Hi all

I'm building this kit using the excellent Alley Cat conversion. I've made some good, but slow, progress on the cockpit and hope to get some pics up soon.

However, I'm going to start this build log with a question. I'm at the stage of cockpit construction where I need to run a wash over my basic paint job to highlight details etc. I normally use a home brew of Tamiya acrylics (black and red-brown), but thought that this time I'd try the Promodeller washes that I've heard are so good. My question is, there seems to be a wide variety of colours in the Promodeller range - can anyone recommend one that gives a good depth of colour to a cockpit painted British Interior Grey-Green?

thanks Brad

Sorry...can't help you with the wash but........ DAMN...........I am looking forward to keeping tabs on your build.
Good luck!

Hi Brad,

...I've tried the Promodeller washes after reading all the positive reviews ..and to be honest I didn't like them at all..no colour, too thin etc etc.. perhaps it's me ..and I don't leave them on long enough or something...'Dark dirt' I guess is the one to go for, but from my experience if you've got a tried and tested wash technique you'll probably want to stick with it..

Thanks for the replies guys. Based on what you've said Neil, I think I'll stick with my tried and trusted method of 1:1 Tamiya black and red-brown, cut with 50 per cent water and a drop of dishwashing liquid.

Photos soon - I'm well into the cockpit and am currently grappling with the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the kit-supplied elevator cable pulley...My eight-year old son told me on the weekend that I'm obsessing over detail a little too much, and I think he's right...

cheers Brad

Hey Brad
100% with Neil on this,save your cash mate and use your homebrew
Andy

Thanks for the confirmation Andy, I'll stick with what I know. I'd have to say I'm a bit surprised to hear the Promodeller stuff isn't much good after what I've read, but I'm more than happy to save myself some money!

Now for my next question - I've just about finished painting the cockpit and seats, and am ready to put on the yellow circle armour plate decals. The Airfix instructions tell you to apply these to the back of the pilot's seat and nav's armour plate, but I've seen lots of reference photos where these circles are on the fronts of the seats/plates, as well as along the wall/bulkhead below the seats as well. Is there a definitive right/wrong placement for these markings, or did they just vary a lot (which means I can put them where I like, given that I don't have any specific cockpit refs for the aircraft I'm modelling..)? Grateful any advice!!!! thanks Brad

Hi Brad, have you ever tried using thinned Tamiya "Smoke" for your cockpit washes? You may be surprised at how well it works, you can add red brown to the mix as well. I used to use something similar to your mix, but personally found the "Smoke" option work better- so i now use it for most cockpits and engine bay areas. No harm in trying it on some parts for comparison maybe.

As for the pro-modeller washes i think they are just an expensive way of achieving what you can do using ordinary oil paints or water colours. Sort of like MIG pigments in my view are just an expensive alternative to ground up artists pastels...still they're very popular of course.

Look forward to seeing your Mosquito come together, it looks an impressive bit of model kit from what i've seen.

Andrew

I can't be of much help with the washes. I've finished the same kit and used a home brew of my own to match colors from photographs. Hopefully I'll get to post some images of my Costal Command NE-A machine soon. Good luck

Jim - really looking forward to see your Coastal Command machine - I saw pics of the one that Spencer Pollard did over on Britmodeller and it looked excellent. Any particular does and don't you can suggest about building the kit?

Andrew - I just tried the Smoke/Red Brown mix tonight as a cockpit wash, and it's definitely a winner - much more subtle than the dark wash I normally use. It gives a nice appearance of built up grime, which is exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for your suggestion!!

Just started applying some silver Mike Grant rivet decals to represent the screws/fasteners which hold down the bakelite footplates under the rudder pedals.

cheers Brad

Not any particular does or don't for this one. It is a HUGE kit though so patience is the name of the game. I think I put in about 140 hours into it, granted it was off and on. The RR Merlins are very nice and fit is great. It is a well engineered kit. Osprey and Squadron publish some awesome reference materials in their Publications No 4 and 15, respectively. More later :-)

Hey Brad, FYI, sent in my photos for my Mossie. Hopefully they will be on next weekend. Jim

Great Jim, really Looking forward to seeing them. Did you use much aftermarket or build straight from the box? I'm planning on using a bit but may well come to regret it.....

I built my Mossie pretty much straight OOB except for the seatbelts that I constructed from ribbon and wire. If you look at the cockpit closeups, this seemed to be the closest match for me. I did my best. In my opinion, the OOB detail is excellent and accurate (especially the fuel/bomb/weapons bay and RR Merlins). I hope you like my build :-)

OK, here's the bit that should have been at the front end of this build log. I'm building a 1/24 FB Mk XVIII using the Alley Cat conversion to modify Airfix's FB Mk VI kit. There's nothing I can say about the Airfix kit that hasn't already been said - it is absolutely superb, and I can't wait to see a finished kit in the flesh. It would look good OOB, but I couldn't help myself and have picked up the following aftermarket bits and bobs:

Airscale instrument panel decals
RB Productions Sutton Harness
Mastercasters intake grill covers and fasteners
Mastercasters wheels
Paragon 50 gallon drop tanks
Paragon exhaust stacks/shrouds etc
Paragon undercarriage doors etc
Paragon rear fuselage underside lights
Scale Aircraft Conversions white metal undercarriage
Master Browning machine guns.

All this combined with the Alley Cat conversion - which involves chopping off the front of the Airfix fuselage - makes me wonder if I've bitten off more than I can chew, but things are going OK, so far…

In terms of references, the main books I'm using are:

The De Havilland Mosquito - A Comprehensive Guide for the Modeller (Richard Franks)
Mosquito FB.VI - Airframe, systems and RAF wartime usage (Dave Brown)
Modelling the De Havilland Mosquito (Roy Sutherland)
Shipbuster - Mosquito Mk XVIII "Tse-tse" (Alex Crawford)
D.H. Mosquito - An Illustrated History, Vols 1 and 2 (Stuart Howe and Ian Thirsk).

This is in addition to lots of detail pictures (mainly cockpit stuff) pulled from the internet, and inspiration from all the other build logs out there on various modelling sites - there are a lot of these kits being built!

After cleaning up the Alley Cat parts and slicing up the Airfix fuselage, I did some test fitting which was pretty promising (pics on that later). Then I made a start on the cockpit.

I think every review and build log of this kit that I've read has mentioned the large number of ejector pin marks located on highly visible surfaces, and they're right. I'm not sure what Airfix was thinking - perhaps it needed to keep the costs down - but this aspect of kit engineering hasn't been well thought out. There's nothing insurmountable - I used superglue and accelerator as a quick drying, smooth sanding filler - but I'm glad the version I'm doing has the bomb bay closed, which will cut down the number of pin marks I have to fill by about fifty per cent.

After quite a bit of sanding and painting and masking, this is what I ended up with for the basic cockpit buikhead assembly.







Please note that some of these colours are a little vivid (I'm not letting my Mac enhance any more photos...). The interior grey-green is a mix recommended by Tamiya that looks pretty close to the colour in pictures of unrestored airframes that I've seen (noting that interior grey-green was a pretty variable colour anyway). The canvas boot at the base of the contol column has been replicated by covering the base kit part with a tissue soaked in white glue, with grommets for the lacing added from spares in the RB Productions seat belt sets. I've also removed a number of moulded on wires/tubes on the upper bulkheads, which I'll replace with solder later in the build.

The multi-coloured cockpit floor is an idea I picked up from Roy Sutherland's book. Youtube footage of the airframe I'm building (www.youtube.com/watch?v=QndLmfp6Y5w) shows a well-worn aircraft, so I thought I'd replicate this inside the cockpit as well. I've attempted to show the base plywood showing through worn layers of red primer and grey-green topcoat - it's a bit garish here under the flash, but should tone down nicely under a matt coat and weathering (I hope).



Finally, here are some pics of my RB Productions seat belts in mid-assembly, which is a process that is maddening and satisfying at the same time!





Anyway that's probably enough for now - more tomorrow hopefully.

cheers Brad

Well it's a bit longer than tomorrow actually, I've had a week at the beach and am now back in Canberra slowly baking - 38 degrees C (about 105 F) here today and more of the same tomorrow. Too hot to do much modelling so here's another update on my very slow progress.

Here are the rudder pedals mid-modification - the one on the left is the kit original (after assembly), and the one on the right has had a lightening hole and reshaped contour added to the upper strengthening rib. It still needs a bit more tidying up, but it's pretty close to finished.



Next is the navigator's armoured backplate, also undergoing some mods. (Ignore the big ugly scratch down the middle, that'll be covered by the seat back cushion!) Airfix left off the fuel cock control panel (lower right), which I've built up with some plastic and etch from the spares box, and am now ready to paint. I've also drilled some holes for the seat belt attachments, and for another lever/switch just above the fuel cock control panel. Finally, I've added some plastic strip at the top of the backplate to represent the hinges used for attaching the fold-down top half of the nav's armour. Again, Airfix hasn't represented this in the kit and I don't know if I'm going to bother including it - my references suggest that it wasn't a universal fit (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), and since I don't have any specific shots of the interior of the plane I'm building, I'm going to let it go...



I've also been working on the seat cushions themselves - these have been painted and Futured, and are now waiting for a final weathering with oils to make them a bit more leather-like. Airfix's rendition of the nav's seat back cushion (on the RHS of the photo below) seemed the wrong shape according to my references, so I've done some sanding and reshaping. The nav's seat cushion itself (LHS side of the photo) was a much better shape, but still needed a bit of reshaping around the edges to give an impression of comfort...



Since the underside of the nav's seat cushion will be visible from the open crew access door, I've added a little more detail here as well. I used plastic strip to build up a raised framework around the bottom of the cushion, and then created a varnished plywood effect underneath the base of the seat, to differentiate the base from the leather that's been stretched over the top of it. This picture isn't great, but I think the finished item will look good once installed.



Finally, the pilot's seat.



This had some nasty ejector pin marks that needed filing before I could start painting. I also committed to paint before I realised (again, someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that the pilot didn't actually have a dedicated seat cushion, but used to sit on his parachute, and so the seat pan should really be empty… Unfortunately, this would have required a fair bit more detail work to make acceptable, and as I said I'd already started painting, so I decided to let it go. Airfix's pilot's seat cushion (RHS below) looks pretty good, but the original seat back cushion looks nothing like anything I've seen - much too square and with a poor representation of leather trim. I'm not sure about my modified version either (LHS below) - I rounded the edges and added some cushion ribs from half-round strip which I then I skinned with bare metal foil - but it looks better than the original. Still not sure if I'm going to use it though….



That's it for tonight. Comments welcome! cheers Brad

Let me guess, Ulladulla/Mollymook? Well that's where i usually went when i was at Canberra.

Nice progress on the interior.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew, it was Broulee actually - we rented a nice little fibro shack just back from the beach and did lots of surfing and catching up on back episodes of Doctor Who with our boys

My main concern at this stage of the build is how well the Alley Cat nose is going to mate with the Airfix fuselage. I was planning on going down the traditional safe route of joining each nose half to its respective fuselage half before joining the completed halves together, but I see that a guy doing the same build over on Britmodeler.com has assembled the nose as an entire separate unit which he plans to plug on to the rest of the fuselage. Not sure if I'm game enough to do that…

cheers Brad

Glad you had a good holiday Brad. I built my Mossie with the seat cushions. Squadron Signal publication, Walk Around Number 15 does have photographs showing these cushions as black leather cushions.

Thanks Jim, I've had my eye out for a copy of the Squadron/Signal walkaround book on the Mossie but haven't been able to find one yet. I'm not even sure if there was a definitive type of Mossie seat cushion cover - I've seen pics of some black, some dark brown, while I've also heard that some were made out of a mid/dark green leather. However I haven't seen any pics of these ones. It doesn't help that many of the restored airframes have non-original seat cushions and belts (perhaps not surprisingly I guess). One positive out of all this variation is that there seems to be plenty of scope for artistic licence! cheers Brad

There was a ubiquitous green material that was used for seats in British aircraft during WWII. Not leather. Leather had to be imported, traditionally from North Africa, and was needed for things like boots. Humbrol Deck Green is a good match for the colour.

That makes sense about the leather, it was just a guess on my part. Good to know though :-)

Thanks Antoni, that's really useful to know. When you say 'material', do you mean fabric? I guess if that's the case it might have some sort of textured weave to the surface. Any idea where I might find a picture of a seat covered with this stuff? If I can find a decent reference I'll rejig the cushions I've already done, it's not too late. cheers Brad

Something like car seats 1960s

Green vinyl - that's awesome…Just like the vinyl on Mum and Dad's car seat back in the 70s that used to scorch the back of your legs when you hopped in the back seat. I think I can feel some re-painting coming on!

thanks again, Brad

PS another question if anyone knows the answer - the aircraft I'm modelling had the original, thin prop blades, not the paddle blades seen on many later Mossies. I assume the blades are made of metal rather than wood, but I can't find anything in my references to confirm this. Grateful any help!

Well, it's been a long time between posts - lots of stuff going on at the moment, and I've only had a little time for modelling. I've spent it pottering away at the cockpit of this beast, adding detail here and there. My most recent work has been on the pilot's seat, fitting the RB Productions seatbelts (little kits in their own right with 50+ pieces each). The seat isn't quite finished - still a couple of other details to add, as well as a bit of touching up to do (a few shiny glue marks to get rid of etc). I've also finished some additional detail on the navigator's armour plate (ignore the big yukky scratch in the middle of the plate, it'll be covered by the seat cushion) - I've constructed a passable fuel cock control panel with bits of spare plastic, etch and decal. Speaking of which, I'm a bit annoyed that Airfix's otherwise lovely yellow armour plate circle decals are out of register - it doesn't matter on the back of the pilot's seat, but it's annoying on the nav's armour. Still working out how to hide it! Anyway, here are the pics.
















Thanks for looking and hopefully it won't be so long between updates next time.

cheers Brad