Simon Posted March 23, 2017 Author Share Posted March 23, 2017 8 hours ago, Gondor44 said: The bomb load that you are attempting to have this aircraft has me worried. I have a copy of "The Lancaster Manual", "RAF Museum Series" which shows a total of fifteen locating points for bomb carriers, three abreast per row with five rows, of which the middle location in the bomb bay is reserved for 1 x 4,000lb or 1 x 8,000lb bombs only. This is on page 153 of the above publication. Is it possible that the reference you are quoting for a load of 11 x 1,000lb and 4 x 250lb bombs is incorrect having been incorrectly copied or entered into the records wrongly? Gondor I did wonder whether it was right, or maybe a typo, but the O.R.B. for 514 Sqn lists the same bomb-load for all their Lancasters for that particular mission - 11 x 1,000lb M.C. plus 4 x 500lb G.P. Indeed they used the same load on the previous 'Op' two day prior to that. I got a copy of the DVD Night Bombers which shows a Lancaster being bombed up, and in the row with four bombs the middle pair are mounted on a double bomb rack, mounted on a cross beam. You can just make it out on the second photo Jari posted above this post. 7 hours ago, Finn said: My guess is the 4 250lbs bombs were in the second row, 4 across as in the other pics, probably to maintain the center of gravity. So you would have 3 (1K), 4 (250), 2 (1K), 3 (1K) and 3 (1K). Jari Thanks Jari. I think you may be correct. I did find this photo which shows the four smaller bombs (looks like 2 x 250lb and 2 x 500lb) in the second row, although it is loaded with a 'cookie' too. Simon 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gondor44 Posted March 23, 2017 Share Posted March 23, 2017 8 hours ago, Simon said: I did wonder whether it was right, or maybe a typo, but the O.R.B. for 514 Sqn lists the same bomb-load for all their Lancasters for that particular mission - 11 x 1,000lb M.C. plus 4 x 500lb G.P. Indeed they used the same load on the previous 'Op' two day prior to that. I got a copy of the DVD Night Bombers which shows a Lancaster being bombed up, and in the row with four bombs the middle pair are mounted on a double bomb rack, mounted on a cross beam. You can just make it out on the second photo Jari posted above this post. Thanks Jari. I think you may be correct. I did find this photo which shows the four smaller bombs (looks like 2 x 250lb and 2 x 500lb) in the second row, although it is loaded with a 'cookie' too. Simon I didn't know about that "beam" myself I was simply going by the mounting points for the bomb cradles as per the manual. I does make the bomb load interesting though your going to have to get inventive to depict that double mounting on the central point. Gondor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonl Posted March 23, 2017 Share Posted March 23, 2017 Bad luck with the masks, as said above I also run a sharpe blade around the masks to avoid it taking the paint off too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mancunian airman Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 The thing with the bombs is that the carrier was modified on the central lug two accept two bombs by linking the bomb release on the single attachment of the bomb-bay. I have seen a photo in one of the 'Lancaster At War' series so that was how it was done. You are absolutely right in that there are only 15 winch positions in the Lancaster bomb-bay Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted April 21, 2017 Author Share Posted April 21, 2017 Thanks for that Ian. I've had a few weeks away from my work-bench, so apologies for the lack of updates for a while. Hopefully some more updates soon... Simon 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobby Posted May 15, 2017 Share Posted May 15, 2017 Kind of ironic I found your post , my uncle W. E. Egri was rear gunner on LL716 when it went down . Cheers ! would like to see pics of finished model . 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted May 19, 2017 Author Share Posted May 19, 2017 (edited) So, after a somewhat longer hiatus than I anticipated, I'm back with a quick update. Apologies for the delay - another project got ever so slightly out of hand and took (and is still taking) about 10 times longer than anticipated! Anyway...the glazing has been remasked and repainted, and worked much better this time, so that has allowed me to get the three turrets ready and painted. Here the nose turret: Upper turret: and the tail turret: I'm busy masking off the red trestle marking lines on the undersides of the wings, fuselage and tailplanes, so that's next up. Then hopefully I can get the checklist of bits to finish ticked off one by one...! More soon, Cheers Simon Edited July 4, 2017 by Simon 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted May 23, 2017 Author Share Posted May 23, 2017 (edited) Some more progress to report. The red trestle markings under the wings, tails and fuselage have been masked: and painted with Revell's Aqua Carmine Red: The kit's decals will be chopped up to go in the gaps, then they may need toning down once they're on. Took about an hour of masking for both wings, the tailplanes and the fuselage, but I hate decalling walkways and trestle markings. I've also got hold of another of Airfix's Bomber Command Re-supply sets, and now have a full bomb load, painted up ready for some weathering: Amazon had a bit of a mare with the Re-supply set, and DPD ended up delivering an empty box , but they sorted it out PDQ and sent out another one with something actually in it! BTW I think Airfix could be on a winner if they did 'overtrees' and sold Sprue D separately with just the tractor, 500lb and 1000lb bombs on it, but never mind. More soon... Simon Edited July 4, 2017 by Simon re-linking images to Flickr rather than Photobucket 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bell209 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 Masking the walkways in 1/72? That's skill! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted May 24, 2017 Author Share Posted May 24, 2017 36 minutes ago, Bell209 said: Masking the walkways in 1/72? That's skill! Thanks - not so much skill as patience, a steady hand, and good eyesight...! I find decalling walkways a right faff-on, as they never seem to go on straight, so it's actually easier to paint 'em for me. Simon 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martian Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 What can I say? Just more superlative work going on here. This one is going to be a show stopper! Martian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Learstang Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 Excellent work, Simon! Some day (he says hopefully) I'll get back to my Lancaster B.II (along with my other half-built Lancaster family aircraft). Regards, Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted May 31, 2017 Author Share Posted May 31, 2017 (edited) Another quick update, and (yet) another problem to get sorted... The bomb load has been decalled up: and as RAF bombs often seemed to look a bit on the scruffy side, they've also been weathered: Meantime, I thought I'd give the fuselage sides a coat of gloss in preparation for adding the decals for the roundels and codes. I used a thinned down coat of Humbrol Clear and this happened: I did the wings at the same time, and nothing went wrong with them, so I've no idea what the issue was. Never had this with the 'new' Humbrol Clear either. Easily solved, but could have been a bit of a disaster. Ho hum... More soon... Cheers Simon Edited July 4, 2017 by Simon Relinking images to Flickr rather than PhotoBucket 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airbus320 Posted May 31, 2017 Share Posted May 31, 2017 Clear coats can sometimes be an inexact science! Bombload looks fantastic - looking forward to seeing this one finished! Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matteo44 Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 Nice job ! Congratulations, I like the painting. Beautiful cockpit and bombs bay. Is the first time that I see this problem with the clear coats Humbrol... I use always the clear Gunze and I never had problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted June 1, 2017 Author Share Posted June 1, 2017 (edited) Another day...another issue to get round... I'd had trouble finding fuselage serials that were the right sixe - 514 Squadron used slightly smaller letters than the standard size for their A2-X codes, about 42 inch. So, I found some red 1/48 27" letters on the Fantasy Printshop website which would be ideal. Just applied them, and they're very translucent which, on a black fuselage side, isn't exacly ideal - compare them to the Airfix roundel and Xtradecal serials: Here's one of the letters with a sheet of white paper under part of it, and you can see how translucent they are: I'd assumed they're be underprinted with a white base layer to make them opaque. I dropped FP an e-mail to see if this is how they'd actually been produced, and to their great credit they replied with half an hour, and said they're an old design that wasn't underprinted, to save costs. Bit of a pain, so on to Plan B, which looks to be using slightly over-sized 1/72 48" codes. Cheers Simon EDIT Found an old and very yellowed Modeldecal sheet of 48" x 24" RAF codes in amongst my spare decals, so tried a quick experiment to see if they could be cut down clightly to make shorter letters: I think they'll work fine, and Xtradecal make them now as XD72210, so I've ordered a couple of sheets. Edited July 4, 2017 by Simon Updated info from FP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CedB Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 6 hours ago, Simon said: ... they're an old design that wasn't underprinted, to save costs. WHAT! Let's hope the accountant's don't have another round of savings or they'll be even more completely useless! Pain indeed Simon, let's hope the Xtradecal ones are good enough to go on your excellent model Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted June 1, 2017 Author Share Posted June 1, 2017 27 minutes ago, CedB said: WHAT! Let's hope the accountant's don't have another round of savings or they'll be even more completely useless! Pain indeed Simon, let's hope the Xtradecal ones are good enough to go on your excellent model Yes, I was a little surprised, and more than a little disappointed. However, lesson learnt, and I'm 100% sure that the Xtradecal ones will be prefectly fine once a little 'chopping and changing' to get the right sizes has gone on. Simon 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted June 3, 2017 Author Share Posted June 3, 2017 (edited) Another quick update for today... While I was aiting for replacement decals for the problematic FP ones, I thought I'd look up LL716 in some reference books, to see what history it had. Seems it was with 115 Sqn before joining 514 Sqn, which means it would have had the 115 Sqn codes overpainted and replaced the 514 Sqn ones. In for a penny, in for a pound... I masked off the areas where the codes would be, making sure the edges weren't too straight: and overpainted the areas with a more solid, newer-looking coat of black: Meanwhile the Xtradecal codes had arrived, so I set about chopping sections out them to shorten their height. Here the port side on, with a sample of their original size to campare to: You can still see the joins, but a couple of coats of DACO's decal-setting solution should sort them out. Once they've been coated, I'll leave them for a day or so to bed in, and then on to the bomb bay. Meanwhile, it's the Northern Model Show at North Shields tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to getting down there... More soon... Cheers Simon Edited July 4, 2017 by Simon Transferring image links to Flickr 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Masters Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 Really superb! I love the human touches you have added. Lovely detail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomoshenko Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 Nice work on the trestle markings, much neater and realistic than decals. The bombs look great too, nice and worn. Good touch on overpainting effect with the newer black. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CedB Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 Nice work Simon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mancunian airman Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 Still on target for a great model despite the issues you have resolved . . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phildagreek Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 Wow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 (edited) Another update for today... I've got all the bomb racks installed in the bomb bay, and I test-fitted the bomb load to make sure it would fit okay: That done, time to add some wings and the horizontal taiplanes and make it start to look like an aeroplane, at last. The fit of both wings and tailplanes wasn't 100% perfect, and took a little bit of fettling to get them on. Now they're on, I've done some weathering on the upper surfaces, as R.A.F. Erks seemed to have mucky boots and Lancasters often seemed to have particularly scruffy upper wings where the groundcrew went about their work: So, I think I'm getting there. More soon... Cheers Simon Edited July 4, 2017 by Simon Trying images on Flickr rather than PB 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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