English Electric Canberra PR.57 Indian Air Force P1098

Here we go with the Ukrainian AMP kit, which I intend to build as a photo-reconnaissance Canberra of the Indian Air Force. According to the instructions, construction starts with the cockpit, but as I am waiting for some paints, I decided to start with the wings, whose construction starts with the main landing gear bays. These are made of six parts each.
To make a PR.57 variant, I'll need some conversion set, and I laid my eyes on Air-Graphic Models' new set, but I don't know whether it has been released or not. 

Some more bits assembled: main gear bays, nose gear bay, engine cowlings and exhaust pipes. All painted with Humbrol acrylics, according to an Airfix assembly guide, to match my other Canberra better. The starter "bullets" were too small for this variant; there are two different parts for the engines (two of each), so I cut the "bullets" from the unused parts and put them on the other, making the starters about 2 mm longer. Still smaller than the ones in the Airfix kit I completed earlier, but better than they would be "out of the box". 

Wings assembled; the wing halves needed some sanding on their inside to fit together. Most parts have some flash to be removed. The engine parts don't fit very well to the wings (not that bad, some glue may easily fill the gaps), but the most troublesome part of all this are the front (intake) parts, which are about a millimetre too thick for the wings, so there is a step where they join. By the way, I don't know where those brown and black stains come from, but I couldn't remove them with denatured alcohol, so I guess they won't mix with the acrylic paint that I'm going to apply. 🙂 

The kit has no weighted wheels, so I made them (only the main wheels) with a file. Anyway, did I mention that wheel painting was my favourite part of building a model? This bird has only four of them. 🙂 

After receiving the paints I wanted (Humbrol 71 and 160, equivalents of what AMP's instruction sheet suggests), the ejection seats are ready. They're made of multiple parts, including separate seatbelts (four parts each) made of brass. I need some experience working with metal parts and super glue, I guess... 

Cockpit section assembled and painted; believe me, it doesn't look this bad in reality. 🙂 

 

Nose section assembled and painted; the upper part is a single clear piece, which I painted black on the inside (except the canopy and the two small windows, of course) to avoid translucency. Painting around windows and canopies is still not my strong point. Main colour is Humbrol 165 (Medium Sea Grey). 

The nose section forms a single piece with the nose gear bay. I'm still not too good at eliminating seams and gaps... 

The front glass part is in its place. For some reason, the pitot tube is missing from my kit, so I'm going to look for something in my sparebox that's similar enough, or make one from scratch. 

Rear part of the fuselage assembled; the halves needed a bit of sanding to fit. The build is going to become interesting (at least something I've never done before): putting this together with the nose part, then cut the fuselage by the lines I made with a permanent marker. 

The fuselage has been assembled; this is the first (but also going to be the last) time that the model looks like a B.2 variant. 🙂 

The bomb bay is about half in size on the reconnaissance variant (according to the instruction sheet of the Air-Graphics conversion kit), and so strakes must be removed. I planed it down with a knife, but it might still need some sanding. 

Fitting the nose and the rest of the fuselage together needed some sanding and removing flash (yes, there was still some left), but nothing extraordinary. 

...and the cutting is done. Actually, I made a single cut with a Tamiya saw, then sanded off the rest to remove the section that's to be replaced with a longer resin part, housing the cameras. 

After some dry fit tests and a bit of sanding... 

...the fuselage has been assembled at last. Air-Graphic's conversion set fits perfectly to the S&M/AMP kit. I have put about 40 grams of weight (of lead and modeling clay) right behind the cockpit, and looks like it's going to be enough. 

The airframe has been assembled, and soon will be ready for painting. The wings needed some sanding at their roots to fit (and still not perfect, but some glue will do the job, I hope). 

The majority of the painting is done. Main colour is Medium Sea Grey (Humbrol 165) as with man contemporary Indian military aircraft. 

"Only" decals and some small parts (including undercarriage) are left for the model to be completed. 

Decals on the underside applied. The "K"-like stencils are from the kit, roundels and numbers are from a Model Alliance decal sheet, "P" letters are self-printed (a bit different in colour, and yes, they're a bit out of line, which I only noticed after drying... damn...). 

All decals put on; now an overall matt finish (with Revell clear acrylic) is next to be applied. 

 

The landing gear legs were a bit fiddly to adjust, but they're in the state of drying now at last. Wheels had not been "weighted", but I did some sanding on the main wheels to achieve a similar effect. Phew... 🙂 

Now every part is in place (more or less...), waiting for the drying of the paint that I had to apply to fix stains from spilled glue. How I love spending time just fixing my own mistakes... 🙂 

...and done. Another (rather embarrassing) mistake was that I didn't check the correct position of the roundels, so I had to correct this by completely removing the decals by sanding (therefore destroying them completely), together with the paint under and around them, and re-paint the wing, then apply these roundels again. Thankfully, Model Alliance's decal sheet had eight roundels, so there were spares on hand. 

 

The kit parts fit quite good (although some sanding is necessary here and there), even the fuselage plug by Air-Graphics, yet I still messed the model up in many places, most prominently at the big clear part that forms the canopy and the cockpit roof, including the two upper windows. 

 

Side by side with the Airfix B(I).58 model, some differences are noticeable (I don't mean the variant-specific differences, but the shape of the wingtips and engine intakes, just to name a few, and I was unable to make starter "bullets" of the size desired). No, this isn't meant to be a poor re-enactment of those old photographs taken at Agra airbase (which feature Canberra PR.57 IP990 and an Avro 748 transport, anyway). 🙂