Mosquito starboard fuselage markings question.

[Mycapt65]

I'm modeling a mosquito and there's a big rib down the starboard side of the fuselage that complicates the markings on that side. The rib's thickness will eat some height out of my roundel decal and code letter masks.  That will make the roundel oblong and codes shorter.

 

 

Does anyone know how this was handled on the real plane?? I cant really move on with my build until i know how this was done so I can duplicate it. 

Any helpful tips on modeling these starboard markings would also be greatly appreciated. 

 

Thank you.

Ron

[Mark Harmsworth]

Good point - although are you sure it will be that noticeable? Depends on scale I suppose.

 

This was my attempt at a 1:72 Mossie and I hadn't really thought about that ridge. Until now.

 

From three feet away it's not noticeable. Certainly when I'm not wearing my glasses 😉

Mark

[Mycapt65]

12 minutes ago, Mark Harmsworth said:

Good point - although are you sure it will be that noticeable? Depends on scale I suppose.

 

This was my attempt at a 1:72 Mossie and I hadn't really thought about that ridge. Until now.

 

From three feet away it's not noticeable. Certainly when I'm not wearing my glasses 😉

Mark

Decals will stetch a little with solvent and sink into the creases so they won't lose much height.

 

Masking tape masks however don't stretch and the height loss is noticeable.

 

I don't see any height difference in photos of the real thing. I'm not sure if its insignificant loss, optical illusion or adjustments to application.

 

Thanks for replying. Your model looks great.

 

Ron

[Graham Boak]

When you were painting the real thing by hand you would allow for that - and could do that again on a model.  I've always just slid a transfer over it and lived with it.  This is perhaps easy with the roundel but where a letter is split on/off or ends up a different height to its neighbour, that may be more obvious.  Yes, the rib does show even on small scales - not that 1/72 is a small scale, of course.  It is sometimes amazing what people don't notice (or care about) but this happens to everyone and these things are only obvious afterwards!  Then you can't avoid them.

[woody37]

I wonder if the rib is a little over scaled on the kit and so sanding it down so that it impacts the decal less might be an option.

[Mycapt65]

4 minutes ago, woody37 said:

I wonder if the rib is a little over scaled on the kit and so sanding it down so that it impacts the decal less might be an option.

I guess that's possible but the kit's already painted

I'll have to figure something out. 

Be well gtg

Ron

[woody37]

1 hour ago, Mycapt65 said:

I guess that's possible but the kit's already painted

I'll have to figure something out. 

Be well gtg

Ron

lovely job Ron, it's making me scratch an itch for a 48 scale build now!

[PeterR]

Maybe slice the mask where the ridge is, top and bottom, so you essentially mask on the fuselage above and below the ridge, and mask on the top of the ridge.

 

Then use tape to mask the sides of the ridge, or just touch up by hand.

 

Edit - I note you have painted the area beneath the roundel white - how did you mask that? Will that now conform to a circular roundel? 

Edited December 18, 2024 by PeterR

[Mycapt65]

2 hours ago, PeterR said:

Maybe slice the mask where the ridge is, top and bottom, so you essentially mask on the fuselage above and below the ridge, and mask on the top of the ridge.

 

Then use tape to mask the sides of the ridge, or just touch up by hand.

 

Edit - I note you have painted the area beneath the roundel white - how did you mask that? Will that now conform to a circular roundel? 

The white area under roundel was a circle of masking tape pressed into the creases. It won't be perfectly round but it'll cover enough to reduce the stripes from being noticable through the decal.

 

I'm considering useing the roundel decal and your idea of slicing code masks. It's probably the safest.

 

Or applying the roundel decal and aligning the top of the codes with the roundel like the port side. The rib will shorten the codes the same as the roundel. Then I'll trim the codes that don't cross the rib short so the bottoms all line up. I'll have to see if the characters will allow that. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion 

Ron

 

[Chuck1945]

I would think attempting to slice the extra length off the non-rib decals is an open invitation to screw up the length proportions. 
 

Slicing the appropriate masks and filling in the rib portion may be the best solution, not sure about how feasible it would be to use the code letter masks to paint the code letters onto decal paper

Edited December 19, 2024 by Chuck1945
Spelling corrected

[FG2Si]

Not sure if it's any help but when I painted the roundels onto my Tamiya 1/32 Mosquito I didn't notice any distortion issues that caught my eye. 

 

 

The lettering went above so not much help there. 

 

 

 

[Tail-Dragon]

I've built a couple of the Airfix Mossie's, and haven't noticed a problem with that reinforcement (or whatever it is) as far as markings go (the "O" was masked and sprayed) ...

 

 

[Collin]

 

Used Aeromaster aftermarket decals on this build….went down over the horizontal ridge just fine with no distinct issue with height. 
 

Cheers

Collin

[MilneBay]

The only aircraft kit I can recall other than the Mosquito having a raised surface distortion which when viewed from the side would appear to distort the national marking are those of the A4 Skyhawks with the fixed refuelling probe on the starboard nose. In those the various manufacturers have deliberately distorted the lengthened the lower half of the star in the vertical plain so that while it looks odd on the decal sheet, it depicts, if applied correctly, when viewed on the model a normal proportioned star. 

 

The position of the RAF markings on the Mosquito would have been painted according to spec. and if they looked a little distorted on the aircraft if viewed form a certain angle this appears to have never been addressed. Personally I have never found it a problem and in fact that raised section provides a very handy means of aligning the markings correctly.

[Graham Boak]

To be fair, this is a much lower ridge than a refuelling probe would be.  It might not hurt to sand it down slightly if you were worried: this is not to cast any doubt on the accuracy of any of the kits on this matter.

[MilneBay]

3 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

To be fair, this is a much lower ridge than a refuelling probe would be.  It might not hurt to sand it down slightly if you were worried: this is not to cast any doubt on the accuracy of any of the kits on this matter.

 

Or to put it mildly a lot of fuss over nothing.

[Graham Boak]

I wouldn't put it that strongly.  Perhaps simply less significant than it might have seemed in principle.

[Mycapt65]

After checking how much height the rib ate out of the roundel I went on ignoring the rib. Btw the difference in height vs width on the Roundel was 0.024" or ~0.6mm. Not really enough to worry about. Decals will stretch that fine. I was more concerned about masking the codes over it with yellow tape masks. It came out fine. 

Sorry to raise concerns over basically nothing. In my head I thought the rib would change the height more than it did. I was so happy with the way the kit was coming out, I didn't want to chance a mistake.

 

Thanks for the responses and patience.

Ron 

Edited December 20, 2024 by Mycapt65