Airfix

1/48 English Electric Canberra PR.9

Kit Number: Airfix A10103

Reviewed by  Chad Richmond, IPMS# 10346

MSRP: Canberra: $50.75 Website: Airfix: www.airfix.com This model is huge! You realize it will be when you get the box. It is 12-1/2 inches by 19-1/2 inches and weighs a ton. The reason for all of the weight is the thickness of the sprue frames. They are actually close to ¼ inch thick, and the attachments are proportionate in size, as well. The clear sprue is nice and clear and the canopy and windscreen are relatively thin. Both the clear and gray sprues are rather soft plastic, which makes sanding and polishing a little more difficult, but also make for easier sprue removal and part cleanup. It becomes very apparent, however, that there are going to be some problems later on. Inspection of the sprues showed several parts were very warped, e.g.. flaps, aileron halves, and elevator halves. The trailing edges of all of the flying surfaces are commendably thin, but this also creates some problems later.

You get the option of four different aircraft on a decal sheet that's almost as big as the box. There are two gray/ green aircraft from the 1980's, a natural metal aircraft from 1963, and hemp over gray as seen in Iraqi Freedom. This is the one I chose to model. The decal placement guide is a beautiful color four-page booklet, with one page for each of the aircraft. Each page is very busy, but you get four views of each aircraft. You get a twelve-page instruction booklet with typical Airfix blowup type drawings showing the construction sequence. Each frame has the part number, an arrow that gets you close to where the part goes, and in some cases, a painting guide in the form of a Humbrol number only. Thank goodness for IPMS/Stockholm and their great series of paint conversion charts. (insert hperlink here?) There are different colors for wheel wells, under carriages, antennas, etc. according to which version you are building, and these get downright confusing at times. In any case, you have to do a little research. Construction begins with the cockpit, and right away I was disappointed. It has very little resemblance to any model of the Canberra. The pilot's right side panel has some circles and squares that are supposed to represent panels and gauges, but in looking at pictures of the actual cockpit, there is poor likeness to the real thing. The same holds true for the instrument panel. It is as basic as that of a Piper Cub or Cessna 172; nowhere as "busy"as a Canberra instrument panel. The pilot's ejection seat is made up of four pieces and the co-pilots seat is in three pieces. Even with a lot of trimming, they don't end up looking much like an ejection seat. I hope we'll see some aftermarket details for the cockpit, particularly with that large glass canopy. The assembly of the cockpit is a guessing game, as there are very few positive locating pins, slots or tabs. The final cockpit assembly is a drop-in tub-type affair that is inserted into the fuselage from the top. Be careful; if everything is not exactly where it should be, it won't fit. Mine didn't, but I was able to take advantage of the big open camera bay on the fuselage bottom, which allowed me access to the cockpit. The instruction sheet tells you to insert 100 grams of ballast to keep it from being a tail sitter. I was afraid after looking at the nose gear configuration that 100 grams would be too much to support, so I did experimentation throughout the build, leaving the camera bay open until the last thing. I ended up with 60 grams on top of the back of the nose gear well. In my opinion, even 60 grams taxes the nose gear (metal struts, anyone?). All that being said, the fuselage halves went together with no problems. The wings are huge, with separate wheel wells. There's not a lot of detail in the wells but they look and fit well. Three of the four wing tips had been bent back on the panel line, probably because of the (commendable) thinness of the tips and trailing edge. I removed the alignment tabs in order to get everything to line up. Next up came the ailerons, which are molded in upper and lower halves. Be careful here - if you assemble the parts numbers as per the instruction sheet, you will have done it wrong. The PR.9 ailerons have an actuator fairing on the upper surface of both the wing and the aileron, so parts J8 and J9 need to be used instead of 34C and 36C. The engine exhaust and exhaust cones do not fit well and the cone itself is too thick. I used a large wood grinder tip to thin the cones, and after smoothing out the inner surfaces, they looked good. Mounting them to the wings is another matter, but after some trimming, they looked okay. I wondered if there was a panel line where they joined, and after doing some on-line research I realized that I had opened a bag of worms that I would never have expected. I started looking at the actual model, the box art, the painting guide and photos of the real aircraft, and found four different depictions of panel lines. These misplaced or non-existent panel lines will come into play later on. As I got ready to glue the wings on, I decided that the tabs on the wings probably wouldn't be enough to adequately support the model's weight, so I chose to add a spar. I cut a piece of .040 plastic the width of the fuselage at the wing tab slots and glued it in. This would give an upper support to the wings. Once I had the wings glue into place, I cut another piece and placed it on the bottom side of the stubs. This gave the wings a very sturdy mount with plenty of support. I wasn't worried about the added weight, because it was right at the CG. The landing gear are supposed to be installed at this point, but I left them off until all painting was done. The same goes for the flaps.

The belly pan, or camera bay, is over 6 inches long and was a bear to get lined up for gluing. Be sure you use the right one- There are two of them, and which one you use depends on which markings you are going to build. So, once again into the Evergreen drawer! I added some .030 tabs at the front and rear of the belly opening to give me some support and alignment aids, and added some square tubing spreader bars at intervals down the length of the belly to bring everything in to alignment. The results were a perfect fit, with no sanding. The hemp and gray Canberra also shows a BOZ pod (chaff dispenser) under each wing. The pylon is just a straight-sided rectangular pylon that attaches to each wing. The marking guide, however, shows a very aerodynamically shaped pylon. I haven't been able to find any pictures of the actual pylon, so I'm not sure about the kit versions. Nevertheless, they do look neat, especially since they are painted a dark green. The stabilizers and elevators are made up of upper and lower parts as well, and when assembled, are too thick. If you sand them down to reduce the thickness, you will lose chord, due to the paper thin trailing edges. The instructions have you assemble the wrong halves together. Parts 16A and 17A are reversed. The rudder has very wide, very deep panel lines, but none exist on the real thing. You can see a little wrinkling of the skin where the ribs are, but no panel lines. I used several coats of Mr. Surfacer 500 to lessen the panel line effect but leave a hint of ribs. Now for the painting. I had gone so far as to purchase Humbrol acrylics for the hemp and the gray, but after the first coat, I opted to go back to my favorite Gunze Sanyo aqueous colors. H336 is hemp and H332 is light aircraft gray. Over a period of four days I sprayed four coats of each color to get a uniform coverage. Prior to painting, I applied Eduard masks made for this kit ( read review here ). For decal preparation, I used Tamiya's clear gloss thinned with their thinner and sprayed on several coats. The decals are very glossy, fairly thin, and slide off the paper very easily. At first I was fooled into thinking these were going to be some great decals, because where you put them was where they were going to stay without a lot of coaxing, water, shoving, lifting up the edge with a knife, etc. Also, using the decal placement guide for placement brought out the subject of the panel lines. For example, there are decals that are supposed to be placed right at the junction of two panel lines, but only one line exists. The warning triangles appear to be slightly oversized. I also had silvering problems, so I started with Micro Sol and Micro Set. No results. Next was Solvaset. Nothing there, either. Mr. Marksofter and Mr. Marksetter. Nothing there either. An old bottle of Aeromaster Aero Sol was just like using water. I gave up and went on with the decaling process. 128 decals later, I quit. There were more to be put on, but I was through. I did find out that you can't trim off the film to try to prevent silvering. The decal becomes a coiled spring. Thank goodness they are tough, though, because I was able to get it straightened out. One of the members of our IPMS Chapter. Phillip Martin, has been known to use lacquer thinner to get a decal to lay down. I'll admit I had tried it in the past, and it did work, but I was a little timid to try it here. I did, however, try timidly to use ModelMaster's Metalizer thinner. It worked fairly well, but gave me some subtle hints that what I was doing was like walking on the edge of a razor blade. Something bad was going to happen if I kept it up. So, I quit that, too. Flaps, gear and antennas, and I'm done and Dave Morrissette won't have to send me any more e-mails hinting that I need to sit down at my work bench. All of the various antennas were installed in their predrilled holes, all of which were bigger in diameter than the thickness of the antenna. Get out the white glue and the paint! The main gears only have a short, stubby hub for that giant wheel to mount to, and it's got to support a couple of pounds of plastic. So, I drilled into the hub and inserted a short axle and drilled a corresponding hole in each of the wheels. Worked like a champ. But, the wheels are flattened, and this aircraft sits at a nose low angle, so, I'll have to wait and play with it when the nose gear is on. The nose gear is another subject. One of the axles was a short shot, so I drilled out the gear and made a new axle. The nose wheels are flattened, too. The gear also has those nifty mud guards on each side, with only a slotted tab to hold them. So, I put the wheel on with no glue, and glue the guard where I thought it should be, since there's nothing that shows at what angle it should be. After doing this with both sides, I finally glued the nose gear on. Miraculously, my guess at the proper amount of weight was just enough, and my thinking both the main gear and nose gear were going to take punishment was right. I picked the aircraft up and put glue on the main wheels, set it back down and let it dry. I repeated this process with the nose gear. I will say that both the nose and main gear mountings were sturdy and fit perfectly. I don't have that luck very often. Now come the flaps. All of the pictures I had of parked PR.9's showed the elevators in an up angle and the flaps down. So, who am I to question that? The only problem is, there is no surface to put glue on. It's like trying to pose an F-104 canopy open. Glue a razor's edge to a razor's edge. I tried many ides of stretched sprue, evergreen shaped plastic, etc. before finally flattening the edge of the flap slightly with a hobby knife, laying a generous bead of superglue on it, putting the flap in place and holding my breath. It worked four times in a row, so I figured I had used up all of my modeling session luck, and at the right time. I laid the canopy in place, put some white glue on the mating surface of the windscreen, and it looked like it belonged where I put it. Two small dots of superglue on the hinge point of the canopy, and the aircraft was done! When I sat the model down on the blue cloth to do the final photos, I actually like the aircraft. Even after all it had led me through. I was actually proud of it. Now, if I only had a display case that was big enough to put it in. My thanks to Airfix Ltd. For providing the kit to IPMS/USA and to Eduard for the mask set, which made things a lot easier.