Oggy trashes a Revell 1/48 Mosquito IV

[Oggy]

I came across the Mosquito in our local model shop while on a visit there to get bits for the Spitfire. At about the same price as the Spit it struck me as good value and I am very fond of the Mossie so I thought I would buy it – after all, how hard can it be? (More of that later.)

Sorry for all the missing parts – I have been building it in parallel with the Spit.

The box is quite substantial and they are not bluffing. Inside there are 5 grey sprues, 4 are full size and 1 slightly smaller. There is also one transparent one along with the decals and instructions. Most are in separate polythene bags so well packed. Two of the sprues are nearly identical – these carry the things that come in pairs like propellers, spinners, engine bits etc.

I am going to raise a number of niggles and nigglets (a bit like a niggle but smaller). Some of these will reflect on the model and some on my lack of talent.

The first impression is of a lot of pieces (about 160 I think) and very good detail. The cockpit and bomb bay are fully modelled and there are two small Merlins. This leads to my first nigglet. The bomb bay doors, gear doors and nacelles are all modelled closed. If you want to have the doors open you have to cut them apart and if you want the engines visible, you have to saw up the nacelles.

Nigglet 2 involves the sprues. On the Spit (Tamiya) where the sprues led to very small or delicate parts, they came to a thin neck – unlike this kit for example

These are the bomb bay door jacks which are less than 20mm long to give the picture scale. You have to be very careful getting them off the sprues.

Nigglet 3 is the pins on which the gear and bomb bay doors mount in the open positions.

These may look fairly substantial in the picture but they are not. They are about 1mm diameter and very easy to knock off. Guess how I know.

On the plus side, there are a lot of options and extras in the kit. It has the colour scheme and decals for three variants. It also includes two different sizes of drop tank, three cameras, rockets, wing bomb pylons and cameras. It also comes with narrow and paddle bladed propellers. Good for a “what if”.

Onward!

Edited April 11, 2012 by Oggy

[jimbuna]

Looking forward to seeing her progress.

[Oggy]

Step 1 – the office. This goes together fairly uneventfully. No shortage of detail and decals for the seat belts and panel although the panel is black and white.

The bomb bay is also nicely detailed.

Personally I think the gloss black as suggested in the distructions is too shiny and a semi gloss would be better.

Onward

[erikmuntz]

Looking forward to this one and definitely taking notes. Your Spit turned out great and I expect that this'll be of the same amazing quality! Definitely watching this!

Erik

[Oggy]

Episode three starts with a correction to episode two. I said that there were no dramas with the front end. Well, there were a couple, the bombsight and joining the two front halves of the fuselage together.

The bombsight is a very tiny fragile component and this is made worse by the fact that it is a transparency (guess who spent ages stairing at the grey sprues before they worked that one out), which seem to be more brittle than the coloured parts. I snapped it getting it off the sprue and glued it back together, then I snapped it again joining the two fuselage and this time the carpet monster got it.

I had to chamfer away quite a bit of the flight deck floor to get the fuselage sides to join and eventually got to the stage where if I had taken any more off, the nose transparency would be too large. At this point, there was still a gap between the two halves from the trailing edge of the hatch so I had to fill this,

The instructions suggest that the two rear halves of the fuselage should be joined together before joining to the front. Out of curiosity I taped up the rear fuselage and tried it. The former at the rear of the flightdeck fowled in it and bent. Unfortunately however, the front edge of the rear fuselage is smaller than the rear edge of the front fuselage. I decided instead to fit the two rear parts to the front parts and then bring them together at the tail and fill any gaps afterwards. This seems to have worked OK.

One of the things I like about the kit is that the wings sit on spars and the stabilizers on a flat former which goes through the fuselage so there is no guesswork in dihedral. The wings and stabilizers fit nigely against the fuselage.

Another nice touch is that the flaps are properly Fowlered. That is to say that instead of simply pivoting about an axis near to their leading edge the slide backward and downward which looks much better if you decide to model them deployed.

Assembly of the wings and other control surfaces is routine but do remember to open out the required mounting holes before you join the upper and lower halves of the wings.

In the next episode, the body count starts to rise fairly quickly.

Onward!

[treker_ed]

i had this problem as well - eventually managed to get it together only to realise that i had missed the fact that you needed to fit the horizontal stabilisers before joining the rear halves together - by this point i got really fed up with it and it went in the bin!

[jimbuna]

Great start.

[TheEngineer]

Looks good so far!

[MIRAGEF1]

Oggy go down to your pet store and get one of those "remove pet hair from the furniture" sticky rollers and roll that over your carpet...I have retrieved many a P.E. part from the carpet....cheers good hunting

[Oggy]

Nacelles – the fun begins.

As I think I said earlier, there are two small but (nearly) perfectly formed Merlins.

These are made up of substantial parts which do need a little fitting to get rid of the gaps but do go together fairly well. I think they would be a great starting point for someone with some talent to do a bit of detailing on.

The “Gotcha” I fell for was to fix the exhausts to one of them. If you are going to have the engine exposed on both sides then this is fine, but I had decided I didn’t want to. If you want the engine exposed then you have to cut the relevant panels out of the nacelles. Because the exhausts route out and down from the engines it is just about possible to get one side through the nacelle but there is no way you can get the other side of the nacelle on. If you are not having the engine showing the simplest way is to put it in the goodies box and fit just the exhausts to the nacelle. If you do this, there is nothing to hold them in place so I used a bit of Blutack.*

The engines mount nicely on brackets which are set into the firewalls. There is another former toward the back of the nacelle. Both of these taper so if you put them into the two halves to the nacelle and peg it together they can migrate slightly out of place.

Another nigglet here – the distructions show the pins that hold the props on as being much longer than they are which does not help finding them on the sprues.

In the next exciting episode we get to the gear. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Here’s a taster.

* My spell checker doesn’t like “Blutack” and suggests “Buttock”. Personally I would have thought this was overkill unless you are of a very light build.

Onward!

[Oggy]

OK folks – a quick post to let you know I am still alive (though broken and bloodied).

The one thing people all seem to mention about this kit is the undercarriage and my experience agrees.

To my utter amazement, the Mossie is standing on her wheels despite the u/c assembly being a right Horlicks. I will post in detail on that soon.

One quick point as mentioned by someone earlier – there is an error on the distructions.

This is the correct orientation of the mudguards with the curved end at the back. The instructions show them the other way around with the curved end forward. I believe that people have brought this to Revell’s attention. I shall do so as well.

Onward!

[Moofles]

I have this kit in the stash, so shall be following your build.

[Oggy]

The undercarriage (gulp).

The destrusctions suggest fitting one half of the nacelle to the wing then assembling the undercarriage onto the wing and finally the other half of the nacelle. This looked awkward so I tried dry fitting the two halves and it was.

I thought about assembling the undercarriage then trying to get it the assembled nacelle, but the u/c flares outwards inside the nacelle and the engine oil tank (the satchel like part) mounts across the two mainstays inside so this was not possible.

I then thought I’d try assembling the u/c to the wing and then ease the nacelle over it and that didn’t work either.

At that point I have to confess I spat my dummy out, ripped the u/c off the wing, hurled it and resolved to model the gear retracted. This was a short term decision as I really wanted the model standing on it’s wheels. When I retrieved the u/c I found that one of the main legs was well stuck to the large cross member. I tried sticking just these two parts to the model first and that went OK. I then eased the other main leg into place ant tried with partial success to get the two glued together. Getting the oil tank on was little more than a fumble with tweezers. I also assembled the mud guard (quite fiddly too) but did not fit it.

Next session I tried to get the “X” and “V” shaped cross braces off the sprue as shown in my post before last and failed. They are nowhere near as strong as even the narrowest part of the sprue. The retract jack (the thin straight component in the same photo). Also broke up as I fumbled with it. It has no real location points on it and the instructions are a bit vague as to where they go. I did manage to get the mud guard on.

Result –

Having learnt a few lessons from the first leg I started on the second one. This time I assembled and fitted the nacelle first. Next I put the two main legs in.

I then tried to get the main cross brace in as best I could.

I could not get it quite straight.

Next the oil tank –

This time when it came to getting the X and V braces off the sprue I tried a hot knife and it worked. I did not dare to try to trim them though.

The locating pins on these braces are tiny and virtually ineffective. The X brace goes on the trailing edge of the gear leg –

And the V brace goes from the leading edge of the gear leg to the centre of the X brace. Sorry but it is not easy to photograph. Best attempt –

As I say – she now stands on her wheels which I consider a miracle. This is very simply beyond my current skill level, but has served as a learning exercise and the gear doors will hide many sins.

On the brighter side, the lumps of grey plastics have taken the gorgeous shape of the Mossie. They don’t make them that pretty any more.

Onward!

[jimbuna]

Looking good.

[TonyG]

I finished one of these off once - the original builder had given up as it 'was doing his head in' so I took it on as a favour to a mate. After all how hard could it be? I had all the same problems as you (bar the carpet monster/bomb sight) and can fully understand why the original builder had given up, but it did eventually turn out okay with a lot of perseverence, gritted teeth, and sleepless nights (I was on a deadline to get it finished).

[Oggy]

No comment.

[General Jumbo]

No comment.

Oh - what's happened there?

[erikmuntz]

Hey mate,

Keep that chin up, we all have problems. Trust me, I just dropped my Avenger I'm working on and the canopy popped off. Nothing broke but in my fear I also dropped my airbrush. The needle did break so that wasn't too good. Honestly, you've been doing really incredible work, especially for a beginner, and we've all loved watching your builds! Trudge on, mate, for that is looking excellent. Did you just have a little paint come off on you??

and still watching

Erik

[andyramone]

Oh dear, a masking disaster for sure! What were you masking for?

Keep your chin up, everyone has been there. It's learning from the mistakes that's the important bit.

[Oggy]

Once I had the undercarriage on, I thought it was going to be easier. Wrong.

The canopy was not a good fit. With the rear part aligned with the fuselage, the front edge was displaced to starboard in relation to the centre line. The side windows are separate (another option, large, small or no blisters). They are quite fiddly to get to fit right. I used Pacer 560 glue which is what I used to use on my RC models. This has the advantage of being a white PVA glue so if it contacts the transparencies you can simply wash or wipe it off – it does not attack the transparency. It does however take about 16 hours to dry.

At this point the poor Mossie suffered another setback. It fell of one shelf onto the one below (about 9 inches) which fractures the undercarriage legs. These re-glued OK, but all the tiny cross braces shattered and fell off.

I had the Eduard masking kit for the canopy which went on fairly well. Then I painted the top surfaces Dark Green with Xtracrylix paint. This seemed to go OK so I masked the surfaces with Blutack and painted the grey stripe. This was the first clue of the impending disaster. As I took the Blutack off, a couple of chips of the green came with it.

On the brighter side, at least it has been easy to get most of the paint off. It has barely stuck to the plastic at all and a judicious thumbnail removes it. Where the paint has landed on glue or filler, it is stuck solid.

Should I have primed this before I painted it and if so, what is the recommended primer?

I also found that particularly the Night Black was prone to blocking the airbrush (Iwata CR 0.5mm with Iwata Sprint Jet compressor) both undiluted and thinned with Xtracrylix own thinner. I believe others have had similar problems. Any thoughts?

Any tips (and possibly a contact number for the Samaritans) gratefully received.

Onward!

[Gizmo]

Hi there Oggy,

Just wondering where you are at with this build. I am going to start in on the same kit for the Mossie GB.

Thanks for all the great tips.

Rob

[Michaelvk]

Looks nice and fiddly.. Not sure the paint chipping is in scale though

[erikmuntz]

I to am curious as to the state of this build! I really enjoyed following this thread!

Happy new year!

Erik

[paganpete]

Hey Oggy, how goes the mozzie - I am looking to do one of these for a GB, have noted your niglets and niggles so far...

Pete

[Oggy]

Sorry Gents.

I thought I had finished this thread. I did finish the model but for some reason that escapes me I didn't post any pictures. I'll post some later.

Bottom line, this kit requires some talent which I did not have at the time, but a very detailed kit at 2/3 of the price of a Tamiya Mossie - bargain.