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"1:72 Airfix Canberra B.(I).6" 
by Gavin Parnaby
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1.	Components

•	Airfix 1:72 Canberra B.(I).8 kit
•	Heritage Aviation Canberra B.2 conversion set
•	Pavla Models Martin Baker 1:72 Mk.2CA ejection seat
•	Eduard 1:72 Canberra B.(I).8 flap detail set
•	Heritage Aviation 1:72 flap detail set
•	Resin Art gear bay set
•	Spectre Resins Mk.7 bomb
•	Aeroclub 1:72 nose glazing
•	Aeroclub 1:72 Canberra B.(I).6 wheels
•	Model Alliance decal sheet MA-127 (Canberra squadron markings)
•	Model Alliance decal sheet MAS-9018 (Canberra stencil data)
•	Model Alliance decal sheet MAS-9025 (Canberra black squared codes and serials)

2.	Cockpit Section

Being something of a frustrated pilot, I always begin with the seats, where present. On this occasion, I used the two white metal MB Mk.2 seats that came with the conversion set for the bombardier and navigator, and the Pavla resin seat for the pilot. The former seemed to be correspond well with photographs, although they required a bit of cleaning. The latter might possibly have a headbox that is too narrow, but there were no ridiculous inaccuracies. After assembly (using up most of my remaining etch brass PP Aeroparts handles)  they were painted in black overall, with bright yellow seat survival packs and blue-gray back cushions, with grey-green straps.

The interior of the Heritage set is creditably well detailed, not just the instrument panels for both the pilot and crew stations, but the sidewalls as well. Nonetheless, some extra boxes had to be added, notably the LABS gear, which was not fitted to the B.2. Although very little can be seen, I added some detailing to the extreme nose. The kit bombsight was eventually persuaded to fit into the bomb aiming station, which needed some considerable cleaning up. 

The overall interior is black, which is incredibly convenient, especially given that much of the available reference material is monochrome. I picked out some details, and glazed the instruments with Kristal Kleer.

Although the set includes a very nicely moulded control column (with a spare included, very thoughtful), there are no rudder pedals, so I had to make these up from scrap plastic. The solid cockpit floor had to be trimmed somewhat in order to align properly with the door aperture. The navigator’s window had to be opened out, and I also scribed some panel lines in what turned out to be a premature move. 

Marrying up the two forward fuselage halves turned out to be some effort, with the aft bulkhead projecting several millimetres behind. A degree of butchery with coarse wet’n’dry and razor saw ensued, until the bulkhead was flush with the minimum damage to the nose gear reinforcing point. With this done, I bonded the admirably well detailed fuselage plug to the cockpit/forward fuselage assembly. 

Now some real work began. The forward fuselage section appears to be simply too flat underneath, with the Canberra’s virtually circular fuselage cross-section being apparently flattened. The dreaded reprofiling has thus appeared. A large amount of Milliput was applied and once cured, attacked with three grades of wet’n’dry and the Flexifile. A substantial dusting in the local area later and the ventral fuselage was filled out adequately, although I couldn’t even begin to get all the debris in the wastepaper bin. 

With this complete, I returned my attention to the cockpit. The matt black interior had been inadvertently highlighted by the dust, which made touchups a little obvious. One feature introduced with the B.(I).6 is the pilot’s gunsight. I represented this by an approximation of the SFOM gunsight fitted to Argentinian B.62s, made from scrap plastic and clear acetate, carefully glued above the pilot’s instrument panel with medium cyanoacrylate and Clearfix.

The separate door supplied is white metal, and well detailed enough. However, the edges on mine were somewhat irregular, and I succeeded in restoring them to a certain extent with Milliput. Once finished, the door was primed in Humbrol matt white and painted in Dark Sea Grey/Light Aircraft Grey (as it straddles the camouflage demarcation line).  Attaching it was a task left until last, once the model was firmly fixed to the base. The fit into the slots cast into the resin fuselage was good, and once the door had been firmly bonded into place with epoxy, I attached a handle and extension arm from plastic rod, painting once the low viscosity cyanoacrylate had set. Manoeuvring the arm into place took some patience and judicious use of the L-shaped tweezers.

The transparencies supplied with the set are commendably clear, significantly thinner than the Aeroclub standards. Whereas the canopy is fine, however, the nose glazing suffers from having the bomb aimer’s panel being too small, extending only about three-quarters of the way to the base, instead of the whole distance, as in actuality. This is a shame, especially as there is even a dimple for mounting the pitot tube. I defaulted to the Aeroclub example here, representing the pipe connecting the nose pitot with a length of fuse wire. The inside of the canopies were painted black, with the radio aerials being in Humbrol 97 and the heating elements in Humbrol 121. 

Attaching the transparencies involved a substantial amount of filler, particularly around the nose glazing. The acetates were attached with Humbrol Clearfix, the nose cone fitting over the extreme forward fuselage for strength. Unfortunately, my skill with the Flexifile was insufficient to prevent extensive grazing. I had significant problems with dust recirculating inside the cockpit via the doorway when blending them in – I will probably cover such with tape in future. 

3.	Fuselage

Once the nose section was finally complete, I turned my attention to the rest of the fuselage. I of course began by removing the B.(I).8 nose with a razor saw, and proceeded by partially filling the deep panel lines that were to stay, whilst totally filling the ones that seemed to be inaccurate from a consensus of the three plan sets I had and photographic evidence (it should be well noted that it is extremely difficult to obtain an accurate impression of the panel layout from most extant Canberra photos). Some rescribing was carried out, principally towards the aft end of the fuselage. 

The fin root extends a few millimetres too far forward, and I dealt with this by marking the correct outline on the plastic with a photo marker pen, and removing the excess. Otherwise, the outline seems good, and only notional filler was needed to make good the joint between the two fuselage halves. The bomb bay doors are so well detailed inside, with those densely-pitched stiffeners, that it was a shame to have to model them closed, but I had no data at all for the flare carrier – the triplet of 1000 pounders forward of the installed gun pack was peculiar to the B.(I).8 – the B.(I).6 never received it. They attached well and little filler was needed to achieve a good seam, and this mostly aft, where the fuselage section narrows. 

Once the mid- and aft fuselage was complete, the nose section was married up to it. I used epoxy for strength and the joint itself was perfectly straightforward. However the resin fuselage section housing the nose gear bay was slightly but noticeably narrower than the cockpit section and the fuselage at the leading edge of the bomb bay. This had to be blended in with Milliput, which of course meant extensive sanding and the replacement of all the panel lines in the area.

In order to fit the large wheel bays from the Resin Art set, a cutout needs to be made at the wing root. This was done with Airwaves microsaws, not without damage to the surrounding area, which was to be made good later.

Returning to the fuselage once the wings were attached, the remarkably clean profile of the B.(I).6 required only a few items adding, two of which (the dorsal aerial and the ventral fuel dump pipe) were included in the kit. The holes for the RWR antennae in the fin were filled – this feature was not present on the B.(I).6. A contemporary photo shows two small blade aerials beneath the fuselage shortly aft of the weapons bay, so these were added from scrap plastic. Two pitot tubes before and behind the tail bumper were added from thin plastic rod. Finally, a formation light was obtained from clear plastic sprue, sanded to section and and attached with Clearfix behind the dorsal aerial. 

4.	Empennage

One new and welcome feature of this kit is the separate control surfaces across all five flying surfaces. Unfortunately, as has been well publicised, Airfix made a preposterous error in moulding rib lines on the rudder. These are quite inaccurate, of course, and were quickly filled. Otherwise little work needed to be done, but one has to be careful of the mounting pin on the bottom face, which I managed to knock off during trimming. 

The tailplaness seem accurate overall, although I believe that there is a generally held inaccuracy in the span measurement for the tailplanes of all Canberras. I couldn’t obtain detailed information about this, however, and so had to go with what I had. The panel lines present seem accurate enough, but I found it necessary to augment them with another at approximately 1/3 span. The dihedral angle seems good, and they mate up to the tailcone with only notional filler. 

The elevators are very nicely sectioned, with a good sharp trailing edge. It is uncertain, but it seemed to me that they were too square at the tip, so I rounded them off a little with the Flexifile. Once complete, I set all three control surfaces to one side.

The control surfaces were attached once the model had been firmly bonded to the base. The two elevators were set at a droop angle commonly seen in the absence of locks. The rudder, too, was set at an oblique angle to take advantage of the unusual separate control surfaces and add interest to the model.

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5.	Wings

As mentioned above, the ailerons are moulded as separate parts here, as are the flaps, although there are too few ribs underneath the panel above the flap and these will need to be sanded off to accommodate the Eduard set, which mandates other sanding in the area. The rather hefty gates are thoughtfully moulded away from the edges of the aerofoils, at the root and within the aileron runs. Be careful to remove all the material from the latter, and be more careful than I was, puncturing my fingertip to the depth of half an inch with a scalpel blade as I was doing so. 

With the wing halves thus prepared, and bloody, the familiar struggle to determine what were the actual panel lines began, with the filling of some wrong ones and the scribing of right ones. I of course do not claim to have got this 100% right, merely a best guess. One absence that needs to be rectified is the landing light under the port wing. 

I fitted the Resin Art main gear bays (nominally for a PR.9, but should be valid as I don’t believe the wing structure changed significantly in that chord region. I could be wrong, but could find no allusion to changes in the undercarriage structure). These require a chopping out of the centre of the root face of the wing, including the forward face of the tab, in order to fit. The locating lugs for the kit wheel bays must be removed. The kit wheel bays are good, and resin replacements are really the icing on the cake. The Resin Art items need a fair bit of plug removing, and I carelessly sawed through the roof of one, which complicated the assembly somewhat. The fit is tight and careful sanding of the inner faces of the wing halves was necessary. Once this was done, however, they went together reasonably well, the resin being bonded with medium viscosity cyanoacrylate and the injection plastic with liquid cement. Only cursory filling away from the root face was necessary.

The engines provided the most work in the general wing assembly. The jetpipes are moulded separately from the aft end of the nacelle, and slot within them. Both needed to be extensively reamed out, both to fit and to obtain the correct wall thickness. The jet pipe fits into a circular aperture in the aft face of the body of the nacelle, and this needed a little reaming out too. Easily the worst fit anywhere on the model, but not irresolvable. Extensive sanding was required, especially on the ventral nacelle, to restore the contour.

As with the jetpipes, the forward nacelles are moulded with a piece of aerofoil section on either side, slotting into the wing. The forward nacelles consist of a well moulded turbine disc, with vanes, although I am uncertain whether or not the installations were handed. These slot into solidly moulded rims in the upper and lower forward nacelle halves, which went together with only perfunctory filling. The turbine bullets appear to be of the correct, extended (for three starter cartridges), length for the Mk.6 on. The later B.6s and B.(I).6s had an starter cartridge fairing of ogival cross-section, whereas the early aircraft had one which was a hemispherically blunted cylinder. Two slots perpendicular to the free stream need to be cut into the upper and lower halves of the nacelles somewhat forward of the leading edge.

Once completed the engine fronts married up to the wings without too much trouble, although a little work was necessary to make good the section on either side. The layout is well suited to changing for earlier versions if necessary. The nicely moulded louvre appears to be too forward, and too high, unfortunately. I added several gas ejector holes and the oil ejector ports downstream. Also missing was the small intake that appears in photographs a third of the way along the upper part of the nacelle. 

The wingtip lights are separately moulded in clear plastic, and all that really needs doing is the painting of the interior of the fitting before gluing them in place with Clearfix. A little sanding was necessary once these were fitted, to make the contour just so. 

The ailerons and trim tabs are separately moulded and are good, except for the external tabs, which are twice as long in span as they should be. I trimmed them back with a scalpel.

Installing the wings was relatively straightforward with the fit good overall, although considerable filling was necessary where I had made the rough cutouts for the replacement gear bays. I bonded the projecting gear bays with gap-filling cyanoacrylate for strength with the plastic contacting faces with liquid cement, which caused the joints to lock after only a few seconds. 

Once the wings were fitted I began to detail the flaps. I initially used the Eduard set, which is nicely engineered, but seems to have the fundamental drawback of being too long in chord! No provision for the piece of upper trailing edge clearly visible in photographs is made, which could be the result of Eduard following the kit rather than doing their own research. Another baffling error. The Eduard set is also very difficult to assemble when following the instructions given in the leaflet. I would instead fit the plastic rod and the bracket parts before folding the ribs onto the base plate. Easy to be wise after the event. After having made an appalling mess of things, I went for the Heritage Aviation set (a third of the price) which looks much better in terms of chord length – and which includes the hinges, although none of the bay parts other than the ribs. I made the bar up from scrap plastic, and the cables from very thin plastic rod, whilst using the Eduard brackets where I could. Filling the edges of this set and blending it into the trailing edge of the wing took an amount of time and effort which it is neither feasible nor desirable to give an account of here. Since then, I have contacted Eduard to complain about the inaccuracies of their set. Once I had succeeded in making it clear to them that it was wrong, they were quite apologetic and pledged to correct it. Full marks to them for paying respect and attention to their customers.

Once the flaps were complete, the gear bays and flap housings were painted in semigloss white, shaded in a similar manner to the undercarriage. The fire extinguishers in the main gear bays were painted blue and the cables picked out in black, apart from those where the few colour photos I had access to show other hues. At the same time as the final details were being added to the fuselage, the underwing pylons were added. Negligible filler was needed to make the joint good, but care with the pylon location was needed, to ensure that the joint angle was correct. 

The undercarriage doors were all from the Resin Art set and are finely detailed inside and out. These were painted in the same way as the gear bays. I employed the Eduard flaps, suitably modified with scrap plastic strips to represent the upper trailing edge The hinges were made from the parts of both sets, although some were inevitably lost during construction (the Eduard set includes spares for some small parts, very sensibly, but the Heritage Aviation set does not). The Eduard set includes the stiffener plate for the hinge, but strangely enough, not the hinge itself. The Heritage Aviation set is the opposite. 
 
The flaps were attached once the gear legs and bay doors were fully cured. The upper edges had previously been touched up slightly to match the camouflage demarcations on the upper wing surface. The ailerons, slightly drooped, were attached once the model had been married up with the base, with epoxy.
6.	Stores

For the loadout, I settled upon the gun pack, with a pair of 1000lb bombs on the wing pylons. By virtue of its significance, I also included a Mk.7 tactical nuclear bomb, to be displayed next to the aircraft. For the delivery of this weapon, which, although intended for tactical aircraft, was nonetheless sizeable, special bomb doors were fitted, although I have no details of this beyond the general layout, which contained a recess for the weapon, with cutouts for the two upper fins. A deflector plate was fitted inside to avoid negative cavity flow effects.

The gunpack has attracted a lot of criticism, and rightly so. I regret not having a more conventional loadout, as the detailing inside the bomb bay is the best I have yet seen. The corrugations within the doors are particularly appreciated. However, as this weapon was a distinguishing feature of the B.(I).6, and I had several drawings, I elected to include it.

This meant a lot of work. The kit item comes in two parts, the body of the pack and the muzzle area. The body is reasonable, although it needs to be thinned down at the back to obtain the flush joint at the aft end of the bomb bay, and the sides need to be sanded to have the right inclination (they are not parallel to the fuselage symmetry plane, as in the kit). With this done, a few door lines scribed, and the four ejector chutes added from scrap plastic, the body was finished. 

The muzzle area, however, is wildly inaccurate. At least half a length too short, it has quite the wrong cross section. I began by sawing it in half perpendicular to the direction of flight, and then extending it with scrap plastic, fairing this into a single parabolic cross-section with Milliput and copious sanding. Once I was reasonably happy with the shape, I drilled the four cannon troughs out again, as they had become ccompletely obscured during the rebuilding. I superglued lengths of Evergreen 1/8”rod to make the barrels, drilling the muzzles out for the sake of realism. I am not clear how far they protrude into the troughs, but they do not appear entirely buried in the photographs. With all this work complete, the body of the pack was painted in Humbrol 85 and the gun barrels in 201. I opted for a black pod, as the evidence appears to show that, after having appeared during the time that the aircraft undersides were painted black overall, the gunpacks were not repainted with the aircraft, being only occasionally fitted.

The bomb doors were cut out in order to fit around the pack and this fortunately needs no extra work. The B.(I).6 did not carry any internal bombload when carrying the gunpack, instead being able to carry a flare pack in the unused portion of the bomb bay. A later modification allowed the B.(I).8 to carry three 1000lb bombs here, but this was not applied to the B.(I).6. I had no details at all of the flare pack, as mentioned above, so I left the doors closed. When I eventually came to fit the gunpack to the fuselage, I found that the two pegs needed extensive trimming in order to fit the slots that are moulded within the bomb doors. A bit of epoxy was used to fit it in place and fill the slight gap between the fairing and the doors.

I did fit bombs to the underwing pylons, however. The kit examples are reasonably, although they do appear a little too rounded at the nose. I built a more pointed region up with Milliput, sanding to shape. It’s quite a difficult call, however, and not everybody might consider it necessary. The bombs were painted in Humbrol 75 which appears a reasonable match for Deep Bronze Green, with the identification bands in 24. 

The B.(I).6 did not carry rockets, so my original intention of displaying a SNEB rocket pod next to the aircraft didn’t work out. Nor did it carry the AS.30 also included in the kit, although the B.15 did, so one could take a similar approach in building a NEAF Canberra. 

I was determined to include the Mk.7 tactical nuclear bomb, once I discovered the Spectre Resins model. This is a good piece of work, with nice, crisp separate fins, and an interesting approach taken to the retracting third fin issue, with the fin cast as retracted, but with a third fin included to model it extended if desired. I assembled mine with the fin retracted as it was to be placed on a trolley. The body of the weapon comes in two parts – main body and nose cap. These went together with little filler around the joint and only a little sanding. Once assembled, the weapon was painted in Humbrol Matt Aluminium Metalcote, with the nosecap in a mix of 73 and 10, the screws attaching it being picked out in 56. 

In order to display it parked next to the aircraft, I had to mount the weapon on its cart. With nothing other than a few photos of preserved US weapons to go by, I embarked on a full scratchbuild from plastic scrap of various thicknesses (40,20 and 5thou) and two gauges of plastic rod. I made the springs from light fuse wire wound around a length of plastic rod which was then pushed out. The wheels were sundry small nose gear wheels from the spares box, such as it is. Once the model was completed, I painted in overall 75, with the two lights at the side and rear picked out in Humbrol 69 and the tyres in 33. Once the paint was dry, I glued the completed bomb to the sidemounts with epoxy and put it to one side.

I assembled the tip tanks at this stage. WT311 appeared to be still operating with the tip tanks in bare metal, even after retirement, and I am reliably informed that metallic tip tanks were still to be seen long after the aircraft had received full camouflage. So I assembled and painted them separately. The mouldings are excellent, with as sharp trailing edges as one could wish for. However, the navigation lights and their associated cable runs were missing, so I added these from plastic scrap. I also scribed a few panel lines for the nose fairing and the filler cap. The tanks were finished in Polished Aluminium Metalcote, with stencil panels picked out in Humbrol 85, in default of any appropriate decals.

The stores were attached after the flaps and undercarriage had cured in place. The fit of the bombs was good, and the peculiar neatness of the Canberra’s pylon installation precluded the requirement to detail the attachments. The tanks went on just fine, and a little extra ProModeller wash was applied to accentuate the join.
 
7.	Undercarriage

Although there isn’t a great deal in it, I elected to replace the kit wheels with Aeroclub items. The nosewheels are cast in white metal, with the mudguards, whilst the mainwheels are cast in resin. Unfortunately they are not weighted, although they do have the tread detail. I had to file the bases and fill out the distorted region with Milliput. Once this was done, they were undercoated in flat white, then painted, using Humbrol 56 for the wheels and Xtracolour Tyre Black for the tyres. The mudguards were painted in semigloss white, while the nose leg was painted in Humbrol 127, according to the Aeroguide information. Details on undercarriage bays are hard to come by on any aircraft, particularly on the Canberra with its low ground clearance. The main gear legs were painted in semigloss white.

A mixture of Citadel washes was used to represent wear, mud and oil staining on the wheels and legs. Dervlan Mud, a dark brown, was used in conjunction with an old armour wash of theirs, and thinned to suit. 

The nose gear bay in the Heritage Aviation nose section is pretty comprehensively detailed – I merely added a couple of struts and a little framing on the forward wall from the Pavla Models set. Once all was set and the edges had been made good where sanding had eaten away at them some, I painted it in semigloss white, with the leads picked out in flat black. A similar mix of inks were used to weather the interior.

With the main gear bays having been installed as described in §3 above, little extra work was needed to complete them. As directed, I added the interior cabling from fuse wire, painting most of it black. The separate fire extinguishers were added to the ledge in the forward end of the wheel bay, and the door struts to the inboard edge. The bays themselves were painted and weathered in the same manner as the nose gear bay, while the extinguishers were picked out in Humbrol 25 Blue.

Mounting the undercarriage began with the nose gear leg, the retraction struts of which had to be significantly cut back in order to fit in the bay. Once the test fit was successful it was bonded in place with epoxy. The main gear legs needed quite a bit of epoxy to bond them in place, but the result was solid enough. The main gear legs were first glued to the main outer door, the resin parts matching the kit ones just fine. The extra cabling was added using fuse wire and the retraction struts added. Then the completed assemblies were washed with a black/Dervlan Mud mix and a few touchups added. Once the legs were firmly in place the doors were attached and the nose gear door extension struts (only one as I had managed to lose the other) attached using cyanoacrylate. The main wheels were attached to the already-installed legs in order to be as sure as possible of getting the correct alignment.

  
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8.	Painting

The overall scheme was typical of late 1960s RAF Canberras, being Dark Sea Grey and Green topsides, with Light Aircraft Grey undersides. I began with a coat of Hycote grey primer overall, which I have previously found to perform much better than the Halfords version. I plugged the engine intakes and exhausts, cabin access doorway and gear bays with Blutack and masked off the flap areas with masking tape, with the transparencies covered with Humbrol Maskol prior to painting. 

Once the primer was complete, I sprayed the undersides with Humbrol 166, followed by a topcoat of Xtracolour RAF Light Aircraft Grey to get the finish. I didn’t mask off the topsides, wanting the paint to extend beyond the demarcation line, to avoid any uncertainty there. I did have some trouble with the consistency of the Humbrol LAG, even that fresh from a brand-new tinlet. Once that was dry, I remasked the model and prepared the demarcation lines with masking tape, The wraparound on the leading edges is fairly constant, but I should make it clear how the demarcation lines around the engine nacelles, wing, and tailplane roots varied between units, aircraft and periods – check photographic references. 

Again, I began the layup with Humbrol 164, before topping it with Xtracolour RAF Dark Sea Grey. Once this was dry, I applied further masking tape to cover the DSG areas of the upper surface camouflage, applying them roughly with tape strips and then marking out the precise boundaries on them with a drawing pen and trimming them to shape with a scalpel. When this was ready I applied Humbrol 163, topping it off with Xtracolour RAF Dark Green. 

Once the sprayed paintwork was dry, I removed the masking and tidied up the areas requiring attention with brushwork. The masking tape had performed well overall, with only a few ‘lips’ at colour boundaries, the worst of which were cut back with a scalpel. Some blemishes due to paint consistency issues had cropped up, particularly on the underside, which was unfortunate, as I couldn’t get quite the same shade when brush painting as I could when spraying the LAG. The intake lips were somewhat troublesome, due to the slightly uneven Blutack coverage. The Canberra’s layout made it somewhat tricky to avoid excessive paint buildup, due to the number of junctions between flying surfaces, fuselage, nacelles, and pylons.

With the decals finished, I applied two extra glossy coats with Johnson’s Pledge, as directed by Phil Flory of ProModeller. This had the disadvantage of flowing around the curves to collect below, forming rubbery lumps in places that had to be trimmed away with a scalpel, sometimes taking paint away. Care should be taken when applying to avoid this. With the successive layers of paint, the panel lines did tend to get a bit obscured – no need to be so assiduous in part-filling them with such a finish. 

Picking out the details was quickly done, with only a few places on the remarkably clean airframe needing attention. The aft fuselage pitots were picked out in Xtracolour Duralumin, the foot of the tail bumper in black, and the nose probe in 201 with a Duralumin root. The clearly visible line of putty around the canopy was painted in a mixture of 97 and flat white. The solitary dorsal aerial was left in DSG with a single black band applied, which seems to be appropriate for this mark and era – others, notably later B.2s, seem to have it painted in light cream or yellow. Some aircraft appear to have the leading edge of the fin painted black, but WT311 did not, so I left it. The trailing edge of the rudder, above the trim tab, is generally black, however. The dorsal navigation light (a ventral one was not fitted, it seems) was painted in Tamiya Clear Red. The distinctive rectangular aerial panels on the lower wing surfaces aft of the main gear bays were painted in Humbrol 29 Dark Earth. 

Once the gloss coat had dried for a day or two, I proceeded to apply the Pro Modeller weathering wash. I used the general Dark Dirt as I’d never used such a thing before, and thought I should start with the recommended beginner’s approach. The application was straightforward, although I found it hard to get rid of the bubbles, even with extensive stirring. The lower surface seemed to be rather more uneven in finish than I’d intended, and the resulting weathering was quite extensive. This is in keeping with some photos of RAFG Canberras that I’ve seen, although very much more grubby than some of the Wyton-era machines. It proved impossible to get the wash into all the panel lines, even with repeat application. Nevertheless, it was a valuable enhancement. 

Once the wash was completed, I added the oil streaks below the aft engine nacelles. I first brushed on a mix of brown and black ink, then brushed on a small amount of dark grey Carr’s Weathering Powder. Finally, after fitting the gun pack,  I applied two coats of Xtracolour acrylic matt varnish, which was remarkably trouble-free in application.

Finally, I picked out the tail and tank lights, using silver for the former and Tamiya clear red and green for the latter. Once the paint had dried Humbrol Glasscote was used to differentiate the finish.
9.	Markings

With the overall scheme finished, it was time to apply the decals. These came from three sources: the kit, three Model Alliance Canberra sheets (stencilling, serials and insignia) and the 1960s/70s vintage Airfix B.(I).6 kit. The latter supplied the fuselage roundels which I used in preference to the kit ones, which were printed integrally with the 88 Sqn fuselage band. Despite their age, they went on readily, with no tearing and only a little debris from the ancient cellophane, which was gently scrubbed off. I began with the upper surface markings. The wing roundels are printed with separate centres, to avoid any register issues, and went on well enough, although the opacity of the white areas compares unfavourably with those of the decades-old fuselage roundels. The kit also supplied the fin flashes and the wing fuel tank markings – I wasn’t sure about the latter on the upper surface, and could find no evidence for their presence beneath the wing, so I only used the top ones. These appeared to be a little short, and were later augmented with Humbrol 197 Lufthansa Yellow. Both fin flashes and wing roundels were rather fragile, the starboard ones tearing repeatedly, which required some correction. The familiar Superset/Supersol combination was used to bed them in, and most of the silvering, particularly noticeable on the tank markings, was thus cured. I used the Model Alliance squadron insignia, although the hornet seems to be rather less accurate, at least for the late 1960s than the Airfix one. The latter, however, seemed to be slightly too large, and as the rudder was separate, I erred on the side of caution and did not use it. 

The stencilling came entirely from the Model Alliance sheet. Although no insignia seems to be present for the tip tanks, the sheet contains plenty of markings in black, red and yellow, as appropriate to the various colour schemes. The instructions, although comprehensive, give of necessity only one configuration, and it is difficult indeed to determine what the appropriate one was without extensive detailed photographic coverage. I suspect that I may have used too many ejection seat warning triangles, although I cannot be sure, as the photograph I have of WT311 has a tarpaulin pulled over the upper forward fuselage area. So the stencils as applied represent an educated guess. 

The serials came from the Model Alliance black and straight (rather than curved) serial sheet and went on just fine, with only minimal silvering. Once these were dry, the upper surfaces were finished, and I turned my attention to the lower surfaces. Given the issues I’d had with the upper wings, I was thankful for the absence of roundels. The serials here took a little more work, however. Fortunately, they didn’t have to be cut in order to fit around the pylons (which were of course removable, fitting on top of the painted serial), but a section had to be removed from one ‘T’ in order to accommodate the landing light. The remaining stencils, significantly fewer in number, were straightforward in their application, although the marking on the strike camera door had to be cut in two to accommodate the small blade aerial.
10.	Base

I adopted a similar approach to basing the model that I had with the Airfix Vulcan, by dint of having a similar chunk of plywood to hand. Face sheets of 20 thou plasticard were bonded to the plywood core with PVA and the edges filled in with Milliput. Rather than have the facesheets project significantly over the edges of the core as previously, which involved extended iterations of filling and sanding, I trimmed them back so as to apply the minimum filler. This allowed the base to be finished more quickly, although I managed to scratch the facesheets in so doing. 

Once assembled, the base was sprayed matt black overall, and then a Verlinden card print of a standard NATO pan was bonded to the top with PVA. Given the scratches, I considered that a brush-finished varnish was the way to proceed and the base was finished with Humbrol clear polyurethane. Once the model had been completed, bar the control surfaces and entry door, which would have just got in the way otherwise, the wire stubs protruding from the wheels were dipped with bright red paint to ‘spot’ the model and holes drilled in the base to suit. These were drilled with an outsize (1.5mm) bit in order to give the best possible margin. Epoxy was used to bed the wire stubs into the holes and form as solid a bond as possible between the model and the base. Finally, once all outstanding parts had been fitted, the last task was to bond the cart/bomb assembly to the base. I put it ahead of the aircraft on the port side, so as not to obscure the cabin door area. And that was that.
11.	Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the varied and considerable assistance given me in this project by: Brian West of the 213Sqn website, Brian Goodwin and Ron Jenkins of 213Sqn, Royal Air Force, Damian Guest of the principal UK Canberra website, John Sheehan, Mark Bilas of Spectre Resins and Ian of Heritage Aviation. This build has been much the easier and more successful to their varied and enthusiastic assistance. 

12.	References

1.	English Electric Canberra Part 1: Bomber Canopy Variants in British Service, J. Freeman, On Target Profiles 7, The Aviation Workshop, 2005.
2.	Pilots Notes: Canberra B.2, 2nd edition, AP4326-P.N.,  HMSO.
3.	English Electric Canberra & Martin B-57, B. Jones, Crowood Aviation Series, The Crowood Press, 1999.
4.	EE Canberra B Mk 2 and T Mk 4, Aeroguide 7, R. Chesneau & R. Rimell, Linewrights Ltd., 1984.
5.	Bomber Squadrons of the R.A.F. & their Aircraft, P. J. R. Moyes, Macdonald, 1964.
6.	 Building the English Electric Canberra, B. Green, Hyperscale Resource Guide, www.hyperscale.com, 2008.
7.	40 Jahre und Recht Weise I, FlugRevue 6, p285-7.
8.	The English Electric Canberra Mk.I & IV, K. Munson, Profile Publications 54, Profile Publications.
9.	English Electric Canberra, R. Beaumont & A. Reed, Ian Allan, 1984.
10.	Canberra: The Operational Record, R. Jackson, Airlife, 1988.
11.	BAC Canberra: Queen of the Skies, Airplane, Vol.8 No.88, p2442-2454, 1990.
12.	English Electric Canberra, K. Delve, P. Green & J. Clemons, Midland Counties Publications, 1992.
13.	Canberra B.(I).8 scale drawings, G. A. G. Cox, Aircraft Archive: Postwar Jets Volume 1, p24-8, Argus Books, 1988.
14.	English Electric Canberra, C. Stafrace, Warpaint Series No.60, 2007.

Internet resources:
1.	A Tribute to the English Electric Canberra: http://www.bywat.co.uk/canframes.html
2.	Canberras at Aircraft Resource Archives: http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Gal-Fea%20Archives/jet/Canberra/Canberra.htm
3.	Canberra Crazy: 
http://www.canberracrazy.co.uk/
4.	Air Britain’s Canberra images: http://www.abpic.co.uk/results.php?q=canberra&fields=type&sort=latest&page=250&limit=10
5.	Discussions on 
www.britmodeller.com
6.	Discussions on:
 http://ipmsuk.proboards.com/

7.	213 Squadron unofficial website:
http://213squadronassociation.homestead.com

Sundry images obtained from Google searches

Gavin Parnaby
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