 
| 1:72nd Revell Lancaster by Mike Williams February 2008 On opening the box the sheer quantity and quality of moulded parts is everything we have come to expect from Revell in their recent releases. There are no less than seven sprues of the familiar light grey plastic, one large clear sprue (Separately bagged, to avoid damage and scratching, naturally) . The decal sheet is relatively small considering its a large model, but is well printed and of excellent clarity, register and opacity. The whole interior was sprayed with Xtracolour RAF Interior Grey/Green with details picked out in black and brown for the seats and tables. The pilot seat has moulded on seat straps but the navigator and radio operator seats have decals supplied for seat straps, these were applied as per the instructions. The cockpit interior floor doubles as the bomb bay, this was sprayed matt black then dry brushed with dark grey to lift the raised details. There are two wing spars that need to be added before joining the fuselage, one for the main wings which attaches to the cockpit floor section and a rear spar that slots through the holes in the rear fuselage to allow the correct alignment of the tail planes. On a dry fit, everything fitted perfectly, but once I had committed to glue, it seemed to knock out of alignment somewhere. I couldn't seem to fix it as the front of the fuselage seemed to not fit properly around the front bomb bay bulkhead.
I conceded defeat and clamped it round the nose whilst the glue was left to set overnight. In the cold light of day the problem didn't seem as bad as it did the previous evening, I added a smear of green stuff filler followed by a light coat of mr. surfacer 500 and sanded it all down and the problem was solved. I still don't know if it was a problem with the kit or a problem with the builder, maybe I'll have to build another one just to find out!!
Next up were the wings, these are moulded simply in upper and lower sections with recesses cut out for the undercarriage bays. Revell would have you fix the wings onto the fuselage here, but I would recommend leaving them until the undercarriage bays and engine nacelles are fitted. The oil cooler intakes and carburettor air intakes were fitted to each engine nacelle and then all four engine nacelles fitted to the wings with minimal fuss. Only the slightest hint of filler was needed to blend the inboard nacelles in on the rear portions of both.
A good idea is the fact that the spinner plates for the propellers can be added and the propellers left off until later to avoid being knocked off or damaged. I then attached the wings to the fuselage and the fit was excellent, in hindsight I should have left the wings off until after painting to facilitate easier masking of the camouflage on the fuselage.
The undercarriage fitment was fiddly, but all fitted very well; I simply slotted it all in and dropped liquid cement onto all joints and left it all overnight to fully cure and harden. Whilst that was drying out, I turned my attention to all the small peripheral subassemblies such as the gun turrets, nose blister, rear underside radar arrangements and other aerials and antenna. There are also lots of tiny bits to add here, like the rudder mass balances and aileron actuators on main upper wings and lower tail planes, all very fiddly to add and all required the use of fine pointed tweezers to help with their positioning; though once in place the dramatically improve these areas.
The two colour options given in the kit are both for RAF aircraft in 1945, one is a B.Mk.I and the other a B.Mk.III. I chose the B.Mk.III which depicts a 100sqn aircraft based at Elsham Wolds in April 1945. This is also the subject of the superb box art, with the yellow tails and wingtips worn to mark the last of the daylight raids by 100sqn. Both options carry the standard colours of RAF Bomber Command of Black undersides with Dark Earth and Dark Green upper camouflage. I painted the tails separately to the rest of the airframe to enable the yellow to be painted without resorting to lots of masking. I masked off the fuselage side windows simply by rubbing down masking tape and then cutting round them. The tails and wingtips were first sprayed with Tamiya XF-2 Flat White to act as a reflective backing onto which I sprayed Humbrol 24 Trainer Yellow, The tails were set aside and the wingtips were masked off for the rest of the standard camouflage painting. I sprayed the whole of the undersides, including the undercarriage bays and legs with Gunze H12 Flat Black. Whilst I had the Black in the airbrush I sprayed all the undercarriage doors and bomb doors as well as the propellers and spinners whilst they were all still on the sprues. I added the upper turret, nose turret and main canopy before masking off the upper camouflage areas. This is where I realised that separating the wings would make life a lot easier. The upper camouflage was sprayed with Gunze H72 RAF Dark Earth followed by freehand camouflage pattern of Gunze H73 RAF Dark Green. When all painting was dry , I sprayed a few coats of the ubiquitous Johnson’s Klear in preparation for decaling.
All the decals went on easily and only needed a couple of applications of Micro Sol on the upper wing roundels in order that they would settle over the aileron actuators. The rest behaved impeccably and had no silvering at all. When the decals were dry I sprayed another coat of Klear to seal them in before commencing weathering. I wanted to highlight the panel lines using a wash. In the past I always used an artists oil paint thinned with turpentine and flowed into the panels using capillary action on the glossy surface. This time I tried a different approach by using Promodeller Dark Grey wash. This is simplicity itself to use and as its water based will simply wash off if it goes wrong. It is simply slathered onto the areas to be highlighted, then left to dry out whence it turns a distinctly matt finish. The residue is simply wiped off using kitchen towel slightly moistened, not soaked, with water and wiped over leaving all the panels lines nicely highlighted. One thing that I wasn't happy with was the fact that the Dark Grey appeared to come out light grey against the dark background of the Dark Earth and Dark Green. I knew it would be lighter than the Black and so was expecting this. To tone it down a bit, I post shaded some of the panels in a random fashion with thinned Tamiya X-19 Smoke through the airbrush, this worked in so much as it softened the starkness of the contrast between the wash and the camouflage and gave me the look I was after. The Smoke and panel wash gave a suitably worn and weather beaten look to the paint work and acted to blend the stark contrast between the brown and green. Next I added a distinctive feature of the Lancaster, the over wing exhaust stain streaking. It was with some trepidation that I approached this aspect of the weathering as I didn’t want to ruin all the hard work thus far. I started by spraying the areas to be treated with Smoke, this is a very subtle effect which can be built up gradually, I kept to the old adage "less is more" from the start. As my confidence grew and after continuous reference to period photographs of Lancasters, I added the next darker exhaust stain with Tamiya XF-69 NATO Black which is slightly greener-greyer than straight Flat Black. To this I added some heat staining using Tamiya XF-57 Buff. When this had dried however it looked too light, so I toned down the Buff with an over spray of Tamiya XF-63 German Grey which imparted a nice sooty look to final finish. I left it at that so as not to go too far. A final couple of coats of Humbrol MattCote finished off the painting and weathering process.
I assembled the 'Cookie' bomb and cleaned it up and then decided which of the three bomb loads given I wanted to replicate. Included in the kit are one Cookie bomb, and 16 standard bombs. This made for a very full looking bomb bay. The bombs were assembled and cleaned up before being sprayed with Tamiya XF62 Olive Drab; and then all were CA'd into their respective bomb racks. I painted the main wheels with Dark Grey as Black can look a bit odd in contrast to the rest of the black lower airframe. These then just slotted into the undercarriage legs. One thing to note here is the fact I added the flat spots to the main wheels by gluing their respective halves together, cleaning up the joint and then pressing them onto a warm steam iron (Turn off the steam setting!) until they softened satisfactorily. Last bits to add were the bomb doors and undercarriage doors which all fit into the respective areas with no problems.
I added one more patchy Humbrol MattCote over various areas of the airframe and then all that was left was to unmask the clear parts and it was finished.
Overall it really is a superb kit, apart from the aforementioned (self inflicted) fuselage fit problem, the rest was an absolute joy to build and cannot be highly recommended enough to all WWII Heavies fans. Areas I would suggest for improvement would be the guns, which could be replaced with more accurate barrels from the Quickboost range. The main undercarriage wheels could also do with replacements, Pavla make resin replacement Lancaster wheels which are also flattened. Other areas for improvement include cockpit details including bomb aimers sight and seat cushion. There could also be some more cockpit details in the way of rudder pedals, throttle quadrants and trim wheel in addition to a seat for the flight engineer. I hope Eduard will see fit to issue a precut masking set for this kit, it would help no end. That said, it is a smashing model right out of the box.
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