PB-1C Lancer maritime patrol bomber

[SebastianP]

I've been doing inventory over my plastic model collection the past few days, seeing what was still left after my last cull of unbuildable projects. One of the few remaining big kits that can't be turned into a real-world model without much more work than I'm prepared to invest, at least until I have an airbrush, is a Revell (ex-monogram) 1/72 B-1B Lancer. Now, this kit has some serious issues if you're making a B-1B - the nose is wrong, the tail is wrong, the bomb bay is *totally* wrong, and the aircraft has been banned by treaty from carrying external ordnance since roughly the day it went into service. *Especially* the kind of external ordnance that comes in the kit.

Nevertheless, it's a really neat looking aircraft, and it does have a few features in common with a couple of the kits I've tossed out due to disasters - namely, the pair of P-3C Orion kits I got a few years ago, and which I still have the decals for...

So, I'm going to see if I can turn this:



into the maritime patrol aircraft to end all maritime patrol aircraft...

I have a bunch of bits and pieces left over from not only the Orion kits, but also from an S-3B Viking and an A-6E Intruder, so I'm not hurting for sensor bits (MAD booms, re-done FLIR turret, etc). I *am* rather short on naval ordnance suited to a large aircraft, though - my principal idea in that area so far is to just load it up as per the instructions and claim the AGM-86s are an anti-ship version. It's not even a completely stupid idea to consider them as remote sonar buoy droppers - the buoys aren't all that large and the missiles are plenty big enough to carry a couple of them.

The scheme will most likely be dark ghost gray over compass gray with low-vis markings - mainly because I *like* boring gray. At least it won't be the *standard* boring gray...

[The Wooksta!]

The Vulcan was used for MPA so why not a Lancer?

[SebastianP]

Not just the Vulcan, there were a couple of B-52 squadrons that actually trained for the maritime patrol and strike mission near the tail end of the Cold War, with Quickstrike mines and Harpoon missiles on their aircraft. They were still USAF assets and didn't have any major mods done to them, though - not even a special paint scheme, to my knowledge. We can't have that, can we?



The armament is going to take the most thinking on this project, and I decided to have a look if any of my ideas might work. This pic shows the relative size of the Mk46 torpedo and the AGM-86C CALCM, and from the look of things, the latter should be easily capable of carrying the former as a payload, giving the Lancer all the stand-off range it will ever need. I'm not sure whether to use the missiles though - I kind of want to close up and hide the dreadful kit bomb bay and leave the payload to the imagination of the viewer....

[Cliffy B]

Dude, detail it out!!!!    Put Harpoons on one launcher and fish on the other; it'll look awesome!!

[rickshaw]

I'd forget about the Fish.  They're primarily used for ASW nowadays and unless you're going to make it an ASW aircraft it wouldn't carry them.  Do two rotary launchers with Harpoon or modify the ALCM to make them anti-shipping missiles.  Does anybody do a Tomahawk ALCM?  They were designed to have anti-shipping as a secondary role.

[SebastianP]

Not if I'm building it... I have no experience with scratchbuilding whatsoever, and no material right now to even start with it. :/ Also, I'm terribly impatient - the only kit I own that I'm actually managing to pace myself with is a Hasegawa 1/48 Tomcat, which I only touch when I know I can do *one* assembly step and then put it back down without trying to continue. That happens less than once a week, and the kit has 250 pieces...

[SebastianP]

I appear to have hit a somewhat serious snag with this build - would anyone here happen to have a leftover strut for the starboard main landing gear, the one that goes forward from the main leg into the narrow recess, with the landing gear door mounted on it? It's either part 23 or 24, on the sprue with the main wheels, pilots and bomb bay doors, from the Revell or Monogram 1/72 B-1B. It appears to be the *only* part I'm missing from the entire kit (not that there were all that many parts to start with), and while it *looks* like it should be doable to scratch a replacement, it won't have anywhere near the structural integrity of the original part if I'm the builder...

In other news, I've "primed" all the underside cavities, the landing gear and the insides of all the doors with the flattest gray enamel I could find, to give the Humbrol acrylic white paint something to adhere to. I'm contemplating some utter sacrilege as an experiment with that paint once everything dries - using a couple of drops of Absolut Vodka for acrylic paint thinner, mainly because it's the only colorless alcohol I have on hand, and buying a 10Euro bottle of de-natured alcohol only to find out it won't work is something I'd like to avoid...even if it *does* count as alcohol abuse to use one of the few clear spirits that I can drink neat for anything *other* than drinking.

Also, I should be able to paint all the non-Medium Sea Gray bits on the NH90 tomorrow, I'll take a few pics of it before I start (right now I'm not touching it, it's not dry yet...)

[Captain Canada]

Cool ! I love seeing big models. Looks like a neat kit too.

[Rheged]

Given that the MiG25 (known asСпирт-Воз   or alcohol waggon) used about 50 litres of alcohol in its systems, I can't see any philosophical problems with a couple of  drops in  the painwork of another flying machine

[SebastianP]

In Soviet Russia, pilots fly drunken aircraft?

Just writing to let you know how much I absolutely loath white paint - it's to the point where I'm considering declaring all of my future projects part of an elseworld where the main difference is that the practice of painting wheel wells and bomb bays in white never developed...

[SebastianP]

The Lancer is now standing on its own three legs, so it's picture time - just need to show you that there actually *is* a model being built here... Excuse the darkness, my floor doesn't make the best backdrop and 10 pm is not the greatest time to take pictures. Then again, it does hide most of the faults.



Top view, showing that the plane has been re-assembled again after I broke it apart earlier.



Bottom view. Among the main benefits of the disassembly was that I finally got the engine nacelles into their proper spots - I'd installed them after the fuselage was closed up initially, which made it terribly difficult to get proper contact between them and the bits they glue to. Doing it the other way around this time fixed this problem neatly. Sitting around and holding the parts in place for fifteen minutes was kind of boring, though, the plastic doesn't really like glue.



The war on white is not going well, if I wasn't afraid the seams would crack open again, I'd probably try removing the paint and just spray it with a rattle can later. My current plan is to do the spraying without the paint removal - won't look as nice, but then again this will be hard to see once done anyway. Just in front of the bomb bay is one of the details that got me thinking about turning it into a maritime patrol aircraft in the first place - the kit comes with a molded in FLIR thingy that's completely inappropriate for the real aircraft, but they make excellent sense on a maritime patrol aircraft.



The Lancer together with most of the rest of my possible whiff builds. The helicopters are all definitely going to be whiffs - the NH90 has its own thread already, the EC135 will be painted in some form of camo and given a mast-mounted sight, the Tiger I'm thinking of painting up for the USMC, and the Chinook will most likely be getting German Army camo. The fast jets are more likely to end up in their designed liveries, though.

[Father Ennis]

I would love to say that those look great,but all I can see is the left side .of the photo ...    Can anyone fix this for me or at least explain why "Some" photos are like this and others aren't   I've had this since I first found this site as well as several others which are using the same format.  On some I can open the picture but this doesn't always happen nor does it always work.  This may not.be the place for this question and I'm happy to have it moved but I would really like to solve this mystery.

[Captain Canada]

That's an awesome collection ! And I know what you're saying aboutbwhitebpaint.....what a PIA !

I don't know how you resize the pics, but it sure would be easier if we didn't have to scroll around to see them.

[SebastianP]

I don't want to sound like an donkey ear, but... do your own resizing, people! There are a boatload of ways to make a large image fit a small screen, not limited to zooming your browser out, saving the pic to disk and opening it in an image viewer, or saving it to disk and resaving it with an editor. There are precisely zero ways to make a small image fit a large screen without losing details.

Image size is like cake. I've never heard anyone complain about getting too much cake.

Edit: one of the easiest ways to see all of an image is to right-click and open it in a new tab. That takes half a second...

[PR19_Kit]

On the other hand shrinking one to a 'Forum Friendly' size takes an equally short time......

Mine are all sized to maximum of 800 pixels on the largest side.