Xtrakit Canberra PR.9

I largely scratch built the nav’s cockpit as what was provided was wrong. The rear bulkhead was the wrong angle and the seat was incorrect.  

Here’s another view of the scratch building, and the resin seats. The kit comes with two resin seats but they are both the same. The nav’s seat was different to the pilot’s seat in the real aircraft, and luckily Pavla produce the correct seat for the nav 

Fuselage halves going together. As you can see, there’s not much in the way of wing support. 

Wings on and plenty of filling around the roots 

A bit of filling needed at the back of the cockpit 

A view inside the nav cockpit 

Preshading going on 

The first coats of Hataka Light Aircraft Grey. In hindsight, I think it’s actually slightly too dark 

All greyed up 

As I was going to build the kit with the nav cockpit open I also wanted the pilot’s cockpit open, so I had to mark out the canopy and saw it very carefully with a razor saw 

Front separated, now for the rear 

Here’s the canopy now in the requisite three parts 

Rear part of the canopy in place and hemp going down 

Masking up for the antenna panel and countermeasures stowages 

All done 

On the large black panel are circular antennas that I used a scribing template as a paint mask for 

There’s a bit of structure behind the pilot’s seat on the real aircraft that is absent on the kit. I made it out of a piece of resin casting block from something or other I found in my spares box. I drilled some lightening holes in it and glued it in place  

There’s also some canopy heating ducting that I replicated with wire 

Cockpit structure painted up and windshield in place  

On the real aircraft the spar caps were left unpainted so they could be NDT’d regularly, so these were masked up and sprayed silver.
Top 

…and bottom 

Decals starting to go on.
The decals were horrible to work with. They disintegrated very easily.  

Just love that big wing.
Incidentally, the roundels are half large and half small because a whole section of wing forward of the spar is a fuel tank that can be removed. At some point this aircraft had the later small roundels but received wing tanks that had the older large roundels 

Those wing walkway lines were a pain in the backside 

Aeroguide 34 was an indispensable aid when building this kit 

Starting to do a panel line wash. I used Ammo Mig neutral brown for the hemp parts and Ammo Mig dark grey for the LAG parts 

Panel line wash on the bottom 

Nose cone attached in the open position 

Another view of the nose. Brass pitot tube added as the kit doesn’t come with one 

My first time using rigging wire. This is the AK stuff. Took a few attempts but we got there in the end  

I based the weathering around a photo of a PR.9 in Aeroguide 34