2 for 1 1/72 Deal - Airfix & Matchbox

[beany]

The Airfix offering here is this venerable old tooling:



The box is long gone but the Mossie was intended for use in a box art diorama for the Airfix Refuelling Set which I may as well continue here. I have two of the refuelling sets and will cobble together one good one from these two donors.





whilst looking for the missing decals for the Airfix Mossie I stumbled across a part started Matchbox one which may also have been earmarked for the Refuelling diorama - I can't honestly remember as it was an idea from about 8 years ago now. If I am going to build the Airfix one I may as well piggy back this one onto it as well.





If I make good headway on those two I may then have time left to tackle one (or both) of the two in this box:







Cheers
Al.

[fredk]

Your Airfix Mosquito should have two sets of propellers; a paddle blade set and a narrow (aka needle) pair.
Use one of these sets on the Matchbox kit. Its prop blades are neither one nor t'other

[beany]

Thanks for the tip Fred. Unfortunately the Matchbox Mossie wings and nacelles are already glued together (with the u/c lowered) so I would have to snap the individual Matchbox propeller blades off and replace them with the Airfix one and I don't know if I'm up for that. I may just use prop blur acetates instead, pop a pilot and navigator in the cockpit and model it as an aircraft taxiing!

[PaulBradley]

Ambitious, Al!

[PaulBradley]

Hey, Al - any progress to report?

[beany]

Right, so it looks like this has become a 4 for 1 Blitzbau utilising the extension until 31st Dec. - (self imposed) challenge accepted!

I have adopted a mass production approach painting with one colour en-masse where needed, and then I can concentrate on the finer detail later. Here is the progress:

Matchbox Nightfighter Mossie. A quick splash of Xtracrylix Night Black as it dries gloss which will facilitate applying the decals and speed things up a bit.


the Airfix 1/72 Mossie - previously applied Interior Green is horrible so it will get re-done with everything else...


...as will the previously painted Tamiya 1/48 interior and a collection of other parts awaiting interior green.




Other parts being cleaned up with sprue attachment points being filed off etc. and then being sorted ready for painting basic colours e.g. interior green, aluminium and black.


That was very relaxing hand painting that lot with my own mix of lightened Humbrol 78.


Repeated the process for anything that needed to be Aluminium (Hu27001 Matt Aluminium)


Cheers
Al.

[Allan31]

OH MAN !!...... I hope you're doing this painting one box at a time !!!.....

[PaulBradley]

Go, Al, Go!

I got my Tamiya 1/48 done in two weeks without really trying, it's such a simple kit, so I fully expect you to get all 4 done now, Al.

[beany]

This is as far as I got with my box art diorama. The re-fuelling set is an ongoing restoration of a set my son started when he was just starting to make models, assisted with parts from another one I picked up as incomplete at Telford one year. The undercarriage of the Airfix kit was a total nightmare and led to me cuttings away the horrible, ill fitting cross braces and using stretched sprue instead. It still looks like a dogs breakfast but will hopefully be obscured by the vehicles stand in front of it as per the artwork. I will continue this build (elsewhere) as I've invested too much time in it to scrap it now!





Many thanks to Paul for running a very interesting and successful Group Build and congratulations to all who finished their builds.

[PaulBradley]

No worries, Al - thanks for participating!