Airfix Avro Lancaster B III 1:72 Military Aviation Plastic Model Kit A08013A,Gray

Airfix has updated their Lancasters several times. This is the latest, and is stunning. (To show how far the updates have come: the first one, which is OK, did not have openings for all the many side-windows, only raised oblongs. This new one has holes in the fuselage, and clear plastic windows to fill them. This is a bear if you are painting last, because you have to mask all those many windows. But it looks great.) It's the first B2 version ever. The main differences: (1) a belly gun-turret, with corresponding fattening of the bomb-bay doors, making the plane look pregnant; and (2) radial engines, with circular cowlings. These changes are very well done. But the whole kit is superb. The panel lines are all recessed, and the skin of the wings, fuselage, elevators and rudders is all subtly GRAINED. This is amazing. The cockpit interior is very fine. 3 decals are supplied to perk up the instrument panels. The elevators move, but the ailerons and flaps and rudders do not. I like these surfaces to move, so I installed hinges, which was easy because all surfaces except the ailerons are separate. The bomb-bay is very detailed and good-looking, but no bombs are supplied. (Airfix advises buying the ground-crew kit for bombs.) I had many many bombs left over from the Trumpeter 1/72 TU 16, so I used those. Apart from the lack of bombs, the kit has no downsides, but be warned. It is very detailed and tricky to build. (For example: the radial engines glue to the nacelles, but the cowlings are only held on by two TINY pins on the engine-cylinders and the very fragile inner-cowling crosspiece, which glues onto the engine nose. That engine nose also holds the propeller pin, so great care is needed not to get any glue on it or the prop won't turn. All in all, fragile and time consuming, but lovely when built.) The prop blades come in for special praise. Instead of the usual paddle shape, they are all sword-shaped and aggressive. Amazing kit, but not for the beginner.

Enough to keep you interested and occuopied

This is going to take a while to assemble but it’s the quality I expect.

Great service. The model is very nice. I am giving the completed model to a friend whose father in law was a turret gunner in RCAF 408 . I have a WW 2 pic of him, with the plane crew, beside a B.II Lancaster. This is a very hard kit to find now, so glad I did.

Another fine Airfix kit. I like that there's no photo-etch to be found in this kit but I wish that Airfix would provide painting masks with their kits.

New moulds. Nice fitting parts. if you are like me you built models during the 60s and 70s started chasing skirts and fell away from what you loved. Now you are older, have way more $$ and can really do some good stuff modeling now. You'll like this kit.

Airfix has done a Bang-Up Job on their New Molds; this Kit (the Lancaster B-II ) is one of them. Highly Recommend; especially since this Lancaster variant is the only one (to my knowledge) that anybody has made a scale model kit of.

Incorrectly described as a gift kit. Airfix gift kits include paint and cement, this kit does not.