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Another Tamiya Mosquito


gwana

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Very cool, if I may make one suggestion? Look at some reference photos for flares, they were not all the same color. 

 

Thanks! I will. Always happy for input. Just going by Tamiya's color guide. I have to re-do those anyway.

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All right, I've been scouring the internet looking for some reference pictures of the cockpit, and I'm coming up short. I can see that the backrest of the pilot's seat is wood, not metal like the seat pan (Or is it metal? Now I think I've seen both). How about the floor and the bulkheads? The navigator's seat back and the vertical panel beneath his knees are marked with the yellow circle that I thought denoted that those areas were armored. Is it a metal panel, or metal sandwiched in the wood? Surely an inch of plywood won't stop cannon fire or flak. I've weathered my cockpit floor as metal, and now I'm thinking it's probably wood, as is the horizontal shelf behind the navigator. The restored pictures I could find seem to show woodgrain under the new paint. If so, I'm going to strip the assembly and start over with a different base color so I can model worn paint on wood instead, and I need to fix some boo-boos anyway.

 

Edit: I know there's plywood on both sides of the control yoke, just not sure about the rest of the floor.

Edited by gwana
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Honey-do list was too long to accomplish anything worthy of photographs, but as an update I have a bit of a story...

 

On Friday I received a notice in the mail that I had a Registered Letter I needed to sign for. Registered letters are never good, in my experience. I don't think I owe anybody money, and I don't have any rich relatives that may die and leave me money. So I was rather anxious on Friday night wondering what bad news I was going to get on Saturday morning. Saturday comes and I try to get to the Post Office, to find that there is a farmer's market, an art show, and a music festival all going on, and the Post Office is across the street from an Irish pub. On St. Patrick's Day. Annoyance level 11. Parked in the grass.

 

So I got my letter. It's from RB Productions in Poland. The PE intake screens and radiators for the Mossie that I ordered off eBay a month ago. Forgot all about them. I'll try to remember to put up some pictures next to the kit parts when I get to that section.

Edited by gwana
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Honey-do list was too long to accomplish anything worthy of photographs, but as an update I have a bit of a story...

 

On Friday I received a notice in the mail that I had a Registered Letter I needed to sign for. Registered letters are never good, in my experience. I don't think I own anybody money, and I don't have any rich relatives that may die and leave me money. So I was rather anxious on Friday night wondering what bad news I was going to get on Saturday morning. Saturday comes and I try to get to the Post Office, to find that there is a farmer's market, an art show, and a music festival all going on, and the Post Office is across the street from an Irish pub. On St. Patrick's Day. Annoyance level 11. Parked in the grass.

 

So I got my letter. It's from RB Productions in Poland. The PE intake screens and radiators for the Mossie that I ordered off eBay a month ago. Forgot all about them. I'll try to remember to put up some pictures next to the kit parts when I get to that section.

Glad your registered letter was something good!  My experience with the kit intake screens tells me that this was money well spent - they're the worst part of the entire kit, and the replacements will look much better. 

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Got some detail painting done this weekend, but I mostly got mired in the intricacies of the Merlin engine. IMHO, with the engine being on display, it needs some more detail on top. I'm not too concerned about flipping the whole plane on its belly and counting oil feed lines, but in all of the pictures of the real thing, the top of the Merlin is... busy.

 

HOWEVER. After looking lustfully at the Eduard resin engines and doing my best to research (and time spent copying scratchbuilding), it seems that they have reproduced the Merlin XX or the 21 from the Hurricane, early Mossie prototypes and early variants, whereas the Mosquito Mark VI had the Merlin 23 or 25. (Edit to add: Nope - further research shows a Mk VI could come with the 21.) Airfix also uses an older engine design in their 1/24 kit that might be suitable for a Mark IV or earlier prototypes. From what I can tell, the engine with the coolant tubes running across the top (a la Eduard) was phased out before many got into Mossies, and almost certainly not the FBVI. (Edit: I was wrong) The coolant tank connects to two small housings on the front of the heads. This seems to be a result of switching from a 1-piece block to separate block & heads. So the Merlin in most some of the Mossies is not going to have the coolant tubes or nest of snakes ignition harness as presented by Eduard, but instead will have a raised ignition harness with a more simplified routing. This is exactly what's shown in the Tamiya reference literature, and I have yet to find a photo of a wartime Mosquito FB that has an engine with the external coolant tubes visible on top.

 

If anyone is well versed on the Merlin variants in Mosquitoes I'd be happy to get some more input before I make some fiddly bits. I have to connect that coolant tank to something.

Edited by gwana
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Got some detail painting done this weekend, but I mostly got mired in the intricacies of the Merlin engine. IMHO, with the engine being on display, it needs some more detail on top. I'm not too concerned about flipping the whole plane on its belly and counting oil feed lines, but in all of the pictures of the real thing, the top of the Merlin is... busy.

 

HOWEVER. After looking lustfully at the Eduard resin engines and doing my best to research (and time spent copying scratchbuilding), it seems that they have reproduced the Merlin XX or the 21 from the Hurricane, early Mossie prototypes and early variants, whereas the Mosquito Mark VI had the Merlin 23 or 25. Airfix also uses an older engine design in their 1/24 kit that might be suitable for a Mark IV or earlier prototypes. From what I can tell, the engine with the coolant tubes running across the top (a la Eduard) was phased out before many got into Mossies, and almost certainly not the FBVI. The coolant tank connects to two small housings on the front of the heads. This seems to be a result of switching from a 1-piece block to separate block & heads. So the Merlin in most of the Mossies is not going to have the coolant tubes or nest of snakes ignition harness as presented by Eduard, but instead will have a raised ignition harness with a more simplified routing. This is exactly what's shown in the Tamiya reference literature, and I have yet to find a photo of a wartime Mosquito FB that has an engine with the external coolant tubes visible on top.

 

If anyone is well versed on the Merlin variants in Mosquitoes I'd be happy to get some more input before I make some fiddly bits. I have to connect that coolant tank to something.

Good research, Gwana.  I did add the coolant tubes to mine - one running along either head, not the central tube down the middle - based on some reference photos that Wolf scared up.  But if your research indicates that's not accurate, it would certainly be easier to avoid. 

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Hmm, interesting. I took a look back at your build, and I have no reason to doubt Wolf's reference photos, although we don't know what variant of the Mossie they came out of. The plot thickens. I'm nowhere near mounting engines yet, so I guess research continues. It's really hard to find period photos showing the top of the engine, and it's entirely likely that restored birds have newer engines in them...

 

Thanks!

Edited by gwana
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Well, I've found reference photos from the period and documentation that show both Merlin 21 and 25 variants in what appear to be Mk VI's, so I guess the correct answer is that either could be correct, and if you want to be picky you'd need to know how your specific airframe was configured if you're after a specific subject. The engines were constantly changing in production. I've edited the post above in case somebody sees it in the future.

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Hmm, interesting. I took a look back at your build, and I have no reason to doubt Wolf's reference photos, although we don't know what variant of the Mossie they came out of. The plot thickens. I'm nowhere near mounting engines yet, so I guess research continues. It's really hard to find period photos showing the top of the engine, and it's entirely likely that restored birds have newer engines in them...

 

Thanks!

 

This was exactly the problem I ran into

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Well, I think I have some closure. I have found 2 production sources that show some of the early MkVI aircraft got the Merlin 23, most of production got the 25. This makes sense just given the production dates of the MkVI being '43 and later. The 21 may have gotten into the MkII Fighter and Night Fighter.

 

There's not much visual difference I can discern between the 23 and the 25 - I think the change is in supercharger output. However, the 23 and 25 do not have the prominent coolant pipes on the top of the engine like the 21 (and as depicted in the Eduard aftermarket engines).

 

So, if anyone cares, unless you're modeling the first MkVI prototype (engine type not clear), it seems likely based on my research that the Mosquito engine for the Tamiya kit should be visually similar to the engine in this walkaround: https://www.largescaleplanes.com/walkaround/wk.php?wid=125

 

And this is why I should just build OOB...   /nerd

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