Tale of Two Mossies

The de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito was a WW2 British twin-engined, multirole combat aircraft. In contrast to most other aircraft of that time, its frame and fuselage and wings were constructed mostly of plywood. Fuselage, wings and tailplanes were made by furniture companies. It had several nick names including Mossie; Balsa Bomber; Wooden Wonder. The Mosquito could exceed 400 mph which made it the world's fastest operational aircraft when introduced. Eventually it was used in many roles including bomber, attack bomber, torpedo-bomber, fighter, night-fighter, photo reconnaissance, and target tug.

I did a side-by-side build of Airfix's newest and previous 1:72 Mosquito kits to compare and contrast the quality of its recent and venerable Airfix kits. I already had their 1972 version that has been reboxed and reissued numerous times: the last time being this one in 2014. The 2021 kit is an entirely new tooled kit that reflects many of Airfix's latest engineering and design improvements.

The first noticeable difference is the instructions. The new kit's instructions break the process down into many steps with color callouts.

The new kit [right] sports a well detailed cockpit. The only thing missing are PE harnesses, which I fabricated out of Tamiya masking tape. The cockpit floor piece also has arms that support the wings.

The new kit has optional, lowered/retracted, tail wheel pieces. Moreover, the wheel assembly can be painted and installed at the end of the process in contrast to the original kit which are sandwiched between the fuselage halves.

The fuselage halves are well done on the recent kit as is the surface detail on the stabilizers. On the original kit I filled in the outsized panel lines around the bomb bay door.

The recent kit has clear wing tip pieces to facilitate coloring the navigation lights.

To me one of the most impressive improvements in the new kit is the treatment of landing gear. They are engineered so that they can be installed after the entire plane has been completed and painted. In most many vintage twin-engine kits the gear must be assembled and installed when the engine nacelles are assemble, which then necessitates complicated masking during the painting process. Besides this, the new gear is more finely detailed.

The wing supports made the wing installation easy and the fit was excellent.

The painting begins with a primer coat.

I painted both kits with AK Interactive Air Series paints from their RAF colors set.

Both kits build up into nice representations of an iconic aircraft. The new kit reflects a multitude of improvements on the older kit—a better landing gear approach, more detailed cockpit, more refined surface details, better fit overall—that make for a more enjoyable building experience. Interestingly, you can find the newer kit at online retailers for a slightly lower price than the 1972 version.