I’ve been a member of the Rocky Mountain Model Club for a couple of years and have been attending and participating in its annual contest for some time. The first contest I was involved in was the 1998 event, and that year I actually came away with some souvenirs, one being an 1/48 Accurate Miniatures TBF-1C kit that I won as a door prize, which proves that buying those tickets does pay off. Since at the time I was still getting back into the hobby, I felt that my modeling skills were not up to the task of taking on such a kit and doing it justice, so it sat in my stack of “to build” kits for a time while I honed my techniques. After some years of building other kits, and being side tracked by other projects, I refocused my attention on this Avenger and decided it was time tackle this build. Still, I admit that I was a little nervous about building this kit and building it well, especially since so many others have built this kit and done and an excellent job.

This project would be a bit of a departure of me on a couple of levels. Firstly, I don’t normally work in 1/48 scale, preferring instead 1/72 for most aircraft and 1/144 for airliners. Secondly, I tend to stick to more modern aviation subjects. One thing that was not a departure was my habit of building a plane in markings other than American ones. Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, or because so many people build US subjects, that I just have to be different, so for this project I went to Britain. To keep things as simple as possible I chose to build a Royal Navy Avenger III, because for the most part it could be build right out of the box with little or no modifications. Besides a different paint job, the three things that make RN Avengers different from USN ones are bulged observer windows, which are included in the kit, British radios which will hardly be seen, and the addition of an observer’s seat located behind the pilot’s position. To add the extra seat I would use a set of Ultracast resin seats, and for the British markings I would use a set of Third Group decals.

As I said, I built the kit straight from the box, only making adjustments to the area behind the pilot’s seat for the addition of an observer’s seat. To do this, I removed some of the floor mounted detail, replaced this with a small piece of sheet plastic, then mounted the Ultracast seat to it. Note that the seat should be offset to the left. I then scratchbuilt a radio panel and installed it in front of the observer’s seat just under and inside the white rear facing formation light. Since you get two seats in the Ultracast set, I used the other one for the pilot’s seat. Waste not, want not. Everything else was built according to the instructions.

One word about the instructions. The kit that I got was one of the earlier releases and the instructions are a bit rough around the edges. There are very complete written procedures to follow and a painting guide included, however the pictorial instructions are bit amateurish and in some cases a bit confusing. Dry fitting, and consulting other reference was required at times to ensure that the parts were going on correctly. My understanding is that Accurate Miniatures have since addressed this deficiency.

Two things to note about this kit. One is the tremendous amount of detail engineered into it. It is absolutely brilliant! Unless you were going to build some kind of conversion, like a RCN Guppy or COD aircraft, there is no need what-so-ever to go out and buy any kind of after market set. The kit is just that good. The other item to note is that because of all this detail the fit is very tight. Each time I attached a piece to one of the fuselage halves I immediately dry fitted the fuselage together to ensure proper alignment of the parts. Placing a bulkhead off by a millimeter or two will prevent the larger parts from aligning correctly. In short, dry fit often, and in doing so you’ll be rewarded with highly detailed, well fitting kit.

I built up the interior as per the instructions, and painted according to my references with Interior Green. To bring out the details, I applied a dark wash to the recessed areas and then dry brushed the raised details, which resulted in the entire interior literally coming to life. The bomb bay I felt was so well detailed that I decided that I did not want to hide it and chose not to install any kind of weapons, though in the kit you do get some depth charges and iron bombs.

The two row, 14 cylinder engine is another wonderful piece of model engineering. I painted the cylinders gloss black and then dry brushed them with silver. The crank case cover was finished in gloss grey, with other details picked out in their appropriate colours; gloss black, gun metal, metalizer, and so forth. The finished engine is then mounted to a tubular support frame which is molded as part of the fuselage halves. Painting the engine details is one area to approach with a bit of caution. Depending on your references you will see different colours as the photos may be of a period aircraft or a restored one. Even in-service aircraft may differ from one another depending on which suppliers provided parts for maintenance requirements.

The next step was to add the engine cowl, and mount the main wings and tail planes. These parts almost snap into place, so well is the fit (I really can’t stay that enough can I?). All that was left to attach prior to painting was the canopy and ball turret. Time and patients are required with the ball turret as there are numerous piece in a small area that need to be put together, but by following the instructions this is easily done. At first it did not appear that the completed turret would fit into its opening, but with a little maneuvering it at some point just seams to drop in. The remaining canopy parts were then glued in place, save for the pilot’s sliding windows, and were then masked with E-Z Masks. These are pre-cut vinyl masks, made in Ottawa coincidentally, that are designed for this specific kit. It was my first time using them, but it won’t be my last. They went on easily in their assigned locations, but make sure you get it right the first time. If you need to pull one off you run the risk of tearing the mask, though there is enough excess vinyl that you can cut your own extra pieces if need be. When it’s time to remove the mask, score around the edge of each mask to cut the paint and sealer that has been applied or else you may end up lifting off paint from the frames or fuselage.

The plane was painted using Model Master enamels, my preferred choice of paint. To add some life to the colour scheme, I chose to add invasion stripes, and this is where I started. I first painted on the white, then masked off those stripes, and then painted the black. With the stripes painted and masked, I applied a coat of Sky to the undersides, including in the wheel wells and the landing gear legs. The top and sides of the plane were finished in Dark Slate Grey and then Extra Dark Sea Grey, each colour being masked off with a soft mask to get a feather edge between them. With the paint cured, the kit was given its gloss coat in preparation for decaling.

As noted above, I would be using Third Group decals for this kit. They provide the appropriate decals for the RN markings, in this case an aircraft of No. 758 Squadron, but not any of the stenciling. For this I used the kit supplied decals, utilizing those I felt would be correct for a British aircraft, ie. nothing that said US on it. I also did not place any decals in the areas covered by the invasion stripes. I felt that since half of the serial number was painted out that ground crews would also have painted out any stenciling as well. Once all the decals were on and set, the kit was give another gloss coat, this time in preparation for weathering.

I am not one to heavily weather models in general. I find that too much weathering draws attention to itself, taking away from the look of the aircraft as a whole. I limited my weathering to washing the panel lines, some paint chipping, and a couple of exhaust stains. For the panel lines, I used a wash of burnt umber water colour, applied to both top and bottom of the model. I add some chipped paint using silver on some high traffic (wing walks) and high impact areas (leading edges). The kit was then sealed with PolyS flat coat, and the exhaust stains were added using black chalk dust scrubbed on with an old, stiff brush.

The model was now painted, so off came the mask and on went the final details. These included such things as the landing gear, yagi antennas under the wings, a stretched sprue radio antenna, and so forth.

The Accurate Miniatures kits is a great kit to build. It is a kit that comes out of the box nicely, requiring no after-market additions to produce an eye catching machine. Since the Avenger was used by some many different nations in different roles, many versions of the plane that can be built, some needing nothing more than new decals. I enjoy model building as a whole, but I found that not only was this build enjoyable because of the results you get in the end, I also really had a good time working on it. When you find a kit that’s fun build, that’s truly an added bonus.