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On 11/20/2020 at 9:48 PM, 11bee said:

Not sure, it would make sense to have a heating element.  Your guess is as good as mine on them.  

 

15 hours ago, Slartibartfast said:

Until proven wrong, I propose the screens were not heated.  They were there to prevent injestion of rocks and small children.


I found *most of the Mosquito maintenance manual. Including the structural repair manual Here post #25 has the manuals. 
 

The screens appear to have just been a passive anti-ice measure. They would prevent large pieces of ice from forming on the intake and being ingested. There wasn’t much in the way of anti-ice on wwii aircraft. I would assume that once warmed up there wasn’t much of an issue with carburetor icing on those engines.

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2 hours ago, Helo-Engineer said:

 


I found *most of the Mosquito maintenance manual. Including the structural repair manual Here post #25 has the manuals. 
 

The screens appear to have just been a passive anti-ice measure. They would prevent large pieces of ice from forming on the intake and being ingested. There wasn’t much in the way of anti-ice on wwii aircraft. I would assume that once warmed up there wasn’t much of an issue with carburetor icing on those engines.

Makes sense but I always assumed if those screens iced up, they would restrict airflow to the engines.  You are correct about those Merlins putting out a lot of heat.  Due to the close proximity of the radiators to the cockpit, it was common for flight crews to fly with just light jackets (or no jackets at all), even in the winter.  

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So, the weathering process continues.   From the previous page, this picture shows a good example of how grubby the underside got on these birds.   Between muddy fields, engine / cannon soot and the oil leaks that Merlins were known for, the bottom of these aircraft got dirty! Note also the patches of what looks to be red dope on the port horizontal stab. 

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After airbrushing the basic exhaust staining as described in my previous  post, I did a bit of oil wash and then tried out Flory Washes for the first time.   Very nice stuff, I'm a big fan.   Essentially nothing more than fine pigment, water and a surfactant.   You slop it on heavy, let it dry and wipe it off with a damp paper towel until you have the effect you want. You can go lightly and end up with some moderate staining or wipe off most and you’ll get a nice panel line wash.  I used Dark Dirt and Grime tones.  Just a warning, for matt paint, they tend to adhere pretty strongly and may not come completely off no matter how much water you apply after they set up.   Need to use caution here.      Anyway, this is still a work in progress.  I add some weathering effects, then tone them down until I feel that I got it just right. 

 

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Mud spatters coming off the tail wheel were Testor's dark tan with a dab of brown added. 

 

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I figured the drop tanks would have just been stacked in the dirt so I added some mud stains to their undersides.    Also added a few patches of red dope to represent battle damage repairs (see previous posts for more info on this). 

 

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That's it for now, thanks for looking! 

Edited by 11bee
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Thanks very much Dutch!   

 

I'm still weathering away.   I didn't use much of the Flory washes on the upper surfaces.   As mentioned, the semi-matte finish means that they could end up leaving darker stains that I'd like.   I added some foot traffic scuffs to the wing root areas using pastels since that's how the groundcrews would have accessed the fuel ports, upper engines and the nose MG bay.  Also added some metal showing around the nose gun camera and MG ports, which was common on all FB.VI's. 

 

I don't want to overweather the model, which is pretty easy to do.   I think I'm going to touch up the wing roots, use some pastels on the national insignia to tone them down a bit and then call it a day on the weathering.   Speaking of national insignia, note the ones on the wings are higher visibility, late-war versions with white added.  These were introduced by the RAF after a spate of friendly fire shootdowns (primarily involving USAAF pilots).

 

I also secured the canopy in place.  Still need to apply a final polish to remove the finger smudges and touch up a bit of the framework, especially around the open escape hatch.

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Note the red primer battle damage touch-ups above.

 

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Note the off-white line running vertically behind the pilot's seat.   Fashioned from stretched sprue, it's a bungee cord that was used to raise / lower the pilot's seat.   Typical British approach -  lightweight, cheap and it works.   You can see it clearly in the picture below.   This pic also shows the heavy weathering around the nose section, presumably from ground crew climbing up on the nose to rearm the MG bins.  I'll be adding some of this as I move forward.

Mossie08 VWOC

 

That's it for now, thanks for looking!

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Not a lot of progress to show lately, all I've done is to complete the props.   Tamiya gives you two blade options, the original "needle" blades and the later, wider, "paddle" blades.   These wider blades were retrofitted on Mosquitoes later in the war and gave a bit of performance boost vrs the early props. 

 

For a small assembly, there is a fair amount of paintwork required.   The spinners were shot with Colourcoates Medium Sea Grey.   It would have been nice to have KK-Q sporting later post-war spinners that some 333 Squadron Mossies had that were painted in the colors of the Norwegian flag but no such luck.  The blade tips were painted white, followed by Testors yellow with a touch of orange added.   Once dry, the tips were masked off and the remainder of the blades shot with a mix of flat black with about 25% dark grey.   The blades on these aircraft weathered just as much as the rest of the airframe so I did my best to replicate this.  I then sprayed a very diluted coat of tan over the blades.  Finally, I removed the masks over the yellow tips and applied Flory's "dark grime" wash.   This stuff really allows you to grunge up a part and you've got the ability to dial it back as much as needed or if you aren't happy with the final results, just wipe it off entirely and start again.    I also applied this wash to the spinners.   As you can see in the picture I posted a few pages back, the spinners got as dirty as the rest of the aircraft. Last step was to add some scratches to the leading edge of the blades.  I tried to keep this restrained.   Although these aircraft were flying off of some rough bases, the pictures I've seen don't show a huge amount of wear.   I used a silver artists pencil for this.   I love these, so much easier to apply fine scratches, etc compared to paint.   

 

So anyway, that's it for today.

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 Thanks for looking! 

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Thanks very much Bounce, appreciate the comments, it makes the time spent posting worth it!

 

Not much progress lately, I've been on the road for work, just returned a few days ago.   Just adding some small details and continuing with the weathering.   One addition was the system of bungee cords that opened and closed the main landing gear doors.   Instead of complex and heavy hydraulics, the British opted for another simple (and lightweight) solution.  They used a series of bungee cords to keep the doors under tension.   When the gear was lowered, it would simply push the doors open and they would remain firmly against the landing gear legs while under tension.  When the gear was raised, they pulled the doors closed.  Quite simple and again, it worked perfectly.   I used very thin stretched sprue for the bungees. 

 

The bungees run around brown "bakelite" rollers on the leading edge of the gear legs.  I think I'll install mounting bolts on that center spreader bar.  The bungee connections look a bit bare. 

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Another picture of the landing gear.   Got the props press fitted in place.  

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At the rear of the door, we have a similar system.  In this case, I'm not sure if they are bungee cords or wire cable.  Either way, they each connect to a heavy duty spring in the wheel bay that keeps the doors under tension.

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And lastly, just tweaking the weathering.   Added some scratches to the 20mm gun ports and cowlings / inner leading edges.  The gun port scratches will get toned down with some additional pastel "soot". 

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So that's it for now.   Thanks for all the interest, enjoy the rest of the weekend!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I figured I'd turn my attention to the crew door.   One thing that I personally didn't like about the design of the Mosquito was the crew door.   I honestly can't see how the pilot and nav could have bailed out in a hurry through such a small and awkwardly located opening.  That being said, I'm not sure what else could have been done given the layout of the cockpit, except perhaps to enlarge the door a bit.   The crew did have the option of going out the overhead escape hatch but I'm guessing they probably would have hit the horizontal stabs.   I suppose this explains why most Mossies that went down took their crews with them. 

 

Anyway, the kit door is pretty decent but was a bit basic.   I decided to add a few details.  First up, I hollowed out the canvas pouch that was used to hold the landing gear locking pins during flight.  The kit part is molded to the inner door surface as a solid lump.  I also added two tiny little drawstrings from fine stretched sprue.  I then scratchbuilt the cover and locking handle assembly.   Simply a bit of carved sheet plastic, two bits of plastic rod for the handle and a bit of PE scrap for the door strap.   I thought about sanding off the emergency hydraulic pump handle and the red emergency door jettison handle since both are simply molded into the door's inner surface but decided to just give them a black wash to try to replicate the handles being separate from the door.   I think they came out ok.   I also added some scratches to the  hydraulic pump handle and the door locking lever.  After all was done, I added a dark brown wash to certain areas, applied the propeller warning and door locking decals and called it a day.   Nice way to keep myself entertained for an hour or two on a cold New England morning. 

 

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It looks pretty crappy close up but from normal viewing distances, it will be ok (I did touch up the brown leather strap after taking these pictures). 

 

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Thanks for looking.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nearly at the end folks, I'm sure you'll be as glad as I am.  Next up is the upper escape hatch.   As I had cut this out of the kit canopy, I figured I'd need to display the removed hatch somewhere on the completed model.   First off, here is a great picture of the real thing courtesy of Anthony over on LSP:

 

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The hatch has a very simple locking mechanism.  A single handle, connected by a cable to 8 rotating metal tabs that hold the hatch in place.   Move the handle and the tabs all open simultaneously. 

 

Using a spare canopy, I cut out the hatch by drilling multiple small holes and then using the blade of my X-acto knife to cut out the hatch.   A bit of sanding and I'm all set. 

 

i wasn't going to do anything detailing to this part but since it's a cold, rainy day and I had nothing better to do, I decided to try to replicate all the bits of the real thing.   I started off with using thin plastic rod that was sanded flat on one side to represent the framing.   I then added the handle, cable, pulleys and locking tabs from various bits of stretched sprue, scrap PE, shaved bits of plastic rod, etc.  All up, I think I added approx 45 parts to this.   The warning labels came from the Barracuda stencil set.    I honestly think that this came out pretty bad.  I rushed things and will probably have the hatch displayed outer side up so these details won't be visible that much.   That being said, I guess it looks better than not having any detailing added.  

 

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So that's it for now, thanks for looking.

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