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Tamiya Mossie: A Plastic Wonder?

The eyes of any kit is the canopy. Adding to the glorious fuss of the pilot’s office is the inclusion of the canopy inner frame as a separate assembly over which sits the crispest, clearest piece of styrene you’ve ever seen. Once again, you have a set of bahookie (or is it kabuki?) tape masks that you need to cut yourself, but that’s no biggee although I wouldn’t have argued at a pre-cut set instead.

Three beautifully rendered figures are included with this kit, a seated pilot and the navigator either seated beside him or about to board the aircraft via the ladder that leads up to the open starboard hatch. A nice touch is the separate clear goggles as opposed to simply being painted on their heads as well as decals for their rank insignia.

Oh-oh, I just used the ‘D’ word. Decals. Much discussion has been had regarding the usability of Tamiya’s sheets of which I will not utter here. That being said, I now regret using them. I chose masks for the Corsair and I wish I had done the same in this instance. Being made primarily of wood, the outer skin of the ‘Wooden Wonder’ is pretty much featureless. There is little in the way of panel lines and rivet detail for decals to be sucked into, so being as thick as they are, there was nowhere for them to go and as a result, a lot of the stencil details sits quite proud of the surface and in certain directional light, become very noticeable. Even with liberal lashings of Daco Products strongest and finest setting solution, they still sit there like little placards or, in the case of the Incidence warnings, wing-top straps.

There are three marking options of which two are the grey/green camouflage. The other is an all-over silver painted scheme of an Borneo-based RAAF aircraft and you need to know what version you want to build right from the get go as there are specific parts for each variant such as needle or paddle propeller blades, exhaust stubs and cockpit components.