1/72 Airfix Canberra B(I).58

Gallery Article by Felix Troschier on Aug 15 2014

India Independence Day

 

As it is the Indian Independence Day I would like to present you an Indian Canberra I finished already in 2011. As I'm usually more into rotary wing it was a rather unusual subject for me. But I got a gift voucher of my local hobby shop and I had to buy something so the new Airfix Canberra B(I).8 fell into my hands. After some thinking what to make out of it, I found the kit decal options rather boring. What first to be intended as an out-of-box build ended up in an aftermarket party. I sorted out that Model Alliance has a Canberra sheet in its programme including a highly attractive Indian Air Force target towing scheme among others. Although being German and used to know orange Canberras, this is even more colourful. I ordered the decal sheet and I had to recognize that I need another sheet for the stencils, okay - go for it. Once at that point I decided to go even further and stuffed the Canberra PR.9 cockpit from Pavla into the fuselage. To be honest, this was a quite unnecessary investment as there is almost nothing left over which is visible anymore. The seat would have been enough. Together with the cockpit set, replacement wheel wells arrives. Finally, Eduard gave me some PE flaps. The original aircraft is said to have been served in No.1 Target Towing Group at Lohegaon AFB near Pune in 1990. Photos of B(I).58s in this scheme seem to be rare, only recently I found another image of this aircraft on the web.

 

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The build was very straight forward. Some fellow modelers argued about the dominance of the panel lines and tend to fill them. I left them but I decided to abandon any preshading or washing. Only the horizontal panel lines on the rudder were filled. The fit was quite good and there was almost no filler needed. Although I have never seen any evidence that wingtip fuel tanks were ever carried together with this scheme I attached them as a kind of artistic license. The most time-consuming task was of course the paintwork. The masking tape earned some money with that. A coat of white came first, then yellow. The fluorescent parts were next. As this is known to be a difficult colour, I was quite pleased how well the Testors Dayglo went on the model. But then surprisingly, slimy residues of pigments and other things came up when I cleaned the airbrush - luckily, they went off easily. Then I applied Humbrol's gloss orange (18), but for my taste the touch of pink was too prominent. So once again yellow and another try with Revell's 30. This was okay and then the most difficult task of masking the parallel black stripes was next. In the end they turned out not to be 100% parallel and symmetrical but I just wanted to finish it.

The decals (printed by Fantasy Printshop) were excellent. Very thin with almost invisible carrier film. Only the roundels need some further treatment with setting solution. Finally the cabin glazing got a cote of Future and some aerials were added and the whole model was coated with a semigloss varnish. Due to its short wheelbase and the fact that there is almost no space left when the resin cockpit is fitted, the model is a horrible tailsitter - so a tail support strut had to be made. I hope you like it.

Felix Troschier

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Photos and text © by Felix Troschier