Tamiya 1/72 Mosquito Racer
I thought it was about time I try out some of these decals I've been producing for the past couple of years. This is the World Wide Airways Mosquito racer finished with my own Thunderbird Models decals, 72-003. I'm pleased to say the decals were excellent both in fit and ease of application, and I can say this without fear of inflating my own ego because it's down to the original Whiskey Jack artwork and the quality of Fantasy Printshop's work rather than my own efforts.
As for the build itself there's really nothing fancy about it, though I must be the only person on the planet that has difficulty with Tamiya kits. This is the second I've built and I had even more problems getting this to fit together than I did with the Douglas Skyray. I drilled out the exhausts and added an antenna from Uschi elastic thread, replaced the pitot with sections of Albion Alloys brass micro tubing and flattened the tyres but otherwise it's straight out of the box. The radio was left out as this had been removed from the full sized aircraft to save weight (replaced with a smaller Motorola unit) and I added seat belts from Eduard.
Paint is Humbrol 103 Cream which is a very good match for the original aircraft's Diana Cream. The green was mixed from Humbrol 3 Brunswick Green, Xtracolour 151 Willow Green with a bit of blue and white in to match the decals. Landing gear and wheel hubs look very dark in photos; I went with Humbrol 85 Coal Black but they could just as easily have been painted in the same green as the trim and spinners. There are also natural metal panels behind the exhausts which I represented with Bare Metal Foil Flat Aluminum. Note that the forward edge of these panels do not follow the panel lines as moulded by Tamiya, they are about 3/32" behind them.
Below: Other than Eduard's Superfabric seat belts I didn't do anything fancy with the interior as it is very difficult to see any of it. This was really built to showcase the decals anyway.
Below: Tell me again how wonderful Tamiya kits are because, frankly, I'm just not feeling the love. The bomb bay doors were half a millimetre too long and there were large gaps on the sides - an internal spreader bar in the fuselage would be an advantage here. The crew hatch also didn't fit well as evidenced by the copious amounts of Mr. Surfacer to blend it in. Had I not been in a hurry to try and get this done for display on my stand at Scale ModelWorld 2015 I would have done more test fitting prior to assembly. Of course, I didn't get it finished in time anyway!
Below: The worst fit was at the rear of the engine nacelles where large gaps necessitated a generous helping of Tamiya putty. The separate wingtips needed filler and the fuselage halves weren't the best fit either. Note the clear parts masked with Bare Metal Foil.
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