My First Warbird - a Mosquito NFII and an exercise in staying positive

[CurrantBunbury]

Hello, chaps. I haven't posted much of my own work in here, mostly because it's not very good, but I thought this would make a nice topic for a WiP. Everything I've ever built on my own has been post-war and most of them have been Cold War-era jets, but I've recently decided that I'd like to build a Mosquito. It's my father's favourite aircraft, so I've always had a soft spot for it, and I thought others might like to watch my first foray into the world of warbirds.

 

Here's the one I'm going for, specifically the NFII:

 

First impressions of the kit are good. I'm miles from being a subject matter expert in this area, so I can't comment on accuracy at all, but it looks like it'll go together nicely. I'm not a very experienced modeller, so my results won't be spectacular, but in all my builds I aim to learn something along the way and end up with an aircraft that makes me smile when I look at it.

 

First steps last night: prep cockpit and aircrew. There's a bit of flash here and there, particularly on the pilot, who needed a good tidy up to make him ship-shape:
               

 

Then everything in place ready for painting.  

  

 

The instrument panel looks nice for the scale. I'll be painting some detail onto it, because I don't know what's good for me.

 

I had a bit of a dry fit of the two fuselage halves at this point and they look like they'll go together nicely. I though the middle was going to need a bit of persuasion, but on closer inspection found a bit of flash on one of the locating holes - it fits much better now. That's as far as I've got so far - I'm hoping to slap some paint on tonight. At the moment I'm not sure which colour to paint the cockpit interior - I have a choice of greens, none of which is exactly the one listed in the instructions, so I'll have a bit of a read of the forum later and see what other people have done.

 

I hope you find this worth a watch. Any advice or constructive comment is welcome.

Edited December 9, 2017 by CurrantBunbury
Title edit.

[TheBaron]

Looking forward to a good Mossie build CB. Best of luck!

Tony

[celt]

looking forward to this.

[Discopop]

Mind if I sit in on this? A front row pew would be nice, and good luck I am sure it will be a corker 

[mackem01]

I like a Mossie too, looking forward to this taking shape. Onwards and upwards chap!

[Crossofiron1971]

Good luck!

[BIG X]

You can't beat a good warbird - my favourites are Vera Lynn & Gracie Fields (I'll get me coat)

[CurrantBunbury]

Welcome, and thank you all for the encouragement (and the faith).

 

Not a lot of progress - I'm still getting into my stride with this one. Yesterday's research on cockpit colour led me to a pleasant evening of footering with the two Vallejo greens I had in my collection - US Dark Green and Bright Olive. The target colour is a lot lighter and brighter than I was expecting - almost a mint green in some pictures, as opposed to the darker, more olive-like colour in something like a Tornado GR1. I think my third attempt, the one on the joint, is getting close:

 

This morning I took the plunge and daubed a bit on the relevant parts - didn't manage a photo because it was still wet when I left the house (as was my jumper, after I added some to that as well during the stirring process ) so we'll see how it looks when I put a second coat on tonight.

 

Also took a few more bits off the sprue and tidied them up. This nosecone, I think, has had rather a hard life:

 

It looks better after a trim, but a tiny bit of filler will be needed when it comes to attaching it. I think I'll do that as late as possible, to minimise the chance of my breaking something. Now all I need to do is keep it out of reach of the carpet monster until the time comes. I did get a couple of coats of matt black on the instrument panel, so that's now ready for me to start torturing myself with.  I'm a bit apprehensive about showing off my efforts in this area, but I've made a commitment now! I'll put a few shiny blobs on over the weekend and see what we end up with.

   

 

I've also got the two halves of the tailplane together, so I'll sand a few wonky edges off those and then see if the fit between them and the fuselage is as loose as it looked when I first tried it. Note ingenious and highly technical method for reminding a tired modeller who's halfway down a glass of sauvignon blanc which side is which:

 

I'm enjoying this so far.  Hopefully I'll have more to show on Monday. Onwards and upwards.

Edited December 8, 2017 by CurrantBunbury
Fixing photo links.

[IanM558]

Don't forget to paint inside the tail wheel well before sticking the two halves together.  An "oh bugger" moment which has resulted in mine sitting unfinished in the cupboard for the past year.

[CurrantBunbury]

Ach! Thank you! That had completely escaped my attention, so you may well have saved me a lot of swearing.

[Vadim]

Good start!

Will be following

[CurrantBunbury]

A bit more progress. Tidied up the tailplanes, trying not to trim too aggressively and end up changing their shape:

 

 

Also had a crack at painting some detail onto the instrument panel. I'd like to be able to do better, but for the moment it's the best I can do on something the size of my thumbnail, and I'm chuffed with it.

 

Having got three coats on the cockpit interior, I decided it needed to be lighter still, so chucked a bit of white in, then a bit more. It's a much better shade and the parts are now getting quite thick with paint, so I think I'll stop here. It was still drying in the photo, so I'll have another look at it this evening, but comments are welcome.

 

There followed a moment of absolute, shimmering brilliance where I cut straight through one of the undercarriage legs rather than the adjacent bit of sprue. Having reunited the two bits, it looks OK. The damaged one is the one on the right and the cut was just below that spigot on the top - ever so slightly wonky, maybe, although it doesn't seem to have affected the fit and the part feels strong. Time will tell.

 

Yesterday evening I had another moment and glued the undercarriage legs together without inserting the wheels - sometimes I think I need supervision - but noticed immediately and separated them before the glue had set. The wheels, I might add, are in the process of being painted.

 

The next challenge was sorting out the - er - unorthodox detail on one or two bits:

 

After a short burst of sanding my own thumb, I got the multitool out to get rid of the worst of it, then finished it off with some wet and dry. Much better now:

 

A bit of undercarriage painting and assembly next, hopefully without any further crises.

Edited December 14, 2016 by CurrantBunbury

[CurrantBunbury]

Well ... that wasn't part of the plan. Nearly eight months without an update. I regret that life got in the way a bit. Two weeks away over Christmas was enough to break my rhythm, then I came back and went straight into five months' training for a long-distance walking event which took up a big chunk of my leisure time, particularly towards the end. I did make a small amount of progress at the start of the year, but the motivation just wasn't there. With the walk now done and out of the way, I've got my life back and have found time to clear the mountain of stuff that had somehow accumulated in the study while I wasn't modelling. It is a comfortable environment once more, and the Mossie is taking shape.

 

 

Annoyingly, I've managed to cock it up again, this time by attaching one of the wings at slightly the wrong angle - too much dihedral. I say slightly, but at 1/72 the effect is somewhat magnified. Having had a fiddle with it and established that I can't detach the wing without risking cracking something, my options seem to be as follows:

 

1) Have a tantrum

2) Take the risk, find some way of detaching it and get it on straight

3) Live with it

 

After careful consideration, I've opted for a combination of 1 and 3. I'm annoyed, but in the interest of my sanity I'd rather end up with a slightly wonky Mosquito than no Mosquito at all ... and there will always be others. It's a nice kit: I'll finish it to the best of my ability and learn the lesson for next time. I'll end up with something well short of perfect, but that was always going to be the case - I build for myself, to end up with something I can look at and be happy about, and as long as I can manage that then it's worth carrying on. 

 

The next step will be to get the nosecone and propellers on, then do a load of sanding and a wee bit of filling before the primer goes on. I've now also got another aircraft on the bench - a MiG-31 I'm building for a friend - and that's got to take priority, so Mossie-fettling will happen as and when I can fit it in. I'll update this WiP as I go along.

 

Per ardua and all that... 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Hello Currant ... you could always claim that the pilot had a hard landing and bent the wing spars ? Yes i know the gear would have ripped off but trying a bit of levity to make the best of the situation. 

[CurrantBunbury]

9 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Hello Currant ... you could always claim that the pilot had a hard landing and bent the wing spars ? Yes i know the gear would have ripped off but trying a bit of levity to make the best of the situation. 

 There is that. Maybe I should ask people for possible explanations and pick the best one. Add in a bottle of wine or two and it could get very creative.

[CurrantBunbury]

Another long break... The MiG-31 is now finished and was delivered to its new owner yesterday, so I cleared up the post-build chaos in the study this afternoon and picked the Mossie back up again. The propellors and nosecone are now on, and I've done a bit of sanding to smooth everything out.

 

        

 

 

As you can see, there's a big gap at the root of the starboard wing, and a huge one where the nosecone joins - that extends about 60% of the way round, so I'll meander down to the LHS tomorrow and see what they've got in terms of putty. I just can't face another encounter with Milliput.  I'm hoping to get some brushable primer while I'm there, and then we'll be in business.

 

I must say, it's nice to get back to a build I'm doing only for myself. I enjoyed building for my friend, and I'd certainly do it again, but this is much less stressful. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. 

 

[CurrantBunbury]

Getting there now. My trip to the LHS yielded some Vallejo surface primer, which went on a bit unevenly at first, but a second coat seemed to sort it. I'm inclined to blame operator error on this occasion, so we'll see how it fares on the next build. It is supposed to go on nicely enough unthinned, but I think the second coat benefited from a few drops of water. At some point during this process, one of the gun barrels pinged off.  I saw it fall, and had one of those horrible, frozen moments where you think you're never going to see the part again... but I found it, sitting under the bureau, all innocent like. Take that, carpet monster. 

 

Having reattached this and added the antenna to the nose, I was happy enough to put the first coat of black on: Vallejo acrylics again. It's very streaky at the moment, but that's a combination of my hamfisted brush-painting technique and the fact that it's not quite dry yet. It should settle with another coat, or two at the most.

 

 

The photo also does a good job of showing up the bits I've missed, and some nice aluminium splashes on the tyres as well, so that's useful.  Digressing slightly, I do like that angle. I might use it for the final photos when it's finished.

 

At this point, I have a couple of questions. Firstly, my understanding is that the finish on the operational NFIIs was more satin than matt - do you think flat varnish will give the right effect? On previous builds, it's produced what I would call a smooth finish - not shiny, but not really matt either - that's looked about right for late-Cold-War-era jets. Is that what I'm going for here? It's quite hard to tell from the wartime pictures. Secondly, how weathered would an aircraft like this have been? I do know that my build quality leaves a lot to be desired - I'm still learning - but I like to try and put a bit of life into things if I can. I don't want to overdo it, so I was thinking of a bit of pale grey wash over the black to give a sense of the effects of heat and dirty air. Any advice anybody could offer on either of those (or anything else, for that matter) would be greatly appreciated.

 

Next steps: another coat of black, and then to work on the canopy. I started this today, in fact, but I'm waiting to see how it turns out before I say anything more about it, lest I have to take all the paint off and start again. At some point, I'll also replace all the old Photobucket links in the earlier posts with Flickr ones.  

[CurrantBunbury]

Have you ever had the feeling that a particular build is cursed? Thank god I'm so close to the end, because it limits the number of things left to go wrong! Last night I knocked the Mossie off the desk. It fell inverted, bounced, flipped and came to rest on its wheels, causing enough damage to one of the undercarriage legs that I couldn't repair it adequately. After a short period of loud swearing, followed by a longer period of sitting glumly at the bureau and fiddling with the bits, I decided to cut my losses, cobble something together from the wreckage, wedge it into position as best I could, glue it and hope it would support the aircraft. It turns out it will, and I think it's solid enough to hold for the foreseeable future. I'm not going to photograph it, because it looks exactly like you'd expect it to... At some point, I'll buy another of these kits, build the new one gear-up and poach the bits to do a proper repair on this one. In the meantime I'll just try not to look at it from that angle. Or maybe park the 1/72 Bulldog in front of it. 

 

I'm going to continue with the WIP, because - well - I've started, so I might as well finish. There might be something useful in here for somebody, somewhere along the line.  In happier news, then, the painting is finished.

 

One of my idiosyncrasies is a deep dislike of masking, canopies in particular - it's fiddly and I never seem to be able to get it right, so I always end up feeling like I've wasted a lot of time. If I can get away without it, I will. For this build, in the interest of my already-stretched sanity, I decided to freehand the canopy frames using my favourite tool for detail work, the half-stripped wire tie:

 

With the help of some rolled-up kitchen paper for cleaning up the edges, I've got a result that I'm actually very happy with. It won't win any awards, but it's the best I've ever done on something this scale, and I enjoyed doing it.

 

Since I build models partly for the enjoyment of the process and partly to end up with something that makes me smile when I look at it, that's a win on both counts.  

 

Decals on next - I'll start, and possibly finish, that today - and then just the final varnish to go. In the absence of any more information on weathering, I think I'm going to leave it unweathered rather than risk stuffing it up. Should be finished tomorrow, barring any further drama. 

[stevehnz]

I built one of these about a year ago, it was an older boxing than yours so I reckon you're doing really well with your build, the molds are getting pretty tired, we could do with a new tool of this  one.

Steve.

[CurrantBunbury]

Thanks for the encouragement, Steve.  

 

I got the decals on yesterday, then the varnish last night and this morning, so ... she's finished!  What I said about further drama was appropriate, as it happened. I now understand what people mean when they talk about poor-quality decals - these ones went on, but they tried their damnedest to fall off again. I think I'd recommend getting some alternative ones if you're thinking of building this kit. They did not succeed in falling off, however, and none of them broke up, so it all turned out OK in the end. I've also ended up with a pretty rubbishy finish thanks to the varnish not drying evenly. I think this is my fault - should have thinned it more - so I'll take that one on the chin and do a better job next time. 

 

What we have ended up with, however, is a Mosquito. A slightly twisted, streaky Mosquito with one knackered undercarriage leg,  but a Mosquito nonetheless ... and I love it. I've really enjoyed the build, in spite of all its trials, and I've learnt a few things, so that's a success for me. The Mossie is currently on the windowsill in front of me, so I can enjoy looking at it in what's left of the daylight before I put it in the display cabinet later. Here are a few pictures of the finished product.