Avro Lancaster 10MR by ErnieL - 1/32 HK kit, heavily kitbashed to represent a Maritime Patrol and SAR bird circa 1960

[ErnieL]

Interior needed full rebuild and re purposing. Many little differences

Here’s a big fuselage mod that is a huge spotting feature of Canadian postwar Lancs.

All Canadian built Lancs with heMartin electric turret fitted had the extra fishplate doublers added under where the turret mounted. If you see a Lanc in a museum today, look for these plates. If they’re there, it’s definitely a Canadian built machine.  Postwar, turrets weren’t needed for long anti submarine patrols so the turrets were eliminated at the Unit level. Often, the resulting patch was quite brutally done. Like by a monkey with duct tape and a screwdriver....

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by ErnieL

[popeye the sailor]

very nice looking plane........must be quite a bit of PE in the cockpit  

[cog]

Very nice. Where did you get your details for this version of the Lancaster to bring it out as  the SAR bird

Edited May 2, 2020 by cog

[ErnieL]

1 hour ago, cog said:

Very nice. Where did you get your details for this version of the Lancaster to bring it out as  the SAR bird

When I started the build, the kit had been out for about two months.  Absolutely nothing was available for it.

 

A prominent decal manufacturer, Belcher Bits, agreed to develop masks for me, although in the end he decided to make an entire decal sheet and offer it in 1/32.

Then, I approached Roy Sutherland of Barracuda to cast some postwar block tread wheels and tires. The kit wheels left much to be desired, so he did both the smooth wartime tires and the postwar block tread, with much improved wheel hubs as well. 

Mike Swinburne, (good friend with a 3D printer) and I then worked on most of the other major exterior fitments. The fuselage cooling scoop, the dustbin radar housing, the convex rear fuselage observer windows, the bomb bay mounted long range patrol tanks, and the unique exhaust stacks were all done this way. They may be released commercially, Mike Belcher is looking into marketing them in his line to go with the decals he now offers.

 The rest is scratched. The rear view tail camera, along with the elimination of the front turret.

The British hydraulic dorsal turret hole was eliminated, then moved forward to the location of the Canadian Martin electric turret, which was then removed and a visible sheet patch installed and riveted. Then, the unique Mk.10 fishplate doublers were cobbled up and applied to the fuselage around the Martin turret patch. Fun.

All fuselage windows were made to disappear, the unique cheek radar arrays were nicked from a P-61 kit and then they too went under the knife.

The Lindholme rescue gear and sonobuoy tubes were also scratched and mounted, canopy chopped and modified, etc.

Dual long range patrol controls had to be scratched, and a proper Mk.10 pilot seat as well. 

This was a major kitbash, and resulted in one of a kind. 

The hardest thing was settling on a Maritime Reconnaissance prototype to build, as every single one was hand butchered and unique. 

 

[popeye the sailor]

I've always said that there are many lesser known subjects to model.......many kits out there today are suitable to fit the bill      this is a perfect example.......you definitely had the desire to achieve this level of replica.  it's nice to have such resource too  

[ErnieL]

3 hours ago, popeye the sailor said:

I've always said that there are many lesser known subjects to model.......many kits out there today are suitable to fit the bill      this is a perfect example.......you definitely had the desire to achieve this level of replica.  it's nice to have such resource too  

Yep. No matter what aspect of the Hobby we developed in, what it comes down to is, you have modelers and you have kit assemblers. It’s OK to be both. Sometimes you need to recharge on something simple, and sometimes you must have a specific replica sometimes even modeled for a specific moment in its life, so you let it all hang out. 

This exact aircraft participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis, running blockade patrol out of NAS Jax. I couldn’t find pics of that moment, but I surely tried.

No matter, I chose a year or so earlier to model. Prettier, in my estimation. It had one minor scheme change before retirement in 1964, but I’ll gamble that it happened after the Cuba adventures ended.

Of all my aircraft, I’m most proud of this one. The old biplane flying boats are beautiful, and I’ll build many more, but this one is, as far as I could make her, as close to an exact replica as I could manage. 

Edited May 3, 2020 by ErnieL