This is an “old” kit, one of the original Monogram packages from 1966. You can see the date on the instruction sheet here (yes, I kept it). As Monogram said back then:
“This Monogram 1/48 scale kit was designed from photographs and measurements of actual Mosquitos. We wish to acknowledge the assistance of R.G. Moulton who furnished us with data, all of which enabled us to make the model accurate.”
Well, accuracy is something we all strive for, I guess. Monogram didn’t do too badly for the time. As I’m not the greatest builder in the world, even were she the best damn kit ever produced, I would have screwed it up. Take that into account, and try not to laugh too hard.
This is the kit disassembled which I did a couple of years ago. I only had to soak it in hot, soapy water and she literally fell apart. The old Testor’s glue was rather brittle after 40 years. The old paint was removed by soaking in degreaser “Purple Stuff”. At one of the local model shows, I actually picked up a later version of the Mosquito for $5 (minus the clear parts) in case I needed some pieces that I had lost. I did need the control stick and the intake screens.
As you can see, I had actually installed the landing gear wrong, putting the wheels on the spokes that go in the wheel bay. Luckily, I was able to remove them and cut the axles to allow the wheels to be reinstalled. Also, I had broken one of the props back then and had made a repair job. It would probably have been okay once painted, but I had other prop plans and didn’t use them.
The front end of the Mosquito I glued in and used Tamiya putty to fill in the gaps, then sanded the fuselage join smooth. Unfortunately, the canopy didn’t match up quite right, so there is a slight over-hang on the left side. I didn’t bother fixing it as I was too far along, and this is a 50 year old kit.
The parts were painted flat black, although the “black basing” didn’t matter much in the end. My use of spray cans and paint brushes tends to blot out any color differential this technique might enjoy. I did use a segment type of construction where I worked on the fuselage and wings separately. It eased the handling of the model somewhat. The wings have a nice tab slot for attachment, so it was easy to build and paint them while not attached.
I missed getting a shot of the cockpit before installation, but here’s a couple of shots of it in place. Radio panels and gunsight are scratchbuilt. One other thing to note is the whip antenna. I had ran a thread through the tail wheel opening and up through the vertical stabilizer figuring that once I had fastened the end to the regular antenna mast, I could pull it taught. Easy! However, when I decided on a paint scheme and decal option I discovered that this particular Mossie had whip antennas! Well, gosh darn! So I pulled the thread out and used it to make whip antennas, one in the regular position and one in the rear of the canopy.
For propellers, I borrowed a set from the Tamiya Mosquito I have sitting in the closet. To attach them, I found that the plastic rods from a Q-Tip was a pretty good match for the hole size in the Monogram hub. So I glued some lengths of the Q-Tip rod into the prop, painted them black and found they were a very snug fit. This allowed me to pull them out when I was working on the model as you can see.
In addition to the propellers, I scribed the bomb-bay doors dividing the bay in two as in the FB VI, adding shell ejection chutes (guided by the Tamiya model) by applying decals. I also added signal lights on the lower fuselage with punched out aluminium duct tape.
Decals were a mix of the old Monogram sheet from my spares Mossie, and letter codes from the Tamiya kit. The red “no step” markings were a pain, as the ones from the Monogram sheet were just too yellowed, and an attempt to make some using printed decals failed. So I used a technique Pawel mentioned here on FSM of spraying a plain decal sheet with paint and then using that to cut strips from.
It worked! The only bad thing I did was use “white” decal sheets instead of clear, so you might see a bit of a white edge in the photos. I’ll see if I can fix that later, but here’s a “Thank You” to Pawel for the suggestion.
So that’s the Mossie redone. I have a few more “old” models in the box to “restore”, so I’ll probably be able to give you guys a few more laughs in the future. [:D]
Thanks for looking!
Gary
