Part 2: The Build

Having dispensed with the preliminaries, its time to start building. Naturally, this begins with the cockpit interior. Detail inside the crew area is OK without being outstanding. A 4-part ejection seat is included for the pilot and to starboard and below him, a non-ejecting seat is correctly included for the Navigator/Bomb Aimer. I found the pilot's seat a little awkward to assemble, and not particularly well detailed; as this is virtually the only part of the cockpit that will be highly visible on the finished model, I opted to replace it with a resin seat from a Classic Airframes Canberra.

The pilot's area has a full set of instruments and rudder pedals; while not highly detailed, its enough to give the proper impression. In the nose, the Nav has his chart table, bomb sight and magic boxes. Interestingly, in real life the Nav was also provided with an additional small seat for this table but it is not included with the kit. All this was painted Interior Black (AKA. very, very dark grey!), with a good drybrushing of medium grey to bring out the detail. Various knobs and switches were painted in white, red and yellow and a few decals were scrounged from the spares box to represent instruments, data plates and the like. Overall, the look is quite effective, considering most of it will be very difficult to see once the model is complete.

Note that while three crew figures are included, and four seats, the B(I).8 only had a crew of two. I presume the extras are for the B2/6 version to be released later. Incidentally, while nicely detailed, the crew figures are quite small compared to 1/48 scale figures from other manufacturers. In the manner customary to the British armed forces, you may nickname them Titch, Shorty and Lofty. All these parts fit together to form one unit with the rear cockpit bulkhead. I added a considerable amount of fishing weights into every conceivable nook in this assembly. The Canberra was a notable tailsitter in real life, and in model form needs plenty of help. Airfix obligingly provide a prop to stick under that tail; I am hoping to avoid its necessity…. Onto this cockpit assembly is glued the B(I).8 cockpit insert as mentioned in Part 1. This is where things got a little sticky for me. There are no positive location guides for the cockpit assembly, and placing this, attached to the insert, into the starboard fuselage half, then wrestling the port fuselage half into place brought up some interesting issues. Firstly, the insert is not a perfect fit; when attached to the cockpit section, something seems to get thrown out of alignment - this also caused the cockpit assembly to skew slightly to port. This causes the floor to mis-align, and throws off the position of the bomb sight. Now, I'm pretty sure that this is my error, as no-one else who has built this kit has mentioned this problem (Because they are all expert modellers, I guess), but it would not have happened if there had been a positive locator inside one of the fuselage halves, as there are on the Nimrod for example. Of course, all seemed well when I dry-fitted everything... Anyway, I trimmed the floor, adjusted the bomb sight position and filled and sanded the insert seams - now it looks like there was no problem at all, but it was more work than I would have liked. Nothing like an unexpected problem to re-affirm your status as "modeller" rather than "assembler!" When I build another, I'll add some location guides inside the fuselage, and leave the insert off until the fuselage is glued together. One other assembly is placed in the fuselage before closing it up - the bomb bay. This has some good ribbing detail and I am sure would look the part if I had wanted to leave it open. Apparently, the B(I).8 fitted with the 20mm cannon pack has bomb bay doors with a cut-out to accommodate the pre-loaded unit, and the ability to carry bombs in the forward part of the bay in addition to these cannon. However, I couldn't find any photos of this and there is no indication of this feature on the kit parts, so decided to leave the bay doors closed and the optional armament was assigned to the spares box for use on other projects. I might build a Canberra bomb trolley to display alongside, if I can find some dimensions. The full-span wings are very simple units to construct. Firstly, there are slots in the lower wings that are flashed over. You'll need to research what, if any, wing armament your model carried - and it was rare for RAF B(I).8s to carry underwing stores - then open up the correct slots. This done, I added the main wheel bays to the lower wing halves. These bays are nicely detailed with ribbing. Notably, there are no ejector pin marks inside these. In fact, the whole model is carefully molded so that there are no ejector pin marks in any location that's visible on the finished model - very nice! Once the wheel bays were set, the upper and lower wing halves were glued together. Fit was perfect. Next up were the separate ailerons, which can be posed at an angle if desired. Airfix have missed the trim tabs on these, so I scribed them on. The kit also has separate flaps, and just for once I decided to show these dropped! Wonders will never cease. As you will all know by now, the RAF discouraged its pilots from leaving flaps dropped while on the ground to prevent damage. However, a Canberra technician pointed out that the hydraulic system would bleed pressure after standing for a period, causing the flaps to drop. So I decided that was all the excuse I needed to show off all the nice detail inside the Airfix parts. In order to accommodate different variants, the intakes and exhausts are separate assemblies, and these are covered next. The exhausts are easy enough, but a little care is needed with the intakes, as the lips are a little heavy and could do with thinning a little, and the join to the main wing needs to be carefully lined up to eliminate the possibility of steps. Upper and lower intake lips trap some agreeably detailed engine fronts complete with the correct long cartridge starter housing. Airfix would have you assemble the wing tip drop tanks next. It should be noted that the B(I).8 often didn't carry these, due to the shorter ranges of their missions, so I elected to leave mine off. The shape and dimensions are pretty good, comparing very well to the Aeroclub units I used on my Classic Airframes model. All these sub-assemblies were brought together with hardly a smidgen of filler used, testament to some fine engineering here. A little re-scribing and the wings were attached to the fuselage without difficulties; good tight seams here as well. The tailplanes are a curious set of parts. The horizontal tailplanes are devoid of panel lines, just like their Nimrod brethren - curious! After consulting plans, I scribed a few lines. The elevators are separate, but their trailing edge is incorrectly shaped, as you can see in the photos. Judging from photos, the apex at the outer trailing edge is too sharp and too far back. It is a matter of just a couple of minutes work with a sanding stick to re-shape these; no biggie, but it makes a difference. The trim tabs are missing here also… I'm also a bit unsure about the span of the tailplanes - compared to plans and the Classic Airframes kit, they are about 4 mm shorter across the whole plane; however, I couldn't come up with the correct figure, so I don't know which is correct. I left them as is. These were glued to the fuselage, being sure to position both at the same dihedral - an easy step as Airfix provides very positive locations for these. The rudder is also a curious creature. As the tailplanes are devoid of panel lines, so the rudder has a surfeit. Although study of Canberra rudder photos shows that there is internal structure in the positions indicated on the kit part, it is very subtle and doesn't readily show up from any sort of distance. I filled all the lines except for the top line and that indicating the trim tab. The fin is another area that needs a slight correction. Looking at many Canberra photos, the fin fillet as modeled by Airfix is too large, starting too high on the fin and ending too far along the fuselage. As can be seen in the photo, I removed a portion of the fillet, bringing it back to something much more prototypical. I'm not sure I removed quite enough - I'll have to see what it looks like when I'm done! None of the aforementioned is a terminal issue; just an accumulation of minor inaccuracies and simplicities that you may or may not wish to change on your model. I glued the elevators with the mass balances drooping down slightly, as per many photos, and the rudder was slightly angled too - apparently, gust locks were optional on the Canberra! I added the nose at this point. This is molded in clear to accommodate the nose cone and two side windows and ends at a panel line behind them - I like this idea, as it saves those awkward joins! Having coated it and the canopy parts with Future, I masked of the appropriate areas with Tamiya tape and super glued them to the fuselage. There was some minor sanding to do to blend the nose parts together. The final step for now was to add the bomb bay doors. These are a tight fit and a little sanding of the edges eased them into place. If you are adding the cannon pack, as I did, don't forget to open up the two slots. The cannon pack (which contained 20mm cannon, by the way, not 30mm as I stated in the previous part) fits snugly into place without filler. And that's it for the primary airframe assembly. This has generally been a simple and quick build so far, however, the issue with the cockpit assembly and the separate insert was unexpected and annoying. I believe that the errors were mine, but it would have been so much easier had there been some positive indicators inside the fuselage to accept the cockpit assembly. In this respect, the Airfix kit suffers in the same way that the Classic Airframes kit does - you'd think I would learn... Once this problem was dealt with, it has all been smooth sailing so far. Next up, I'll paint and decal, then add the final details.

Information, images, and all other items placed electronically on this site are the intellectual property of IPMS/USA ®.