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1:48 Tamiya Mosquito Twin Highball


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That interior looks great.

Thanks Ron, chaps ;)

I'm just holding the resin bit together while the CA cures, so it'll never be seen again :S

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Looks great so far Mike.

Maybe i should finish my Narromine Highball i started awhile back.I got kinda distracted by Tamiya 1/48 F-16CJ's and Hase 1/32 P-47's.

I know Neil wants me to get it done

'Course he does, but don't make too good a job of it, or it'll make mine look poo ;)

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Reet-o.... Most of the cockpit painting's done, and I've assembled a few bits. Still to do is the control column, ancillary instrument panels, and the IP sandwich. I also need to paint up the sight from the HighBall conversion set, which I've kept on the pour stub until I've ready to use it, as it's a bit fiddly.

Anyhoo... here's a couple of pics:

cockpit1.jpg

cockpit2.jpg

Not quite up to Neil's standards :blush: but I'm quite pleased with it. Next job is to try & shoehorn it all into the fuselage & get it to fit :unsure:

Damn mike that cockpit is stunning almost sexy!! :shocked:

Regards

Steve

Edited by Mike
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Cockpit looks fantastic Mike :thumbsup:

BTW...whatever happened to those paint booth pics? :whistling: :D

Cheers Annonny... I took them, uploaded them & then forgot to post them :doh: They're around somewhere :rolleyes:

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Mike

Regarding the in flight pic I sent (the upper view, looking down on the aircraft) I think that the leading edge of the wings 'could' be yellow, if you look closely.

B)

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Mike

Regarding the in flight pic I sent (the upper view, looking down on the aircraft) I think that the leading edge of the wings 'could' be yellow, if you look closely.

B)

Will have a look sunbeam, taa. Got a jiffy bag from you waiting at home, thanks! :thumbsup:

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Well, after a bit of silence, I've got the airframe together. The resin forward fuselage, including the cockpit details was tricky to get together, so I elected to attach one section of the seam at a time, to allow me to bend it to shape without worrying about the whole thing wobbling. The next tricky task was to disappear the seam, which took another few applications of CA & then some careful sanding. The section around the nose entry door was very badly warped, so I got it to fit as well as I could, then layered CA into the gaps, for later sanding.

After cutting off the hinges from the bomb bay, I attached the two nicely moulded blanking plates provided in Neil's conversion kit. The fit very snugly, but because of the slight warping of the fuselage caused by the resin front, some pressure was applied while the CA was drying. Again, the seams were hidden by CA sanded back while still "green".

I sprayed the detailed langing gear bays with RAF green grey, washed them with Phil's lovely wash, removed the majority, then dry brushed to bring out the detail. I'm very pleased with the scratch built bulkheads, and Petr's Rosie the Riveter did a good job. I attached the wingtips, sanded them to profile, using tape to protect the detail on the main wing, then added the various flying surfaces with CA (6 in all). I set the angle of droop on the tail surfaces, then offset the resin replacement rudder & secured it with CA.

The spar arrangement on the Tamiya Mossie is well known, and fits beautifully, leaving almost no gap between the wings & fuselage. What gap there was, again was caused by the replacement resin nose. That was soon removed by some judiciously placed spreaders inside the fuselage, made from chopped up coffee stirrers. ;)

I then turned my attention to the glazing of the nose, and test-fitted the side windows in the resin nose. The fit was not good, and some scraping of the resin was needed to get the windows to sit deep enough within the fuselage. I decided to sand them flush with a rough sanding stick, then buffed them back to a shine with my Mastercasters sanding sticks. A quick dab of Klear & they were back to normal :)

Fitting the nose glazing exposed another gremlin in the resin nose. One half is thicker than the other, and led to there being a ledge on the left side, and a gap in the right (looking from the front). Rather than offset the nose glazing & have a stupid looking model, I sanded back the resin on one side, attached the glazing with G-S Hypo cement (watch crystal cement), and then filled the gap with a fillet of Milliput. I used the excess to fill the remaining seams on the wing joint, rubbing the overflow away with a damp cotton bud, so there's no sanding needed. You've really gotta love Milliput :wub:

Anyway - the tail is now on, I'm waiting for the Milliput to cure, after which I'll sand it to shape, then mask the glazing, and install the seat & canopy. A bit more masking, and she'll be ready for pre-shading.

With a little help from Neil (Thanks ;) ) I've decided to model the trials machine DK290 G, which was dark green, ocean grey on top, with MSG undersurfaces, sky spinners and a sky tail band. There's a bit of odd camo extending to the bottom of the nacelles, and Neil's very kindly supplied me with a set of 6-stack exhausts, as this machine was experimenting with 5 on the inners, and 6 on the outers. There's also a chance that it had yellow leading edges to the wings outboard of the engines.

It was quite a well used machine, so I'm going to try & simulate some of the wear, which will be a first for me :hmmm::unsure:

Finally... some more pics!

airframe1.jpg

airframe2.jpg

The High-ball compartment is just dropped in & the fairing is placed on top, but it gives an idea of the look of the machine:

airframe3.jpg

I added some extras to the landing gear, to simulate all the bits of the door retraction mechanism, comprising the wheel guards, rollers on the gear legs, and the attachment points on the cross-members. These were all made from styrene stock of various widths & profiles. Fiddly, but worth the effort. I also drilled out the mudguard supports (copying Neil again!), and thinned them down to somewhere near scale thickness. I did experiment with some Eduard PE guards, but although they looked very sharp when built up, they didn't fit into the kit parts, and would have been a nightmare to alter... so they were slung to one side of the bench, but I used the supports as my template for drilling the holes in the plastic parts :smartass:

landing-gear1.jpg

The resin wheels have been primed, and are up next for a coat of black before I spray the hubs with Alclad II.

wheels1.jpg

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Couple of questions for the experts:

  1. How wide would the sky tail band have been?
  2. Would the glazed port on the underside of the fuselage have been faired over/painted over, or just absent?
  3. I know the cockpit glazing was both internal & external. Does anyone have any references, and suggestions of how best to achieve the look?

TIA ;)

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Mike,

Looking good!!

The glazed port on the rear fuselage was for a camera on the PR versions I believe, so I would paint over it.

As for the canopy question - on the BXVI conversion that I'm doing (slooowwwwly) I intend masking the internal glazing and spraying the framework IGG then masking the exterior glazing of the canopy and spraying the camo colours. Labourious I know .......

HTH,

Ian

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Mike,

Looking good!!

The glazed port on the rear fuselage was for a camera on the PR versions I believe, so I would paint over it.

As for the canopy question - on the BXVI conversion that I'm doing (slooowwwwly) I intend masking the internal glazing and spraying the framework IGG then masking the exterior glazing of the canopy and spraying the camo colours. Labourious I know .......

HTH,

Ian

Cheers Ian, I'll probably do the same... just need to get a handle on which bits are inside, so I can mask it properly. :unsure:

Thanks Neil - you just keep coming thru ;)

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Cheers Ian, I'll probably do the same... just need to get a handle on which bits are inside, so I can mask it properly. :unsure:

Thanks Neil - you just keep coming thru ;)

No probs.

On the link I posted above, if you click on the 'Phil Broad Collection' icon, there are lots of pics there showing the canopy framing etc.

B)

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No probs.

On the link I posted above, if you click on the 'Phil Broad Collection' icon, there are lots of pics there showing the canopy framing etc.

B)

:doh: now why didn't I think of that? :dunce:

Aaahhh, it's the little dotty ones near the back... not too tricky then :S

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