A Separate Little War - Strike Wing Mosquito FB.VI

[John1]

I'm on to the landing gear and wheels.   One thing I've found about these 32nd Tamiya kits is that Tamiya appears to be responsive to modeler's feedback.  As each new kit comes out, they've continued to reduce the "toy" features like moveable control surfaces, landing, gear, etc.   They also have improved the wheels.   Previously, they offered nothing but vinyl tires, which are hard to paint and impossible to show as bulged.   With the Mossie, they took a much different approach.   See the instructions below:

 

Some might argue that this is overkill but given the large size of the tire, the deep treads and the fact that they were significantly bulged on the real thing, it's an excellent solution.   Assembled, it looks great and there are no seam lines to have to deal with.  Here are my tires, as they stand currently.  Still tweaking the weathering.  Also, it's hard to see in the picture but I added a slight bronze tone to the wheel assembly (along with some grease stains on the hub) to replicate discoloration due to brake heat.   

 

Next up is the landing gear.   Still a work in progress.  Note the alignment jigs that Tamiya provides to keep things in their proper place during assembly.  A very nice touch.

The small diameter wire guards on the front are amazing.  A very complex bit of plastic and they come together perfectly.   Fun fact - to simplify production and save costs, DH opted not to go with a conventional hydraulic oleo shock absorber.  Instead, each landing gear housing was filled with approx 10 hard rubber blocks stacked vertically.  This acted as the shock absorber.  Quite a novel solution, not sure how well it worked for a hard landing though.  The brown cylinders shown above are bakelite rollers (a type of plastic resin) used as guides for the landing gear door bungees - more info on this later. 

 

Lastly, I completed the landing gear retraction hardware.   Nice stuff, includes the hydraulic lines, no need to break out the cooper wire.

That's it for now, thanks for looking!

[turbo]

Great work John! That tyre design is very clever by Tamiya - no more bloody great seam running around the tyre through the middle of the tread which is always a PITA to get rid of!

[John1]

10 hours ago, turbo said:

Great work John! That tyre design is very clever by Tamiya - no more bloody great seam running around the tyre through the middle of the tread which is always a PITA to get rid of!

 

I never understood why some manufacturers provided vinyl tires.  Makes no sense but they seem to think it's a great "feature".   Thankfully in the case of the previous Tamiya kits, Barracuda offers wonderfully detailed (and pretty cheap) resin replacements.   

[John1]

Small update, just adding details of the wheels and landing gear.  Still weathering the tires but one thing I noted was that the Merlins were considered prodigious oil leakers.   While looking at some pics of Strike Wing Mosquitoes, I noticed in this pretty commonly seen picture that the tires had numerous oil drips and stains on them.  Fun fact - many (most?) Mosquitoes had canvas covers placed over tires between missions.   This was to keep the oil from leaking onto and damaging the tires.    For whatever reason, they don't seem quite as common at RAF Banff.    A few other comments on this picture - note the early rocket launchers.   This configuration made it impossible to mount the 100 gallon "slipper" tanks on the wing.  In early 1945, a modified launcher assembly was introduced that allowed two rockets to be mounted on each outer set of brackets, which then freed up room for the tanks to be installed.   Note also,   the rockets have solid shot armor piercing heads.   No explosive filler at all.   The crews aimed these rockets immediately below the waterline of the enemy ships.  By all accounts they did a great deal of damage, often times passing out the other side of the unfortunate vessel.  Lastly, note the very unusual camo scheme.   I assumed it was the Coastal Command special duties scheme of Extra Dark Sea Grey over Sky but I can also seem what looks like the original grey / green on the aft fuselage. You can also see the area under the exhausts in unpainted aluminum, apparently this aircraft had the original flame hiding exhaust cover installed when it was repainted and then later had the cover removed, showing the bare metal. Bottom line - I have no idea exactly how this bird was painted! 

 

Based on the picture above, I decided to add some staining to my tires.  Not finished yet, here's the first one.

Note also that I applied a black wash behind the brown "bakelite" rollers on the landing gear to give the illusion of this molded on part being cylindrical.   I think it came out pretty nicely.   I still need to touch up the weathering on the tires but I'm pretty happy with the overall look of these assemblies.     

 

Next, I did an oil wash on the gear retraction assembly and added decals to the mudguards.

 

Lastly, I dry fitted the landing gear to the nacelle, looks good to me.   Note that this is the "un-detailed" engine that will be covered by the cowling sections. 

To me, the Mosquito's wheels and undercarriage always seemed a bit out of proportion to the rest of the aircraft but that's what adds some of the charm I suppose.   

 

That's it for now, thanks for looking. 

[John1]

Model is completed!   I decided to replicate the famous DH206 remotely piloted, flying wing!

I guess I shouldn't quit my day job for a career in standup comedy.   

 

Anyhoo, I've completed most of the updates to the starboard engine, which will be left mostly exposed.   I installed the exhaust housings.  They actually cleared the sparkplugs I added but also completely hid them (which is what I was hoping for, given how horrible they look).   The only thing visible if you look from the bottom is a small portion of the spark plug leads.  Disregard the rough looking interior of the exhaust housing, once the exhaust stacks are installed, nothing will be visible.  At this point, I plan on installing the lower cowling section and leaving the side and top cowling sections off to show off the Merlin.  Last tasks remaining on this motor will be to clean up some of the wiring and add a few bits of piping to the wing root interior.  If anyone has pictures that show this area, please share!  

 

 

 

At this point, I added some final bits of wiring to the landing gear bays.   Here is a nice shot of the real thing, from the walkaround posted here at LSP:

 

To my existing details, I added the brownish electrical wires and a black hydraulic hose to the aft sections of the gear bay.   Hard to get a good picture of these bits but they are there, trust me!   This picture also shows in detail the springs used to retract the landing gear doors.  Once the doors are added, I'll install the two lengths of bungee cord that connected the springs to the aft ends of the doors 

 

Still need to do some additional weathering to aft section of the gear bays.  It looks too shiny for a hardworking warbird. 

 

I also installed the main landing gear assemblies.   I still have to add the brake lines (included in the kit) and the bungee cords that attached to the landing gear doors (to be scratchbuilt).  

 

That's it for now, thanks for looking and for all the good feedback! 

[turbo]

That is looking great John, I love the detail you have added - looks fantastic!

 

On 7/20/2020 at 12:34 PM, John1 said:

Lastly, note the very unusual camo scheme.   I assumed it was the Coastal Command special duties scheme of Extra Dark Sea Grey over Sky but I can also seem what looks like the original grey / green on the aft fuselage.

 

I've always wondered if that photo is pseudo-coloured John. There is another photo of the same aircraft taken at the same time which is black and white.

 

 

I'm wondering if what looks like the original grey / green on the aft fuselage is actually overpainting of invasion stripes which was present in odd and varying patterns on the Banff birds.

 

 

[John1]

1 hour ago, turbo said:

That is looking great John, I love the detail you have added - looks fantastic!

 

 

I've always wondered if that photo is pseudo-coloured John. There is another photo of the same aircraft taken at the same time which is black and white.

 

 

I'm wondering if what looks like the original grey / green on the aft fuselage is actually overpainting of invasion stripes which was present in odd and varying patterns on the Banff birds.

 

 

Hi Turbo, 

 

Thanks for the compliments!

 

With regard to the color picture I posted, there are a few different versions out there, some are more "vivid" than others but the consensus seems to be that it's an original color picture.  As far as the aft fuselage, anything is possible but if it's overpainting of invasion stripes, it seems to be just a bit out of position.  It also still doesn't explain the weird looking vertical stabilizer.   I posted over on Brit Modeler (they seem to have a good number of Mosquito experts) and a few folks said it was just a combo of newly applied and heavily weathered Extra Dark Sea Grey.   That's a nice picture above, the subject I plan on building (KK-Q) has the same light overpainting on the aft fuselage.   One thing I don't understand - I believe they first painted over the upper portion of the fuselage invasion stripes (along with the markings on the wings) when the order came to remove these but left the invasion stripes on the bottom of the fuselage as a unit ID marking.    If that was the case, why do so many of these Mosquitoes only show overpainting on the upper fuselage, while the lower section appears to be in it's original scheme?

[Anthony in NZ]

Fantastic work and very inspiring to me with my one.

 

Love the slightly weathered look and especially love the fluid staining on the tyres...a nice touch and a common sight.

 

Cheers

Anthony

[John1]

Thanks Anthony!  Hey, if you happen to have any good pictures of the aft portion of the cockpit, area behind the seats, to the aft bulkhead, please feel free to post.  That's the section I'm working on next.

 

Just a small bit of progress to share.   I completed the piping around the firewall.  Just need to run an oil wash to around those copper coolant lines to tone them down and I think I'll be complete with the engine.   For S&G's, I dry fitted the fuselage section just to see how it looks.

Hard to find pictures that show the upper firewall area, I did the best I could by adding some hydraulic lines along the inner wing area.  

 

 

 

That's it for now, thanks for looking! 

[Uncarina]

Great work John! I love the extra work and attention to detail that you’ve put into the engines.

 

Cheers,  Tom

[Dpgsbody55]

I've been having a look back through previous pages of this build.  The bind moggles...    Wonderful work so far. 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Biggles87]

Wow!! What did you use for the copper pipes? It looks like copper pipe to me.

 

John

[John1]

6 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

Wow!! What did you use for the copper pipes? It looks like copper pipe to me.

 

John

The large coolant lines are kit bits, sprayed with good old Testor's copper and then hit with an oil wash (still need to weather those last two lines).  A few of the smaller diameter lines are ones I added using copper wire.   

[John1]

Plodding along slowly.  I'm back to the cockpit interior.  Specifically, the "shelf" aft of the crew seats.   Not a lot of pictures out there that show this area in detail, thankfully Anthony here on LSP shared some of his personal pictures of a beautifully restored FB.VI and I also found this trolling on the net:

 

 

You can see the folded down navigator's armor plate and against the rear of the bulkhead, the IFF transmitter and reciever units.  Also note the electrical and hydraulic lines running along the sidewall.   This shot is of an aircraft mid-way through restoration so some of the lines and black boxes are missing. 

 

Before I dive into modeling, first - A brief sidebar on the avionics used on the Mosquito.  Early variants had pretty much nothing but a large radio transmitter and equally large radio receiver mounted in this area.  A bit later came the IFF sets.   Prior to deciding on the subject of my build and doing research, I purchased the beautiful Barracudacast resin Mosquito  Radio set.  Truly a work of art (like all of their stuff is) and i was quite excited to use these bits..  

Unfortunately, as I started researching Mosquitoes I found out that the position of these radios changed over time.    First the Mosquito was fitted with the "Gee" long range navigation system (sort of like the old LORAN system).   To make room for the Gee gear, the transmitter was moved to the aft fuselage.   Later, starting in 1944, (which is the time period my Mosquito is from), the receiver was also relocated to the aft fuselage, leaving just the Gee receiver and display taking up the rear shelf, along with a small electrical junction box.  Here's a nice shot of a Mosquito's Gee setup:

Just note that this was a prototype.   Operational units were finished in overall black. 

 

So here is where I am at so far - 

 

Built up the shelf using kit parts.   Tamiya's Gee receiver is quite nice and comes with a PE cover so that all the cooling holes in the case are replicated.   Only thing I've added to the this area is a handle on the receiver and various electrical lines.   Still much more to do.  Note that for the three lines coming off the small junction box, I only added the sections that would be visible.  No sense doing work that will be invisible, right?

 

Also extended some electrical lines along the right sidewall.  These will terminate into the aft bulkhead once everything is assembled.  Sorry for the substandard paintwork on these lines, you'll only be viewing them from the top.

 

And here are a few shots of the cockpit with the wings dry fitted.   I like the "busy" look of the Navigator's area.  

 

 

 

Still more to add in this area, followed up some more weathering and touchup work.    That's it for now, thanks for looking guys! 

[Anthony in NZ]

Wow!

Sensational work John!  very informative and impressively executed! I always love your updates with this.  

Keep up the awesomeness you have me captivated my friend.  Glad some of those photos were of use

 

Cheers Anthony