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1/72 De Havilland Mosquito by Airfix - released


Bjorn

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Undercarriage is too skinny, wire guards crude. Wheels have over heavy block detail.

Assembly of said undercarriage is fiddly and lacks fitment pins.

Tailwheel ditto and not the Marstrand twin contact type

Props too thick and lacking in aerofoil section

Pilot's seat has cushion when the pilot sat in a bucket seat on his parachute.

Control column is crude.

Bomb doors incorrect for B.16, having the pockets for drogues of TT.35

Rear fairing has cutouts for drogues.

Fit of the closed bomb door is a bit sloppy, leaving a step.

 

But overall, the moulding is good, shape looks to be right and the fit is positive.

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5 hours ago, The wooksta V2.0 said:

The radiators on both Airfix and Tamiya match.   The latter's wingtips also fit perfectly, whilst the Airfix canopy will fit the Tamiya.

 

I was told by someone who worked at the Mosquito Museum that Tamiya had sent a couple of blokes who spent several days crawling over airframes with measuring gear, so I don't doubt the it's accuracy.

 

IIRC, Freightdog are doing a PR.XVI conversion, so that would give you the doors and Colin said he was including a correct tail wheel. You already get the earlier blister side panels in the kit.

 

The one underway is going to be a 14 Sqn B.35 as I've had the decals for a good decade and I've been itching to use them.

 

I meant to ask earlier about the canopy, have they moulded all the frames externally?

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1 hour ago, Adam Poultney said:

How many of us, if we are knowledgeable enough on a particular subject, would provide consultation on a kit in return for a few free copies when it goes into production? Some community outreach may be all it takes

 

9 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

I have no skin in this game, as my interests stop just before the prototype Mossie took flight! it looks like a Mosquito to me, but what do I know?
 

However, I watched the Airfix promo interview with Paramjit, the kit designer. In it, he openly says he wants to hear from other modellers - he is a keen modeller in his own right - so if you have any beefs about accuracy I am sure he’ll be keen to hear from you. :wink:

 

Has anyone attempted this? For better or worse, I tend to share HK's indifference to the legendary Wooden Wonder, but maybe Paramjit might be interested in joining the conversation, Nomex coveralls securely zipped up. If he's a keen modeller, then he must surely be a Britmodeller member! OTOH, there's that old cautionary saying about grabbing a tiger by the tail... :winkgrin:

 

John

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I may be in the minority, but I don't want a perfect model. Not yet anyway - maybe when I'm in an assisted living facility with limited time left. Until then, I like fixing things and spending my kid's inheritance on aftermarket stuff (which are often no better, sometimes worse, than the kit). That's my modelling "fun." Oh, and tons of 1:72 stencils.   :)

 

Cheers,

Bill (dons disguise and runs for cover...)

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4 hours ago, Adam Poultney said:

How many of us, if we are knowledgeable enough on a particular subject, would provide consultation on a kit in return for a few free copies when it goes into production? Some community outreach may be all it takes

Airfix already do this, what they need to do now is get their consultants in when the main design research has been done to give it a lookover and error check it.  This does mean trusting their consultants with commercial material though, which maybe the stumbling block on this.  

Example, they used @Sabrejet on their 1/48 Sabre,  if they shown him the CAD work, he'd have spotted the oleo locks and lifting jacks on museum example LIDARed, and pointed out the cockpit was black, not grey.

Airfix  do read BM as well.   

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My comments about Airfix having modelled a TT.35 by default rather than by design were rather tongue in cheek and simply based upon some of the errors in the kit.

 

As for issues surrounding the build acceptance of a restored Mossie from NZ does this mean that the three airworthy examples currently in the US would not be allowed to perform at air shows in the UK? There are no plans I'm aware of for any of them to visit the UK but it would be a pity if they were unable to as it is a very, very long time since UK audiences have had the pleasure of such an experience.

 

Regards

Colin.

 

Ps. each to their own of course but personally I feel that the Mossie was the best aircraft the UK produced during WW2 simply because no one else was able to build an equivalent any where near as good, or able to find an antidote to it until the very belated and limited emergence of the Me262 - totally unique and the first genuine MRCA.

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I recently measured the full size B.35 engine cowling's at Salisbury Hall. I can say that the new tool Airfix Mosquito has correct measurement's for the two stage  Merlin cowling's.

Edited by T-21
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Interesting point - they could certainly visit the UK as they are on the N (or C) reg - there would be no bar to that - in regard to displaying the pilot would have to hold a Display Authorisation but I dont know whether that would extend to the CAA granting permission for the aircraft itself to display if it wasn't a type approved by the CAA as it was 'new build'.

 

TT

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Hello wooksta,

Do you confirm the same fin height for Airfix and Tamiya? Fin height is the only mismatch between Tamiya and Gauntlett's drawings in Aviation Guide n2 (Tamiya being 1mm in excess). Thanks

Stefano

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18 hours ago, The wooksta V2.0 said:

Undercarriage is too skinny, wire guards crude. Wheels have over heavy block detail.

Assembly of said undercarriage is fiddly and lacks fitment pins.

Tailwheel ditto and not the Marstrand twin contact type

Props too thick and lacking in aerofoil section

Pilot's seat has cushion when the pilot sat in a bucket seat on his parachute.

Control column is crude.

Bomb doors incorrect for B.16, having the pockets for drogues of TT.35

Rear fairing has cutouts for drogues.

Fit of the closed bomb door is a bit sloppy, leaving a step.

 

But overall, the moulding is good, shape looks to be right and the fit is positive.

OK thanks for the sum up, I can live with those faults especially now since I am aware of them.

Cheers
Martin

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1 hour ago, steh2o said:

Hello wooksta,

Do you confirm the same fin height for Airfix and Tamiya? Fin height is the only mismatch between Tamiya and Gauntlett's drawings in Aviation Guide n2 (Tamiya being 1mm in excess). Thanks

Stefano

I merely offered the separate fuselages together and they seemed to match. Offering the Airfix rudder to the Tamiya, the latter is indeed about a mm taller.

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13 hours ago, Max Headroom said:

ETA?!

 

Trevor

 

Good question, probably a while to wait but it's what I'm planning to do now. Multiple versions without AM and going from the CAD they've got the parts right that Airfix have got wrong, so hopefully more accurate, but we see when the plastic turns up.

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15 hours ago, Adam Poultney said:

It would cost less top tool a single new sprue, maybe two, to cover a new variant than an entire new kit; take the Victor B 2R for example, with two new sprues they made a K2 and SR2 (the K2 I think is the most popular variant to model). As another example, the Lancaster swapped a few parts to make a Dambusters version or the slightly obscure B.ii, which I doubt most modellers even knew existed until they saw the kit. The B.ii was popular enough to get a reissue. The Whitley kit was reissued with parts for a Coastal Command version and an unarmed freighter with one small additional sprue. It seems like a pretty good return on the investment if tooling a few extra parts is all it takes, and I suspect a lot of the parts for later releases would have been tooled at the same time as the base kit

I'm sure that Airfix are well aware of the 'development potential' of the Mosquito, so there must be good very reasons why there is no apparent provisions for these.  Time and money probably and maybe experience.

Time: The necessary research, design and as suggested, tooling, will all delay the release.  It also prevents the designer addressing other subjects 'in the pipeline'.  There's also the possibility that someone else (was it Special Hobby?) 'will get in first' so to speak.

Money:  Airfix must have been in a parlous state at the beginning of the year with only the Spitfire Vc of 2020's releases made and earning money.  Happily they've caught up with only the Tempest now listed as 2021\2.  Also any money spent on developing other variants is essentially 'dead' and of no value until these are released some years later.  Get the kit on the Retailers shelves and earning money as soon as possible

Experience: Need I say more?  They've made enough 'development releases' Whitley, Lancaster, Victor, Kate to know what works best.

 

 

 

 

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Gentlemen 

Let's see the bright side of it! Now we have a correctly shaped two-stage Merlin Mossie, and the Tamiya's single-stage are nearly perfect. With the aid of Freightdog we'll probably have access to all the main Mosquito variants. At the horizon, Special Hobby could provide us with correctly-shaped (they can check their design with Airfix and Tamiya) mouldings with even more options. Sincerely I'm more than happy, as I will be when Airfix releases the Tempest later in the year.

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On 8/19/2021 at 10:23 PM, The wooksta V2.0 said:

Undercarriage is too skinny, wire guards crude. Wheels have over heavy block detail.

Assembly of said undercarriage is fiddly and lacks fitment pins.

Tailwheel ditto and not the Marstrand twin contact type

Props too thick and lacking in aerofoil section

Pilot's seat has cushion when the pilot sat in a bucket seat on his parachute.

Control column is crude.

Bomb doors incorrect for B.16, having the pockets for drogues of TT.35

Rear fairing has cutouts for drogues.

Fit of the closed bomb door is a bit sloppy, leaving a step.

 

But overall, the moulding is good, shape looks to be right and the fit is positive.

 

I think the undercart assembly is the main concern for me. It reminds me of the Airfix 262 engines and I found that fiddly to get right. I don't mind doing some work as long as it's not fiddly in the sense of tedious, annoying and requiring a lot of time and effort to get right... otherwise I may as well only buy short run East European model kits :lol: Thanks for doing the list, it's useful to know 🙂

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6 minutes ago, Knight_Flyer said:

 

I think the undercart assembly is the main concern for me. It reminds me of the Airfix 262 engines and I found that fiddly to get right. I don't mind doing some work as long as it's not fiddly in the sense of tedious, annoying and requiring a lot of time and effort to get right... otherwise I may as well only buy short run East European model kits :lol: Thanks for doing the list, it's useful to know 🙂

Somewhat unfortunate that the designer said he made extra effort with regards the undercart in the YouTube video 🙄😕

 

Mike

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Just received my Mosquito about 10 mins ago and have had a quick look at the sprues and instructions. It seems all the comments about the 'issues' are correct although most apart from the bomb bay doors and fairings could be quite easily fixed, or ignored as with the tail wheel. However as a modeler in his latter years with less than perfect eye sight and not too steady hands the biggest issue with the kit is that it is massively over engineered and extremely fiddly to put together especially the landing gear.

 

I found the landing gear on my recently completed Italeri Do217E to be tricky but this takes it to a whole new level and I doubt I will be able to complete it with any degree of success. As such I've decided to immediately pass the kit on to a new owner and purchase the Tamiya B.IV instead in order to have a mosquito in my collection. I'd deliberately not bought the Tamiya kit before when I discovered that Airfix were doing their new kit but now I wish I'd gone ahead and not waited.

 

I appreciate that many/most modelers who work in 72nd scale may not suffer my physical limitations and that I could always move up to 48th scale but to make the kit so fiddly seems unnecessary  and almost a vanity project by the designer. What's even more disappointing is that they seem to have gone to a great deal of effort to produce a highly engineered kit but then forgot to get some of the basic essentials right.

 

Regards

Colin.

 

Ps. my example will be on a well known auction site very soon at a bargain price!

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On 8/20/2021 at 3:05 PM, Max Headroom said:

Irony of the model being a TT.35 is that you can’t make IWM’s TA719 out of it,  because the fairing is missing!

 

Mosquito

 

Tailwheel guard is there though.

 

Trevor

 

 It in its current config but she probably would have had the appropriate bomb bay and fairing when she was operated as a TT.35. After 633 Squadron ( which of course the aircraft were modded some what anyway ) she apparently went through a lot, a crash landing damaging the belly and was then repaired and used for one of the crash scenes in Mosquito Squadron. So I guess there's a lot of different parts on her now.

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Wow.  Now I've had a chance to look at the sprues I am really surprised how badly Airfix got the bomb bay doors with the TT detail, let alone the other issues.  How on Earth did they manage to get this so wrong?  Even a cursory look at the real thing would have, one would have hoped, raised some qurestions about it.  Clearly no one involved with the kit's design wondered what those lumps and troughs were for.  Airfix are being a bit 'weird' at the moment.  As others have mentioned, there are silly errors and odd design choices with the Vulcan and with the Spitfire VC both the spinners are noticeably incorrect to the extent that I'll be using one from the spares box.    Didn't they go on about how they were only going to produce kits of aircraft for which plans were available?  Perhaps they ought to refer to them occasionally.

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I had a look and couldn't see any references earlier in this chat so apologies if this has already been covered but what I'm assuming to be the glue seams on the wings appear to be massively over-pronounced.  Checking my references I'm struggling to find photos of them even being visible, let alone as big as they are on the kit.  More sanding required?

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