Airfix Canberra

The Airfix 48th scale Canberra B2 is on sale finally. Sadly, after having looked-forward to it for years (since it was first mentioned to me about a decade ago!), I have to say that it’s not very good – quite a disappointment in fact.

It’s already been mentioned on some of the modelling sites but nobody seems to have noticed how inaccurate it is in parts. Just to warn potential builders, the key problems are:-

Cockpit canopy is too shallow. It looks completely wrong when attached to the fuselage and is too fat. To put things right you’ll have to mould a new one from scratch.

The nose section, which is all clear in the B(I)8 kit, is solid in the B2 kit with a “stick-on” clear section for the nose glazing. This means that the joint line between the fuselage and clear section is a pain to clean-up. Why they didn’t produce a larger clear nose section as in the earlier kit, I don’t know.

The clear nose section is wrongly shaped – too blunt. This is partly because the actual nose section is a tad too fat, especially around the undersides.

The port window is moulded at an odd angle and it will need to be repositioned.

The wing tips are wrongly shaped. Nobody seems to have notice this glaring error. The training edge area of the wing tips is completely mis-shaped and will have to be re-built.

The tip tanks are wrongly shaped – the nose section is too long and worngly proportioned.

The moulded lines to represent the air brake fingers are on the upper wings but not the lower. Oddly they were on the B2 test shots but now they’re gone on the production kit.

The decal sheet is nice but on closer inspection the large areas of colour (in the roundels etc.) are poorly printed and would have to be replaced.

The scribed panel detail is way too heavy all over the kit. It needs to be filled in, as the full-size aircraft shows hardly any signs of panel lines (apart from rusty museum examples!).

So, I have to say that for a kit costing nearly £30, it’s a major let down. If you’re gonna build it (and want it to look like a Canberra) then be warned! The model magazines will doubtless claim it’s a “great kit” but bless ’em they rarely have a clue what they’re talking about… so beware of what you’re letting yourself in for.