Mosquito build

Cockpit in the early stages of the build. It's a bit if a shame that most of that beautiful detail will be near invisible. 

Damn, that's BIG, about 66 cm wingspan 

Very nice detail on the engines too, and the fit is perfect. 

Added seatbelts from the metalfoil lid from my cat's food! I know they're not quite correct, but good enough for me. 

Added some extra detail to the walls, mostly wire 

One side of the fuselage was pretty warped, but I got it together eventually! 

the wings wouldn't go on like they should, and i couldn't figure out why. So a little adjustment and a little filler was required. 

It starts to look like a plane, a BIG plane! 

Heavy weathering on the engines, and I did them both different. I'm planning a diorama with one engine in and one probably hanging from a crane on a truck. 

 

Some mild rusty spots on both engines. The diorama will have some mechanics restauring the plane, sometime in the 2000's. 

Part of the fun, painting! Except from the black (tamiya) all enamels from humbrol and revell 

 

All painting except from the cockpit green and black for the engine was done with a brush. Sofar, that is. 

Next up will be the landing gear, got some nice white metal after market parts for that! 

White metal landing gear 

Still some cleaning and polishing to do 

My first time trying white metal after market parts 

This landing gear has taken the term "fiddly" to a whole new level 

After several attempts to glue the white metal cross struts (?) in place without bending them I decided to use the plastic kit parts.I also glued the tanks on upside down. 

Corrected the tanks and some other mistakes 

The engine and landing gear assemblies are kits in itself. Some fit problems of the engine assembly, and turned out I got the wrong one! The engines differ in 1 part, but you can't swap them around!! 

The mudguard assembly. Fitting that in place is another challenge, as the ceiling of the wheel bay, where it should be glued to, can't be installed until all the other parts are in place....this calls for some thinking ahead! 

This nacelle won't have the engine installed. The diorama will show some mechanics that have just removed the engine with a crane on a mercedes truck. Pictures later. 

One engine in 

One engine out 

The instructions from Airfix show 2 arrows to drop the nacelles in place under the wings. In real life it took 30 minutes of wrestling, sanding, cutting and swearing and lots of pressure and glue to fit them.  

The fit of the nacelles is terrible. There is no way on god's green earth these things will fit without lots of trimming. 

My first camo in probably 30 years. Will need a touch up session, but overall quite reasonable. Looks even bigger with some colors on!