Woljags' Avro Lancaster/Manchester/Lincoln/York/Shackleton - Personal Group Build

[woljags]

Lancaster B1

Lancaster B1 test shot by frog



another of my very rare kits,this is one of the test shots made before the kit was released,i'm not sure all the parts are there as i can only find 3 props at the moment as the bag was split,this was released by frog in september1976, and in production for only 3 months so this must predate this slightly,pics to follow shortly

[woljags]

i've made up the wings and painted the interior,the last couple of photos show my old stock RAF interior green

[Airframes]

Looking good so far, and a nice rare kit. Note though, that the nose area forward from the nav position was matt black, to prevent glare, and the possibility of the light-coloured interior being spotted by a night fighter crew.

[woljags]

Cheers Terry i will change that,i was lucky enough back in the late 1980's to get inside the B.M.F Lanchester but only as far as the main spar so i was going on memory and didn't look it up

[Airframes]

Got some pics of that one inside if you need them - made a AV production with the BBMF back in the early 1980s, so got around 300 transparencies!
EDIT: just thought, if you have a look at my Lanc build in the Bombers/Heavy Hitters GB, it might give you an idea of what it looks like up front, and what can, and can not, be seen once closed up.

[woljags]

that would come in handy for later as i have in my collection a modern bbmf kit ,i thought that i'd build them in the markings of when i helped out as ground crew for the West Malling and North Weald airshows of the late 80's,i think the lancaster was in the marking at time of Guy Gibson's G for George,one day i'll tell you the story of the ME163 we worked on

[woljags]

I've been looking at your Lanc build Terry and what a fantastic job you did of it,it has shown some faults with the frog kit ,ie the navagaters position,cockpit detail etc,all i have done for the moment is to use rubber bands to hold it all together so that i can add or change details as the info become available,i will try this time to build something like you do with the detail,it won't be anywhere near your league of build but i'll give it a go as this kit is so rare,i needed to make some parts anyway as its not complete,i would guess this must be one of the 1st from the new mould as there seem to be a few issues getting things to fit together properly plus lot of parts missing where they were not moulded correctly

[woljags]

this kit really is a bit of a challange in more ways than one,i've found a few more bits missing including the lower half of the elevators,there is also 2 extra parts from another small kits wings that i've seen before somewhere but can't remember now,this must have been kicking around in someone's office in the factory in Margate,pics to follow shortly

[woljags]

although this is suppost to be a B1 i think its more like a later model with B1 fittings,it doesn't look quite right to me

[Wayne Little]

look forward to more....

[woljags]

boy is this fiderly to build,i hope the kit itself was better,nothing fits correctly,there are loads of moulding defects,i tried to load some pics but they don't show the defects clearly enough,i will try again fingers crossed to take somemore

[Wurger]

Looking forward to these...

[woljags]

this is the progress so far,the front of the cockpit has been changed to the correct matt black colour,i had to make a replacement part for the tail plane as it was missing,the last couple of photos show just how bad the moulding is,the bomb bay doors will need recutting as they are nearly 6 mm out of line

[Gerry]

Looks like that kit needs a lot of work, but looking good so far. I modeled the 1/72 Revell Lancaster Mk 1 recently. If you wanted to look it up it's in the Start to Finish Builds, page 5, "Still going Strong...". Cheers.

Two sites I found with very useful reference shots were,

[Gerry]

The web references on the above post didn't go through for some reason. These are: http://www.lancaster.partworkmodels.co.uk/cockpit.htm and http://www.kiwiaircraftimages.com/lanc.html

Again, good luck with the build.