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I'm jumping in with my first build for this GB. It will be an Avro Lancaster in 1/72. I decided to hold off on the big B-29 for a while; it may be next. Or not. We'll see.

Why did I choose the Lanc? It's all AX_365's fault! He goaded me into this. He'll be building a Lanc with a different kit, so naturally I have to meet his challenge and do likewise.

This kit is a boxing for the 60th anniversary of RAF's 617 "Dambuster" Squadron. It is quite unique. There are two separate kits included: this Lancaster, with a dam-busting bomb, and a 1/48th scale Tornado, which the squadron was flying at the time of their 60th anniversary.

As you can see from the box, this unit has considerable history.

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The kit is also rather unique, in that it comes with paint and glue!

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I'll set aside the Tornado for another day, and concentrate on the Lanc.

Not too many parts on the sprues, and an extra little bag of white plastic parts that clearly allow the standard Airfix Lanc kit to be adapted to a dam-busting version.

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The Tornado is in a separate bag. Nice touch; it allows the modeller to build one without mixing up or losing parts from the other.

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I am not an expert on Lancasters, and 1/72 is NOT my usual scale. The drawings look simple enough, of the turret assembly (nose turret in step 1):

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But those parts are TINY!

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This one will require some patience.

ALF

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Appropriately enough, a British band (the Stones) started playing in my head as I started this. "Paint it Black" was on the first album I ever bought, "High Tide and Green Grass", back in the early 70s. And paint it black indeed! Lots of black on this aircraft.

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Nose turret parts ready for assembly.

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I'll have more progress, and more pics, in a couple days. Thanks for stopping by!

ALF

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You're welcome! :woot.gif:

Nice to have the 2 in 1 kit.

I see red, white and blue tins of paint. Do they expect you to paint the roundels and fin flashes?! <_<

Some of the pieces are miniscule. Thank goodness for tweezers, glasses and magnifying lenses. Without them, :wacko:

Good luck with your build ALF. I will be following along.

Mike

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I suspect it is indeed the original tool Lanc from Airfix.

Look how warped the fuselage is! Not terribly clear from the pic, but tough to hold together. The worst part was gluing in the bomb bay; it is already non-standard due to the big skip bomb, and the parts don't fit in a clear orientation beforehand.

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I did manage to get it all glued together, with a reasonable job on the bomb bay fit. This kit is not newer technology, for sure, but it will look enough like a Lanc for me. The biggest thing to look out for is what angle to glue those two little side windows on. At first, I had them conforming to the curve of the fuselage behind them, but I realized that the large canopy would cover much more than just the hole where the seats were. Those windows should stand straight up from the fuselage, as they do here.

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A dry-fit of the canopy shows what I mean. More progress soon, and thanks for stopping by.

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ALF

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I suspect it is indeed the original tool Lanc from Airfix.

Look how warped the fuselage is! Not terribly clear from the pic, but tough to hold together. The worst part was gluing in the bomb bay; it is already non-standard due to the big skip bomb, and the parts don't fit in a clear orientation beforehand.

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Some guys would just pester the seller, complain about the fit of the parts and demand his money back. Thankfully you're not one of those types.

Looks like you're making some good progress there chum.

Keep it up.

Mike

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That e-bay story was quite something, wasn't it Mike? Wow. Unfortunately, when dealing with a dispute mechanism on a place like e-bay, you deal with people who have zero idea of how model kits work, and it's hard to make a case as a seller. Amazing. Nope, you won't find me bitching about that - but I am somewhat regretting having kept the wrong Lancaster kit! :woot.gif:

I did mean it when I said you would do it justice, while I would not. Proof coming...

Emvar, nice to have you lurking. As long as you don't jump out and scare me in the dark, we'll get along fine. :thumbsup:

Remember how industrious I got, building up the engine pods and other sundry bits? Well, I had a very fleeting "oh no!" moment when I looked at the destructions after the fact (come on - you know you rarely follow instructions when things just look so obviously like they go together, right?). Here are the instructions, and below are the parts. For a few seconds, I thought I might have to pry apart the large nacelles to insert the gear legs, or maybe have to shave off locating pins and make them weaker.

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Well, it turned out my moment of shock was unfounded. The parts fit in nicely after the nacelle is assembled; in fact they are far easier to install after the fact. I made sure to install the forward forks first, then the rear ones, to make it easier to get the angles correct.

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I set them up like this to ensure a solid joint between the front and rear forks. Nice and solid.

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ALF

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By the way, the weather here in this region has been absolutely terrible this summer. There have been news stories about the poor weather, and Quebec/Newfoundland/ and some of the Maritime provinces have been among the ONLY regions in the entire world where temps have been significantly below normal, and rainfall higher than normal. For those who speak French, this about sums up how it's been for the last 2 months here. The only difference is this video was done by a comedian from Montreal, where it's been raining a lot, but about 4 to 10 degrees warmer than here. This a very well-known character called a "tête-à-claque" (literally, a face you feel compelled to slap).

Christmas is coming soon (not by the calendar, by the weather). So when Neo contacted me to ask if we would combine an order from Lucky Model to attain the $120 minimum to qualify for $2 worldwide shipping, I thought that even if it only arrives in a few months, it will be just in time for Santa's visit. Here's what I ordered, plus two $4 Tamiya Extra-Thin glue bottles. Definitely a worthwhile sale!

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Back to what I've been doing during this stint of crappy weather. This kit assembles very quickly, with some fit problems that will require putty.

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Yick! Got lots of extra glue here. Luckily it's underneath, and I don't care about losing surface detail.

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Now I need to install the spinning bomb, mask and prime, then paint some black. Here's what it looks like now. Much better! Also, we are having summer this week. Temps are about 25 to 26C, with only afternoon showers. As close as it gets this summer!

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Thanks for stopping by. Now for some more masking, and painting of the top camouflage.

ALF

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Nice work ALF, the underside looks great with a coat of paint on it.

Thanks! Amazing how black covers up shoddy work. :rolleyes:

Wow, your really motoring through it. Your going to be done before me and my Herc, and started a month ago!!!!! Dang work sure gets in the way sometimes.

Who are you, and what did you do with the real Phantom? Hope you get some modelling time soon.

ALF

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ALF,

Making good progress there buddy. Re: e-bay...some people. I shake my head. :doh:

That's an interesting breakdown of the nacelles to the wings?! I've lost a bit of detail to sanding as well but like you said, it's on the underside so no biggie. The black looks just right. It appears to be a semi gloss. Is it the paint or the light? I'm just about to start the masking of the canopy on my build. EGAD! E-Z Mask makes them for the 72nd scale Airfix and Hasegawa Lancaster kit but not Revell. I'm going to get a set of each and see how well they work. If they suck, it appears that masking individual bits will take some time. Oh well. My anal-retentivness at work.

Will drop a quick line later on.

Keep it up chum.

Mike

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ALF,

Making good progress there buddy. Re: e-bay...some people. I shake my head. :doh:/>

That's an interesting breakdown of the nacelles to the wings?! I've lost a bit of detail to sanding as well but like you said, it's on the underside so no biggie. The black looks just right. It appears to be a semi gloss. Is it the paint or the light? I'm just about to start the masking of the canopy on my build. EGAD! E-Z Mask makes them for the 72nd scale Airfix and Hasegawa Lancaster kit but not Revell. I'm going to get a set of each and see how well they work. If they suck, it appears that masking individual bits will take some time. Oh well. My anal-retentivness at work.

Will drop a quick line later on.

Keep it up chum.

Mike

Mike

I used a Tamiya rattle can (TS something or other) for the paint; it really is a semi-gloss finish.

I tried until I got frustrated (about 1 minute) to mask the glass with the purple gunk, but it kept running and looking terrible, so I just smooshed it on everywhere. I will hand-paint the canopy rails. Should look awful!

ALF

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I have started to mask for the top colours. First, some Tamiya tape.

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Then, time for the Nexgen 3M medical tape that Mike clued me in to.This stuff is magic!

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Brown painted (Tamiya XF-52 Flat Earth), masking with the 3M medical tape, and green sprayed (Tamiya XF-67 NATO green).

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Breath held. Tape removed. Not bad! Some minor touchups required, but this camo is looking OK.

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Looks to me like these colours would work nicely for this year's CF-18 demo.

ALF

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Making good progress. Posting has been late, however, and here's why:

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Yup, took the Windows 10 leap. Here's some advice: before converting yourself to Win 10, put drivers for your video card and (especially!) your wireless internet adapter if you have one, somewhere easy to find. Windows did not retain my drivers for display or wireless internet, and I was dead in the water with a fuzzy bizarre resolution and no means to go on-line to get the drivers. Luckily my son was able to download the drivers and give them to me on a USB key. Now I'm functional again.

Here is the beast with decals applied and gloss coat done:

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And here it is with the dull coat applied and the masking for the glass peeled off. Lots of little line painting ahead to finish off the glass.

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Should be done in a day or two.

ALF

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Nice model.

For the sake of completeness, it isn't the original Airfix Lancaster, which was released in 1958.

Nor is it the new Airfix Lancaster.

There are in fact three generations of Airfix Lancasters.

The kit in that Dambusters boxing is the (then new second generation) 1980 B.III kit which was re-released with a B.III (Special) fuselage in the early 1990's

The 1980 kit and its derivatives were widely considered to be very good representations of the original aircraft and really only recently surpassed, including by the new mould kit

I no longer have the original kit unbuilt, but first made it in about 1967 or 1968. The 1980 kit was a revelation when it came out but I still didn't make it as well as yours.

Shane

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ALF,

I really like what you've done. The top colours turned out very good. The decals look like they went on without too many problems. I don't see any silvering. That's good.

Good luck with the canopy and the turrets. As mentioned, I got the E-Z Masks for the 72nd Hasegawa Lancaster B.III. Some work well and others not so well. Like you, I tried the Micro Mask but that wasn't working very well either so that's why I tried the masks. It's time consuming but hopefully the parts should turn out okay. And I'm still not done all the masking. After waking up at 0700 hrs (as I'm off today, that's an extra 2.5 hrs of sack time for me!), I spent 1/2 an hour masking the rest of the bomb aimer's dome and the front turret. I still have the top turret and the rear turret to do along with the windows along each side and other assorted 'glass' bits. As I'm off today and tomorrow, I should be able to get the masking done by tomorrow evening.

On a side note, as I sat (and continue to sit) and applied the E-Z Masks, I had a thought (or as Black Adder would say to Baldrick, "I have a cunning plan!"). It wouldn't be as time consuming as individual masks but it might yield half decent results. Use some Tamiya tape to mask the frames lengthwise, brush paint the frames by hand, remove the tape immediately after painting, let the paint dry, mask the frames width wise and repeat the painting process. It should give you some measure of success over having no masking at all, no? The same process might work for the top turret as it's pretty simple. The front and rear turrets might be a bit of a pain.

Thank heavens ALF Jr was able to help out with your Windows 10 issues. I read somewhere that many people who have switched to Windows 10 are quite perturbed with Microsoft. Try to please everybody and nobody will like it.

You're certainly much closer to the finishing line than I am. I look forward to the finished product chum.

Keep it up! :thumbsup:

Mike

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How are you doing the clear parts, masking?

I'm going old-school on this one. A steady hand (sort of), and Tamiya acrylic paint with a fine brush. Pros: easy wipe-off when I make a mistake. Cons: Tamiya acryl is horrible paint for good coverage; I prefer enamels for such work. Second con is my lack of skill in painting such tiny lines. Here's what it looks like:

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Nice model.

For the sake of completeness, it isn't the original Airfix Lancaster, which was released in 1958.

Nor is it the new Airfix Lancaster.

There are in fact three generations of Airfix Lancasters.

The kit in that Dambusters boxing is the (then new second generation) 1980 B.III kit which was re-released with a B.III (Special) fuselage in the early 1990's

The 1980 kit and its derivatives were widely considered to be very good representations of the original aircraft and really only recently surpassed, including by the new mould kit

I no longer have the original kit unbuilt, but first made it in about 1967 or 1968. The 1980 kit was a revelation when it came out but I still didn't make it as well as yours.

Shane

Thanks for the detailed kit history, Shane. Some day I would like to do the 1/48 Tamiya Lanc; that kit looks awesome, and the larger scale would be easier to work with.

ALF,

I really like what you've done. The top colours turned out very good. The decals look like they went on without too many problems. I don't see any silvering. That's good.

On a side note, as I sat (and continue to sit) and applied the E-Z Masks, I had a thought (or as Black Adder would say to Baldrick, "I have a cunning plan!"). It wouldn't be as time consuming as individual masks but it might yield half decent results. Use some Tamiya tape to mask the frames lengthwise, brush paint the frames by hand, remove the tape immediately after painting, let the paint dry, mask the frames width wise and repeat the painting process. It should give you some measure of success over having no masking at all, no? The same process might work for the top turret as it's pretty simple. The front and rear turrets might be a bit of a pain.

Mike, you have a really great idea there with the Tamiya tape - too late for this one, though, but definitely has been filed away along with other superb tips you've given me. Must be your advanced age and life-long struggle to avoid your namesake's Law.

I was worried about decal silvering. Luckily, it didn't happen, but at one point when using some Micro sol I saw a bit happening with the Future undercoat... but it wasn't there after it dried. With such expanses of black, and the side letters, I was worried about how it would turn out.

I am now calling this one done. Here are some pics (which will be repeated in the finished kit thread). I couldn't take any outside; for the last 24 hours we've had continuous rain and drizzle, with maddeningly short interludes of sun that only serve to increase the humidity. It's been about 16C to 23C here for the last few days. Luckily, during a few really nice days we had last week, I was able to get the black spray paint done outside.

BTW, there are lots of little flecks from the liquid canopy mask that needed to be brushed off. The little flecks in these pics came off with a gentle finger.

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More pics in the finished builds thread.

ALF

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