed and barely made a dent in the plastic. From a couple of days of searching the internet, the rivet tools/decals etc end at 1/32 scale.

Thanks Jeff, that is helpful I found another photo which might also be of your Mossie. All references are helpful as there’s a shortage of detailed 3-views with rivets.

Took maybe an hour to do this side.

One of the keys was using a clump of stickem to support the compound curved plastic. This goes pretty fast actually...marked the rivet spacing on the tape. A side benefit is the line of punched rivets creates an easy stressed skin look! Pretty happy with this.

Day 2 of trying to figure out the rivets. Might be on to something. Using a sharp punch to make a small hole then a 1/8 punch with a malet to dent around it.

Spent all day trying to create a workable rivet solution...then saw this picture of a Tamiya Mosquito and gave up. Without a useable way to do rows of rivets at the same time there’s no way in my skill set :(

Well this is going to be a long haul. Airfix had NO rivet detail whatsoever on the nacelles (which are all-metal) and they have fabric control surfaces which were only used on early Mosquitoes. I searched and searched but nobody seems to have a 1/24 rivet solution. What I ended up with was using the "Rosie the Riveter" to mark a line of tiny dots then using a hand punch to punch out every second dot bigger. The scale is about right but it's laborious and the rivets aren't consistent sizes. Harumph. Once they're all in, I'll sand the panel and smooth them out but it's a ridiculous omission on such a large scale plane. I know on the 1/24 Typhoon kit that came much later than the Mossie, it's a rivet fest but this one not so much.

That's disappointing. I got the largest "Rosie the Riveter" tool (1mm) and it barely makes a mark in this plastic. Far too subtle to be useful.

Having fun painting and muddying the nacelles.

I can definitely see how a monostrut and smaller scale version of this metal would be delicate (and particularly prone to bending) because the metal is so soft. Not sure that in many applications it would be a better bet than the plastic though the connection points are stronger. The two main struts on this mossie are solid though. They have a lot of beef to them so are pretty strong in this application but I’m not sure what benefit they’d have for, say, a Spitfire with spindly gear.

Also drilled the strut pivots so I can use brass wire through the rod end instead of just glue.

The fact the axles and eyelets and pivots for the main legs are metal means they’re infinitely stronger than the plastic parts. People told me the plastic will fail within days or weeks of the model sitting with all its weight on those points if you use the plastic gear.

Today was finish back of the firewall day.

Thanks guys. I was always torn with my Nanchang...I spent hours and hours polishing and touching up paint, cleaning oil off and always thinking “I used to spend hours and hours painting this sort of detail on models!” I used to fly with real planes, including an F4F which had horribly non-scale paint schemes and think “I know modelers who spend more time on the accuracy of their paint jobs than you did on your multi-million dollar real fighter!” But no question, familiariy with and having worked on and flown planes removes a certain curtain of confusion about what is what, how it works and how it looks and wears.

Just as an aside, this was my old 1/5 scale Spitfire and 1/4 scale Spitfire. I did scale competitions with these and won a regional Scale Masters event with the big Spit. Wife for scale. Sold the 1/4 scale one in 1997 and it paid for my pilot’s license...not sure which was more work, that or this Mosquito! LOL.