Andy G

Totally aware of that John, we operate in both the model railway and scale model worlds so come across the issue ourselves - we can't go to Scale Scotland because it clashes with model railway shows down here. When the Warley show first moved to the NEC they had to take whatever dates they got which inevitably meant they trod on other clubs' toes. The difference then was that they spoke with the other shows and things got sorted out. What appears to be happening with Key is that they are picking/being allocated a date and tough luck to the collateral, they're not even informing the other shows or saying "sorry chaps"

Next year's show will clash with the Scottish Nationals. I have been informed that Key Publishing have made no contact with the organisers of the Scottish Nationals which frankly I see as a very poor attitude to the hobby. There were several traders at Perth from South of the border last weekend - Mr Models, Models for Sale, Affinity Models, Crafting Well and ourselves, EBMA Hobby & Craft. I hope that they continue to support the Perth show as their loss to that show would be much greater than the gain to Key Publishing. It's worth bearing in mind that the Scottish Nationals is run by volunteers for the benefit of the hobby whereas the NEC event is run by a commercial organisation for the benefit of its owners/shareholders.

A significant issue with the trade attendance is that Key have picked the same weekend that the Scottish Nationals is established on. Most traders can only be in one place at a time. The cost of the stands is also an issue. Our stand would have cost us significantly more than at Telford.

Thanks Chris, Andrew. I had a look at @Dunny's thread, blimey he's motoring. That certainly looks a good solution, I may give it a try.

Thanks Chris, the kit is good but there's certainly a degree of work to be done hiding some of the joints. That's certainly been true on the latest trench of work to get the wings all done and on to the fuselage. The nacelles went together pretty well but the air intake at the front is a separate part. The join is pretty good, it would be perfect if there was actually a seam there. However, looking through prototype photos there was only one where there was even the slightest hint of there actually being a seam. So it had to be worked upon. The black superglue was used again and it took a couple of rounds to eradicate the seam on each nacelle. Sanding was made tricky by the carious curves in that area of the nacelle. There was also quite a bit of pre-painting to try and make things easier later on. You have to fit the exhausts before the nacelles are fitted to the wings. So they were painted first and nacelle around the exhausts. So later I can simply mask off the exhausts and a small area around them. Similarly the radiators which go in the leading edge of the wings between the nacelle and the fuselage were prepainted and the insides of the wings given a coat of PRU blue. Part of the fuselage also had a coating of PRU. The wings also needed seams dealing with where a blanking plate fills the landing light in the leading edge and the trailing edge of each nacelle. The latter were pretty good, just needed a bit of finessing. The blanking plate could have been a much better fit. The poorest part of the wings though were the wing tips. These are moulded as separate clear parts and the join is not at a seam. So some careful filling and sanding was required rtying not to destroy surface detail on the wing nor scratch the navigation lights. I've also not come up with a way of depicting the coloured bulbs. I'd much rather have just the lights as separate parts as there's less of a join to clean up and the bulbs are very simple to do. The wings are now on, just requiring a smidgen of PPP along the joints top and bottom. On the bottom there is a row of rivets very close to the joint and this was protected by tape whilst the filler was applied and cleaned up. Very glad to have the wings on and the aircraft sat on a stand rather than kicking around the desk or a drawer. Think I've got to squeeze the pilot and navigator in next, this could be tricky...

Looking forward to watching this develop. I’ve got the same kit somewhere in the stash to build as a 613 City of Manchester squadron kite.

That’s looking very nice Neil. Sharp and clean. I shall look forward to you making it mucky to your usual very high standards.

With the fuselage stuck together it was onto the bomb bay and related bits so that they could all be cleaned up without the wings getting in the way. First up was fitting the camera window and surround immediately aft of the bomb bay. This was taking some fiddling around with to try and get it sat level with the surrounding fuselage. Then it tipped up and disappeared inside the sealed fuselage - rats! I could hear it rattling around but there was no way it was coming out again. I didn't fancy breaking the fueslage open but thankfully part of the roof of the bombay wouldn't be seen from either above or below, so out with the minidrill and dentist burrs and open her up. The errant part came out relatively easily after that. Small bits of white tak were then used as soft supports to help get the front and rear parts to the right height for them to be level with the surrounding fuselage and minimise the amount of filling and sanding. The bomb bay itself was then fitted using small slips of paper to get it to the right height so that the ends could be glued in. Once the ends had been given plenty of time to set solid the paper was removed and the sides of the bomb bay glued whilst gently pressing it against the fuselage - there was just a small gap to close up. There were then a few rounds of filling, sanding, priming to get the few places that needed sorting good enough. That's not to say that the joints were bad, but I was striving for perfection on this one - not sure I've got there. The camera covers were coated with a maskol type fluid when spraying the primer and carefully avoided with the sanding sticks. Hopefully that should be satisfactory at the end. You'll note that the camera cover to the rear of the mount is in place. The plastic behind it had been roughly painted black and I dropped the cover in as a dry run to check that it fitted and it won't come out. This is really annoying as it's been moulded with a locating pin on the back which really shows through from the front. I'd wanted to remove it and then polish the rear back up but it will just have to be as it is. The tailplane fits well with no gaps. However, each stabiliser could move up or down just a little so it was out with the wing jig and line them up the same and hopefully horizontally. So that's where we are. I'm enjoying a kit that it going together well and not throwing up any horrors or hurdles to overcome. Cheers

Apologies, it's been over a month since I updated this thread. Progress has been slow due to the last exhibition of the year, the cutter throwing a tantrum and a very successful end to the year business wise. However, progress has happened. I'm using this model as something of a learning/experimenting process. As such I've bought some goodies from my local hobbie shop - High Peak Scale Models People have been raving about the VMS varnishes so I thought I'd give it a try, it's not cheap though. Matt varnish I find to be tricky not getting it chalky or white specs in the finish. Galeria has been my preferred choice to date but it's quite slow drying and I've tended to get a small number of white specs in it. I've used Mr Surfacer for years as a filler, but I'll give it a try as a primer this time. Finally, Jenn and others use superglue to bond the fuselage together thus avoiding ghost seams, so I've bought a bottle of the VMS black cement. A small bead of the superglue was applied around the edges of one side of the fuselage using a cocktail stick. The tailfin was excluded as the capillary action of mekpak would be used to glue this together later. The two halves of the fuselage were then placed together and held minimising any misalignment. Thankfully the joint was very good and he superglue just took a few minutes to go off. I'd always feared that there wouldn't be enough time to align the halves correctly once they were placed together but there were no such issues. The top and bottom seams forward of the cockpit were not glued with the main fuselage, instead there were addressed invidually by gently prising the joint open and applying the CA with the cocktail stick before then aligning the joint and holding it until the glue set. Unfortunately I hadn't properly checked the fit of the tailfin halves and it took a lot of pressure to hold them together to get anything like a decent leading edge. A quick polish up with sanding sticks followed by wet and dry and grey primer was sprayed over the joint to check for any remedial work that needed to be done. Thankfully there was very little. The leading edge of the tailfin and a couple of places on the top of the fuselage were addressed with beads of the superglue. This was left for about fifteen minutes before being sanded back and another test coat of primer applied. I've also been painting the pilot and navigator. They're not the best I've done, but this photo is really cruel! Hopefully they'll look ok underneath the canopy.

Evening, With displaying the aircraft in flight there are a couple of things that need sorting before the fuselage can be closed up. First up is a means of "suspending" it. In the past I've used telescopic brass tubes which are simply fitted by holding the two halves of the fuselage together whilst the relevant sized hole is drilled in the joint. However, whilst this works fine if the aircraft is displayed in level flight, it's a bit of a problem trying to get it to stay in place if it's at any sort of an angle. A while back I bought a couple of lengths of square section telescopic tube to try and provide a better solution than applying random thin coats of solder or super glue to he round section. Cutting the hole is not quite as easy but it wasn't too difficult using a craft knife and flat file. Once the two halves of the hole have been made to fit the larger of the tubes it is glued with five minute epoxy to one half of the fuselage. Epoxy is applied at the top of the fuselage as well as around the hole otherwise the joint at the hole tends to break and the model flop around freely. In flight also requires a flight crew. For some reason Airfix supply you with a pilot but no navigator. The pilot is also on the diminutive side. A couple of years ago a cast a quantity of pilots from the Airfix figures I had to hand to resolve this situation and one of these was selected based on the requirement to get in the rather cramped cockpit. The figure chosen happens to be a slightly larger version of that supplied with the Mosquito, I could probably have done with casting some new figures from the Mosquito pilot but my resin has gone off. The smallest seat space in the cockpit is that for the navigator so the Airfix pilot was demoted and the resin figure manipulated to fit in the pilot's seat. Unfortunately for him @CedB's surgeon has been working overtime. The figure was previoulsy primed in black so the surgery stands out quite alarmingly The protrusion on the top of his head is the exit gate for the resin and has subsequently been filed off. The identification lights in the fusleage also needed to be coloured. I initially tried Tamiya and Alclad clear colours, however, these were not very distinct from outside of the fuselage so solid colors were used and these look fine through the lenses. Chris, it should make a big improvement, but it's too late for this one. I wish they included it in the Zoom set or even just on its own as it will probably be the biggest improvement to the cockpit. Next time - being brave and buttoning it up with superglue! Cheers

Evening, with Telford out of the way, the stock put back on the shelf and orders prior to Telford despatched I've taken this afternoon off and done some modelling and photographing of the work done to date on the Mosquito. Part 3 of Jenn's tutorial covered washing and drybrushing of the cockpit and I pretty much completed this last week but hadn't had chance to photograph it and write this up. For the wash I used a thin mix of Burnt Sienna and Payne's Grey oils applied in a more restrained manner than my normal slap it all over and then wipe off. There was still some removal of excess wash using a thin brush dampened with artists' white spirit. This was left for two - three days to allow the oils to dry before I set to with the highlighting by dry brushing. I used a thicker mix of Naples Yellow thinned with Artists white spirit this time and tried to apply it in a restrained manner. You can see it with the naked eye but I'm not sure the photos show it. All the bits of the cockpit have been assembled and a dry fit into the fuselage shows a very nice fit. Looking at the previous photos the washing and drybrushing has certainly brought the detail out. The pilot's seat as a bit dissapointing due to the limitations of injection moulding. As I will be displaying the model in-flight it's also making chosing figures difficult, but more on that next time. I've got the previous bomber release of this model in the stash and I bought the Eduard etch for that primarily to replace the pilot's seat and for the main gear 'mudguards', I'll do that wheels down. Jenn's fourth part is up on Youtube and she glues the fuselage together with superglue. I have a love-hate relationship with the stuff but in the interest of learning new things I think I might give it a go.

It certainly affects the traders and if the traders plump for the NEC as per @Circloy's comments then it will mean curtains for the Scottish Nationals or they will be forced to change the date. The two years we've been to Perth there have been clubs from the south of England there, so people do travel for it.

Coming from a model railway background I concur with what @Circloy says. It’s what set the alarm bells ringing when I received the trade invite and especially when I realised the clash of dates with the Scottish Nationals.

Not much done today as I've had to concentrate on getting things ready for Telford. However, I have got the instrument decal on. The panel is nicely molded with all of the dials showing crisply. The decal is clear with just the instrument faces and bezels coloured. It's also pretty much the correct size for the part it goes on, so no awkward trying to cut the decal down to size. The part was coated with MicroSet before the decal was applied. I always wonder about this step as the Microset just beads up, is it doing anything? A cocktail stick was used to carefully line up the decal with the molded instruments, well as best as I could when unable to see the molding underneath due to the liquid blurring everything. Everything eventually dried out and the decal just sat proud of all the detail - great! I've just had a Special Hobby Me109 where the instrument decal refused to sit down on the panel and I feared that this was going to be a repeat. However, several doses of MicroSol later and it was settling down nicely. To finish the job off a liberal dose of Tamiya X20A thinner was applied and the decal sat down just nicely to the naked eye as you can clearly see in this fantastic photo Oh well, you'll just have to take my word for it. The photo does show that I nearly got the decal lined up correctly. Jenn's third update covered a wash and dry brush highlighting of the cockpit interior. She used an enamel wash product whereas I resorted to oils as all of my proprietory washes etc are packed in the trailer with the trade stand. It's gone reasonably well but I need to wait for the oil to dry before moving onto the dry brushing. I'll possibly use oils for that as whilst I've got several of Ammo by Mig's dry brush paints they are once again packed in the trailer.. Cheers

Just a warning on the laser cutter suggestions. Normal plasticard is generally regarded as a no no for laser cutting. I've not tried it personally but it reportedly tends to melt rather than cut. More importantly is that the actual make up of the material varies and some of them contain chemicals that turn very nasty from a health perspective when shown a laser. This is not to say that plastic can't be cut with a laser. There are some materials such as Romarc that are specifically designed to be cut with a laser, however, it is much more expensive than your normal plasticard.