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1/72 Halifax B Mk III finished

rob hart

Active member
Revell kit. A nice kit with a decent level of detail, good fit, and reasonably accurate. I added an Eduard zoom set which provides additional detail to the cockpit and forward crew stations. Unfortunately, not much can be seen once the fuselage is closed. In fact, so little of the fuselage interior will be visible that I didn't bother to clean up injection pin marks and mold seam lines.





 
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I look forward to your build. I have this in the stash as my Uncle was a radio operator in one right up to the end of the war. They were just switching to the Lancaster when the war ended.
 
I finally got some paint on this thing. However, when I pulled off the masks, some of the paint was lifted. I used Tamiya Acrylics over Alclad primer per my usual practice and let each color coat cure a few days before applying the masks. I used an AML vinyl mask set for the first time to delineate the camo segmentation and it appears that the spots where the paint came up were where the mask set was applied. I didn't think the adhesive felt that agressive, but apparently it was stronger than I thought.





 
Wow, Rob, I'm surprised. Your technique is usually flawless here so it must have been the tape. You got this; should be quite simple to fix.
 
Mercy!
I have the old MPC kit in the stash... more for nostalgia than anything else.
 
The model represents an aircraft of 1341 (radio countermeasures) flight stationed at Digri, India in May/June 1945. The markings came from DK Decals 72016 'No. 100 Group RAF'. To convert the kit from a bomber to a RCM aircraft, I fabricated a 2nd ADF 'football' from one of the kit's 250 lb bombs and carved some bomb bay fuel tanks from balsa wood. I made straps for the tanks from some 1/43 race car seat belts. I rescribed all of the panel lines so they would better hold a pin wash and used an Eduard Zoom set for additional cockpit and crew stations details. I used an Eduard canopy/wheel hub mask set and an AML camoflage mask set. The rest of the build was pretty much out of the box.

The kit fit fairly well with the exception of the engine cowl halves. They simply did not match up and, since the seam ran through the middle of the carburetor scoops and the oil coolers, i ended up doing a lot of tricky sanding and re-scribing. The nose transparency is very thick and had a lot of optical distortion. I attempted to minimize that by sanding the interior of the piece with successively finer grades of sanding wands (from 180 grit to 12,000 grit), polishing with plastic polish, and then brushing on a coat of Future. I ended up with less distortion, but a somewhat cloudy clear piece.

The kit lacks two diagonal bracing bars in the aft section of the cockpit transparencies. They are visible and should be added. I missed this detail until after the clear part had been installed and painted. The kit provides all of clear parts for the earlier versions of the Revell Halifax kits and the instructions indicate that some of ones on the sides of the nose that were not present on the B Mk. III are to be installed. The Eduard mask set compounds the error by providing masks for those same windows despite the set being dedicated for the B Mk.III. Check references. The nose gun was a Vickers K, a drum fed weapon with a pistol grip and shoulder stock. The gun provided in the kit appears to have a .50 calibre receiver and grips and a K gun barrel. Some late model Halifax B Mk.IIIs had .50 calibre guns, but in the only photo that I could find of the subject, the nose was covered with a tarp. I went ahead and used the kit gun with a Mini World machined brass barrel. The auxiliary bomb bay doors are represented as scribed lines on the fuselage whereas the lower edges should stand proud of the sides of the fuselage where they transition into the bottom of the fuselage. I didn't address this issue.

Some reviews say the propellors blades do not taper enough from half way the length to the hubs. I couldn't find an image of the propellors that was taken at an angle that confirmed this and left them un-modifed. Some reviews also say that the tire/wheels are too small in diameter. To that end, I bought some aftermarket tires. They turned out to be exactly the same size as the kit tires and had a weird block tread pattern that looked like they belonged on a dirt bike and I ended up using the kit tires.

The paints are all Tamiya Acrylics (save the oil paint washes) matched to mixes that I found on the internet:













 
RAAF markings are a pleasant surprise! Too roit, Cobbah! Your blood's good enough to be bottled! :salute::oldguy::pilot
 
Great Job.gif
 
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