GB-43 1/48 Mosquito FB.VI - Aces' Aircraft of all Eras

Stay safe ! .

Great work so far Andy!

After a bit of a hiatus from the bench, I was back at it yesterday to continue work on the wheel wells. This time, I attended to the rear bulkhead of the nacelle which, as provided in the kit, is bare of any detail and shows an ugly seam down the center. The plan is to cover the area with a very thin piece of sheet styrene cut to the contour of the bulkhead and so I created a template using masking tape cut to the shape needed.



I then removed the tape and used it to cut the styrene sheet to the correct shape. Below at left you can see how the nacelle looks before the mods. At right is the one side glued in along with a scractch-built support for the springs that help close the doors. The springs will be added once the nacelles are glued to the wings. What looks to be a crooked cut is in fact correct as the bulkhead needs to follow the taper of the rear wing spar, to which it is attached.



In studying the wheel well details from pictures and the manuals, it occurred to me after some bouts of confusion that there is something not right with the well details provided by Tamiya. The revelation occurred when the manuals confirmed that the undercarriage for the Mosquito was interchangeable and that the hydraulic retraction jacks were on the same side, regardless of which nacelle they were installed in. Unhelpfully, the B35 manual says that the lugs for the jacks are on the "right-hand side of both bays" whereas the FB VI manual says they are on the left. So where is your head pointed when you say left and right? This is why we use the terms "port" and "starboard"!



Careful study of my reference pics shows that, indeed, the jacks are on the starboard side each nacelle and I marked the wing parts accordingly (below) so that I would not get confused again. Because Tamiya made the undercarriage and well details mirror imaged, I will need to modify the starboard bay and undercarriage to reflect that the jack is on the other side.



Here are the modified undercarriage parts with the jacks now on the same side. I had to cut the jack and lug off one, flip it over, and move it to the other side.



This was an interesting revelation for me and something that I did not pick up on for my earlier Revell model, which also got it wrong. Hope I didn't bore you with all this!

Looks great so far Andy!

Good stuff Andy, and has clarified a lot. I thought something didn't look right on my Tamiya Mossie kits, but couldn't figure out what it was.

Thanks guys. I just checked and it looks like Tamiya got it right on their 1/32 scale model.

Work continues on the wells and wings. First, a bit of an accident.

My handy old chisel bit is no more. I was using it to carve away the up-stop block moulded in to one of the wells and the bit sapped at the junction of the blade and holder and the holder pierced the wing. You can see the crack in the plastic between what's left of the bit and the wheel well.



Fortunately, this will be an easy filling job and no fine detail was damaged.

Below are the reworked starboard wheel well details. After scraping away the moulded in hydraulic lines, up-stop, and electrical cable, all of which were mirror imaged to the port well, shown at left, I replaced the details in the correct position using lead wire and styrene rod.



To uncross my eyes, I moved onto something simpler and attached the upper wing tips. Two options are provided with the kit and I went with the tip with the single nav light lens and the later rear-facing formation resin lamps.



The rear face of the radiators which can be readily seen through the exit louvres are moulded in plain, flat plastic with no texture or detail. To represent the proper details, I made up some faces with card and stretched sprue and etched them with a scalpel to make them look like cooling fins. The separate oil cooler was also represented.



All of this has now been painted and the wing halves have been glued together. Pics soon.

Thanks for stopping by.

Nice detail work Andy. Time for a new chisel though ...............

Thanks Terry. That chisel bit owes me nothing being over 50 years old! I actually found it too wide for many things I needed it for so the blade has now been ground narrower and is now clamped into a different handle. It will continue to serve in its new form!

Crimea_River said:

So where is your head pointed when you say left and right? This is why we use the terms "port" and "starboard"!

Click to expand...

To avoid confusion, we use LH or RH, inboard or outboard, left and right defined by where the pilot sits facing forward, as in the jacks are located in the LH inbd and RH outbd undercarriage bays.

This is the LH undercarriage bay, with forward at bottom. Note the angle of the rear spar.

LH ucarriage bay

The RH bay, again, note the spar angle.

RH ucarriage bay

More Mossie close-ups here.

http://warbirdswalkaround.wixsite.com/warbirds/tv959

Thanks guys. Grant, with port and starboard, there is no confusion. I was demonstrating the inconsistent application of left and right in de Havilland's own documentation, in one case using "left" and in the other "right" when in fact the detail never changed. Thanks for the link to the pics. I was using detailed pics of the B.35 and the FB VI manual to confirm the details and have become very familiar with determining the wheel wells depicted in pictures by the rear spar angle. Also, the line to the oil tank at the firewall can be seen coming from the oil coolers (always to inboard) and this also provides a clue. Both of these helped me to conclude that the well details and undercarriage structures are not mirrored

Awesome stuff.
It's the details you pick up I admire.
Well done matey.

Thanks Bill.

Looks great so far Andy!

One of the things that I mulled over in my mind, for maybe 2 nanoseconds, was to eliminate the wheel well roof in its entirety and use the inner surface of the upper wing half instead. In real life, that's how the aircraft was built and the Tamiya moulding results in a somewhat unrealistic flattening of the wells and the associated details. This would have resulted in a lot of extra work that I was unwilling to undertake as the value added would have been minimal. So, the wheel well upper surfaces have been painted and these areas can be considered finished.



The picture revealed a few areas where I dribbled the silver and these have since been touched up with the grey/green. Note that I also glued on the external wing tanks as I've decided to pretty much finish each wing before gluing them to the fuselage in order to make detailing and cleanup easier. One area that did need a bit of surface treatment was each wing tip. I made sure that the upper tips were glued on first so that these would be flush and this resulted in the lower tips needing a bit of attention. The step was small and a brushed on thick coat of primer did the trick.



Today, I was in the right mood to kick my detailing up a notch and I went ahead and made some better looking ribs on the nacelle walls. I did 4 at a time and then took a break before doing the next batch as this is pretty fiddly stuff and brains my hurt. And yes, I did not fill in the ejector pin mark but this will be hidden behind the undercarriage struts.



I also finished off the main gear assemblies by adding the brake lines and painting it all aluminum. I did take some pics below but they don't show the work very well. I still have to paint the flex hoses black and I'll take another, hopefully better pic tomorrow.


Thanks for looking in.

Dang!

Wow!!

Excellent detail work Andy !