1/48 Sanger Avro Shackleton MR Mk 3

by Darius Aibara

--------------------

 

Sanger are the company that produces 1:48 kits of RAF two and four-engined aircraft that other companies have so far avoided.  Unfortunately they are vac-formed kits of the "old school" requiring serious plastic cutting, sanding, scratch building and a big hit to the spares box.  In short they are great fun but not for the faint of heart (or sane).

I got my MR3 kit from Hannants.  It is packed in an insubstantial plastic bag with large vac-formed white styrene sheets containing the fuselage, wings. tailplanes, engine nacelles, part of the nosegear leg (unuseable) and mainwheels (also unuseable).  The cockpit, nose and tailcone transparencies are supplied in thick but well-formed clear plastic - you only get one set so care is needed when cutting.  The nosewheels (wrong tyre tread), maingear legs, engine exhausts, propeller blades, control yokes and cockpit seats (unuseable) are in white metal.  A large decal sheet provides codes that appear to be for an MR1 but does supply appropriate yellow wing walk markings.

Kit parts out of the bag - fuselage and engine nacelle sheets plus transparencies and white metal parts

Click on image below to see larger image

 

Click on images below to see larger images

The vac parts were cut from the backing sheets and sanded down in the usual fashion - sandpaper laid flat on a sheet of glass (an old refrigerator shelf).  The engines are supplied as left and right halves and require intake flaps to be cut in the sidewalls.  Based on photographs I sketched sideviews of the inboard and outer nacelles and marked where they were on each nacelle half.  They were then cut away to form the openings.  Pre-curved sheet was laminated and re-attached to fill the rear half of each opening and a thinner "flap" was attached to the forward half to match the photo images.  The vac-formed engine fronts were scored with a P-cutter and cemented just inside the front of each nacelle.  Offcuts from the vac backing sheet were fashioned to make the "dividers" in the engine fronts.

The outboard nacelle "tubes" are moulded parallel but the MR3 outboard nacelles have a bulged underside that is quite distinctive.  This was created by cementing curved formers to the nacelle underside and filling the gaps with offcut vac backing bits and finally Humbrol plastic filler.  Once hardened these were sanded smooth to form the bulged nacelle undersides.   The nacelles were then grafted onto the wings using super glue (cyano) and lots more filler.  Once I had removed much of this from my fingers it was ready to sand.

Click on images below to see larger images

The tailpalnes are moulded with quite a bulbous thickness to them so these were ruthlessley sanded down to produce a more scale thickness.  The rudders were also separated to give a better effect.  Steel pins super glued into holes drilled using a pin vice secured the tail assembiles together. 

The fusleage halves have door and window locations indicated by embossed perimeters.  Unfortunately these are in the wrong positions and so they had to be filled and the windows marked, drilled and cut out in the correct locations - photo references helped a lot with this task.  The starboard rear door was re-scribed in the proper position.  The joint between the fuselage halves was reinforced with plastic strips (more vac backing offcuts) and sprue lengths from an old injection moulded kit were used to ensure the correct vertical separation - this prevents the vac fuselage halves from "squashing".  

There is no kit cockpit and so this has to be scratch built (using more vac backing sheet offcuts and plastic card stock) - a google image search helped with this. 

Click on images below to see larger images

The main cockpit console was scratch built using laminated plastic card sheets but the kit-supplied yokes were used (hurrah!).   The seats were scratch built using thick plastic card and spare photo-etched bits.

The kit-supplied engine exhausts do not look like the ones on an MR3 so the exhaust bodies were scratch built and the white metal pipes were grafted onto these - only had to do this eight times!!! 

Click on images below to see larger images

Once the cockpit was cemented into one fusleage half, the other half was attached superglued, taped and left overnight.  The joint was then smeared with humbrol filler and then left for another day.   After sanding - no joint line (phew).  Slots were cut in the fuleage sides for two thick plastic main wing spars (not a kit instruction requirement but vital in a model of this size).  The cockpit and tailcone transparencies were dipped in Johnson's Clear and once dry super glued to the kit (the Clear does prevent white misting) - although the super glue is applied to the joint using a pin point with the part taped in position.  Once the glue had set the clear part is masked and the joint filled with humbrol filler.  The filler having set, the joint is sanded (with the masking still in place) to result in a smooth joint - the masking protects the clear part from scratching during sanding.  The masking was replaced and the whole model primed with Halfords grey spray primer. 

Click on images below to see larger images

The top of the fuselage was painted with Halfords white spray primer and sealed with a couple of coats of Clear.  Xtracolour dark sea grey was then brush applied to the rest of the kit.  I used spitfire mainwheels for the nosewheels and true details 1:72 B52 wheels for the mains - with scratch built hub inserts.  Xtradecal roundels and Carpena white letter codes were used along with home-made decals for the red serial and code inlays to the white decals (to give a red code with a white outline).  The octopus motif on the fins was scanned in and transferred to clear decal film.   The finished model depicts a Shackleton MR Mk 3 Phase 2 of 206 Squadron RAF based at St Mawgan in Cornwall circa February 1965 - the month of my birth!!!

Darius

Click on images below to see larger images

 

Photos and text © by Darius Aibara