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Canberra B.15/16 Akrotiri Strike Wing 1/72


Doc72

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  • 1 month later...

I decided to add a wing spar. The wings are made from quiet thick and heavy plastic and the fuselage is loaded with lead, so the wing-fuselage joint might not be sufficiently stable without a spar.

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Also the cockpit reveived a reflector sight (it is some resin part, probably more correct for a Spitfire)

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I am just wondering whether a gun sight (or rocket sight in this case) worked well with a curved canopy. I thought a flat wind screen like on most fighter/attack-types is preferable to avoid optical distortions.

 

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There is still room for improvement when it comes to the fit of this kit.

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Of course, this is how it looked after a lot of filing. And don't get me wrong, I appreciate the work of short-run manufactures. The shape of the kit looks alright and the panel lines are very fine.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I ran out of fishing lead and nearly out of space where to put it, but Liquid Gravity came to the rescue. Really useful stuff even though it's not cheap. The bottle says no toxic, so it is probably just iron and not lead. The very small balls, however, make best use of any cavity. The loose pile of little balls was soaked with liberal amounts of diluted white glue to fix it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The rest of 2020 will be spend with sanding and rescribing ... just kidding, I will be done with it when the pandemic is over.....

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I also worked on the navigation lights. The kit provides no clear parts here, so I used the old technique: glueing a clear piece of sprue in place and sanding it into the right shape. I might still need some more sanding and polishing.

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So far, I haven't glued on the canopy. First of all, the way the canopy is moulded as an integral part of the fuselage is really clever. I think many  kit manufacturers do it like this recently. On the downside, the kit misses the prominent vertical light coloured stripes on both sides of the canopy (it's a heating system for the canopy on the real plane IIRC). I used stripes cut from white decals here, but I am not yet satisfied. The real stripes have a weird shape: slightly tapering with a rounded tip. I might give it another try.

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  • 2 months later...

Ok, some modest progress here. I can't even blame Corona. It was just a lot of filling and sanding and decision-making. Those stripes in the canopy took me a long time. Finally, I glued thin, tapering plastic strips to the inside of the canopy. Glueing something on clear parts is normally a no-go for me, but in this case and with a lot of polishing to keep everything transparent it worked somehow. Maybe the stripes are too prominent. We'll see. 

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She is now standing on her own feet and - rejoice - she is no tail-sitter. Before I glued the canopy in place I also had to decide whether she is a B.15 or a B.16. For the latter I should have removed the rear starboard ejection seat, add some black boxes instead and foldable seat next to the pilot. And later, of course, the sidewards-looking radar antenna. So it's now a B.15 as I left all three bang-seats in place.

 

My favorite option is WH954 with drop tanks, four pylons and two rocket pods. The disadvantage is that I need to find a decal for the emblem of the Akrotiri Strike Wing on the tail.

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The alternative would be WH947, an earlier machine with the old style large white serials and the blue-white markings of 32 Sqn on the fin. It should be possible to do these squadron markings with airbrush and masking tape. On the downside, the typical Canberra drop tanks are missing (of course, there were likely fitted to this plane on the day before or after the photo-shot, but I like to stick to a particular photo). Furthermore, the rocket pods are lacking the nose caps. This means, 37 finely aligned launch tubes should be visible from ahead. Not simple to scratch built in 1/72.

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BTW, does anyone know what is the color of the landing gear and the wheel wells? The kit's instructions don't say. I guess, silver is correct for a British aircraft of this period (undersides in High Speed Silver), but I don' t know.

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Canberras are funny old thing when it comes to u/c bay colours, some are actually black which is really unusual on British post-war aircraft.

Silver and off white have also been used, i don't know what dictated the colours, the original builder, when it went through majors or version?  They do look black to me in that pic, but hard to know with the lighting etc.   John will probably have the answer.

The presence of those outboard pylons is interesting as that shows it was AS.30 missile capable.

Freightdog have done ASW decals, but sadly not that era or style.

 

Lovely work, done really well with those canopy strips, and blening in the upper nose area.

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On 7/3/2020 at 9:38 PM, 71chally said:

Canberras are funny old thing when it comes to u/c bay colours, some are actually black which is really unusual on British post-war aircraft.

Silver and off white have also been used, i don't know what dictated the colours, the original builder, when it went through majors or version?  They do look black to me in that pic, but hard to know with the lighting etc.   John will probably have the answer.

The presence of those outboard pylons is interesting as that shows it was AS.30 missile capable.

Freightdog have done ASW decals, but sadly not that era or style.

 

Lovely work, done really well with those canopy strips, and blening in the upper nose area.

I will post the question regarding the color of the u/c bays in the Cold War forum.

The four pylons really add some interest because it's not something you see often on Canberras. Basically only the AS.30 capable late B.15 plus some export models maybe. I think I saw a photo of a Peruvian Canberra with AS.30s fitted, but maybe this was a former B.15 and certainly the picture was taken in the UK. So probable it was just an option that BAC proposed to export customers.

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It is rare to see all four pylons on, my understanding is that only some B.15s had the all the gear in place for AS30s, even on the so equipped squadrons.

I think an opportunity like that, I would be hanging something on them!

 

Good idea to pop the question on bay colour, it has come up before here and someone did a pretty good guide as to what had what. That should draw John in like a moth to a lamp!

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  • 3 months later...

OK, last time I posted something here was in July. At least, I finished my Hellcat in the time being.

Now, I have finally added the pylons. Guessing the size and shape from photographs took some time. In addition, their position and size has to fit the kit's wings and the decals (none of which might be a 100% correct). So I cut out the serial from a photocopied decal sheet and fixed it temporally under the wing. In this way I made sure that the pylons are in the same position relative to the letters and numbers that we can see on photos of the real aircraft.

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The next task will be some antennas.

 

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  • 3 months later...

I admit this must be one of the slowest builds on Britmodeller:

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With hindsight I wonder whether the underside was High Speed Silver (HSS) or Light Aircraft Grey (LAG). Apparently the photo of WH954 (see above in this topic) was taken in mid 1967. So it could be both. The upperside camouflage wraped around the leading edges and the small fuselage serial are late features that often go together with LAG undersides. On the other side this photo and others of similar marked aircraft look like HSS to me...

What do you think?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

WH954 carried Microcell 2" rocket pods under wing or more specifically: the Microcell pods with frangible nose cones and 37 rounds. Where to get those?

I decided to buy the 2" rocket pods from ResKit. These resin items represent the 36 rounds version with a metal nose, but I suppose the dimensions are about the same and I can scratchbuild a rounded nose cone. The Reskit launchers are finely cast and look beautiful. Here you can see them (above) already with the new nose cone:

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The only issue is, they look huge under the wing of the Canberra and also in comparison  with a Matra 155 pod from Revell's Hunter kit (below). The dimensions of the Revell pod look ok (234cm for the real thing would be 3,25cm in 1/72). The dimensions of the real Microcell pod seem to have been lost in time (there is an old BM thread that couldn't find the answer), but judging from photos, the Microcell and the Matra should be in the same ballpark. Maybe the Microcell is a bit more beefy.

At first, I thought ResKit got it all wrong, but now I guess I have the 1/48 version! It clearly says 1/72 on the box, but there seems to have been an error during packaging.

Anyway, I guess I will modify the Revell Matra pods.

 

 

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