Mosquito: more cockpit details

Yes, it has been a while since I posted on this topic -- February, to be exact. I have a range of excuses which I won't bother listing because you probably won't believe me.

I got around to the instrument panel which uses an interesting approach to gauges.

The panel consists of a styrene piece full of holes, and a clear piece with little raised divots that fit snugly into the holes. The idea is that you put the decals for the different gauges on the raised divots, then insert the whole thing through the styrene piece.



The only problem is that the decals can get caught on the styrene piece as they go in, and get turned on their sides. So this all took longer than hoped for as I rescued a bunch of poorly stuck decals. The decal glue being weak, a dab of Micro Krystal Klear helped settle them all down. Miraculously, only one actually got lost, and I'll see about finding something from the parts bin.

The challenges notwithstanding, this seems like a nice approach and I can't help wondering why the mainstream styrene car kits don't use something like this. Even better would be a single decal with all the gauges, on a flat backing, and with a thinner overlay -- putting on 21 individual decals sure is time consuming, and getting them all to line up is a challenge.

Next: a second instrument panel needs to be completed; this one goes on the inside of the fuselage at right angles to the main panel, and has to go in before the cockpit assembly all goes in. This also has a handful of decals on a clear backing plate. It also includes a wiring harness which broke when I tried to clip it off the tree, so some superglue will likely be needed once it is time to install it.