The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

i decided when I came back on the forum that I would post pictures of every project I finished, even if the quality was, as in this case, less than stellar. This was a refurb. project, making over a Soviet Frog copy Canberra that I had built in 2009 and that I hoped to spruce up a bit. Alas, I just made it a different sort of bad, but I'm treating it as a learning experience and moving on.
Some photos:







This was a model of one of the four Indian Air Force Canberra B(I)8s of no.5 'Tuskers' Squadron sent to Congo in 1960. They had an interesting career, eventually putting the Katangan Air Force out of action in one mission and then going on to give valuable support to UN ground forces.

The kit was a terrible piece of old trash, with hard bright yellow plastic and a lack of visible panel lines, but it really wasn't the kit's fault. Some of my worse mistakes were:

*Poor quality finish - visible gaps along joints that I had forgotten to fill, roughness where the sanding wasn't adequate to the job.
*Bad paintwork - as you can see in the pictures.
*Lack of decent aftermarket bits - there's tons of these for the Canberra on the marketplace and the only reason I can offer for not getting more of them is being cheap. The only aftermarket product I used were the rather nice if excessively frail decals by DP Casper, reminiscent of Propagteam in their early days.

In all, something of a botched build, but if nothing else it's encouraged me to do it again starting with a better kit and then putting into practice the lessons I learned on this one.

I built a Russian knock off version of this Canberra a couple of years ago. The Russian mouldings are very poor. In its original FROG guise it was a quite decent (if basic) model.

I have done Frog, Novo and a very cheap Version from Russia of this kit. The Frog and Novo ones were ok but the cheapo one had very soft 'soapy' half way between kit and Airfix Soldier type plastic. It can be built into a decent model and to be honest yours doesn't look too bad. Quite nice in fact. Nice one.

All the best.

Greg

Wow!
Great to see this model.
I have the Novo kit built in the very same hand-painted markings; done many years ago as part of a small collection for my ex-Indian Air Force Dad! It came back to me when he passed away, and I am hoping to restore it, but not in those markings.

cheers,

David

That old model is looking OK. It must be over 50 years old now. I get a nice finish on plain silver by filling a standard paint jar with Klear and then putting a brushful of Acrylic Matt Black in it. Give it a shake and add to surface with a flat brush. It tones and smooths the silver finish and leaves a little matt black in the details.




About three coats on the Mig.

It's not quite 50 years old. I seem to remember the reviews of it when it was new in Aviation News - and that would have been 1972 or 1973.

Eric Mc wrote:It's not quite 50 years old. I seem to remember the reviews of it when it was new in Aviation News - and that would have been 1972 or 1973.

Yes, that would mesh with my memory of it too. It must have been one of Frog's last new releases.

Thanks for the kind words, but I think this is still one that I will revisit in years to come.

BTW, Skypirate, did your Dad fly with the Tuskers?

Spaceowl wrote:BTW, Skypirate, did your Dad fly with the Tuskers?

Nope! He was Education Branch, not a flier, but I grew up on various air force stations and got well and truly bitten by the bug.

David