Examination of parts, aftermarket add-ons and instruction-booklets

Today I want to continue with the examination of the parts, the description of necessary aftermarket add-ons I bought to improve the kit and the instruction-booklets.

I don't want to go too deep into details describing the kit-parts, since most of them are well

known and already described in reviews of the normal B MK I-version. For those of you who are interested in this review a very good possibility is to have a look at the review of Kevin Futter on Largescaleplanes.com.

The Dambuster-Kit comes in a big box with a really nice box-art:

What is disappointing is that all sprues look as if they were thrown into the box. No packing

e.g. Tamiya or ZM does. For the price of the kit (I paid 350,-€) I had expected something else. Room for improvement for HK !

The difference to the normal Lancaster is an extra sprue for the specific Dambuster-parts and

decals depicting the famous AJ-G plane flown by Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

The extra sprue contains parts for the bouncing-bomb, the calliper-arms to hold the bomb, the

drive including the drive-wheel and the Vickers-Hydraulic-Motor, the bomb-release-mechanism and the forward and aft fairing of the bomb-bay. I will come to necessary changes (and pictures) of these parts in one of the future posts.

The studying of the kit-details and the plan to integrate the Magic Scale Modeling-set led me to the decision to buy some add-ons:

1st: Eduard "Big Ed"-Set for Lancaster B MK I:

This Set includes the radiator faces, prepainted seatbelts, prepainted cockpit-parts and a masking-set.

The cockpit-set consists of parts for the instrument panel and most panels for the flight-engineer, the navigator and the wireless-operator. What I don't understand is that Eduard

included nothing for the Gee-Set of the navigator and none for the bomb-aimer. The only

possibility here is to paint them by hand and enhance them with instruments and placards

from the available Airscale sets in 1/32. I will show photos of this in one of the next posts.

Also missing is the 3rd instrument (fine height-measure) of the head-up-display installed

in the Lancaster-Dambuster (yes, one of the first real head-up-displays installed in an aircraft!)

The seatbelts are prepainted but look to "new" when installed. They cry for weathering,

which I will show in one of my future posts.

The masking-set includes all masks needed for the canopy, the turrets (only front and rear

are installed in Type 464) the fuselage-windows and the wheels. They fit perfectly, which I

will show you later.

2nd: Pilot Set of British Pilots of WW II from ICM:

This set includes 3 pilot figures (1 sitting and 2 standing) which are injection-moulded and nicely detailed and are a good basis for the crew to be put into the model. I want to put a pilot and the flight engineer into the model because light, sound and movement doesn't make much sense

without any of the crew in the cockpit. To make them fit needed a lot of changes which I will come back to in a future post.

3rd: Two sets of painting-masks from Top-Notch:

This is the first set which includes the masks for the camouflage. It is absolutely necessary because the 2 upper side colors have sharp demarcation-lines. Otherwise you would have to

do them all by yourself. I didn't use them until now. I will describe my experiences when it comes to painting.

The second set includes all masks needed to build a model with the insignia of the famous leader of the 617. Squadron, Guy Gibson which I want to build. In my opinion for such a big

model it is better to paint all the insignia than to use decals, because it is much more realistic

(the original also has no decals :-)). I will show you the results in the painting-step.

4th: The Lancaster-Set for 32nd Scale Lancaster from Magic-Scale-Modeling:

No need to place a photo here. Just go the homepage and have a look at all information

regarding this special set and other helpful tipps (e.g. preparation of the cables, propeller balancing and the other post of building a normal Lancaster from Bernard Demer).

The installation of the Electronics will be a future larger post and it will be the first time I

build such a set into a plastic model. But it's really plug and play...

The last thing I want to talk about today is the instruction booklets. There are 2 booklets included

in this kit:

- The instruction booklet for the B MK I-Version

- The extra instruction booklet for the Dambuster-Version

The extra booklet for the Dambuster-Version consists of extra steps and changes within the steps of the normal version to build the model correctly. This I also think is a point of criticism

to HK because they made it quite simple for them but more complicated for the modeler since

he has to implement the necessary changes and special steps into the main booklet.

How I did this I will describe in the next post which will also include the quite unusual start of

building the model. So stay tuned ! See you soon...