1:48 Blackburn Buccaneer canopy mask (inside and outside) Airfix

The narrow cockpit of the Buccaneer from both sides

Double-sided painting stencils for the clear parts of the British Buccaneer strike aircraft. They deal with the framing outside and inside, so the inside of the frames does not stay merely darkly translucent. Which kit the set belongs to follows from the name.

An aircraft built for flight just above the ground

The Buccaneer came about for the navy as a machine that gets under radar literally above the water and keeps a high speed there. A solid airframe, a tuned fuselage and a system blowing compressed air over the wing match that; without it the aircraft would not have got off a ship's deck. It carried bombs in a rotating bay whose doors turned inward into the fuselage. Later it passed to land-based aviation and proved itself in combat as late as the beginning of the 1990s, when it guided laser-guided bombs. The nose and the wings folded on it to save room in the hangar.

What to keep in mind when painting

• The cockpit is small compared with the fuselage, so the frames are fairly wide.
• The windscreen is markedly raked and the surfaces meet at a sharp angle.
• The glazing of the second cockpit continues behind the pilot and the transition has to be matched.
• Dark schemes forgive less; every bit of bleed shows up on clear glass.
• The inner frames are dealt with before the clear part is seated into the fuselage.

Who it is intended for

Builders of British equipment who want a cleanly separated sprayed cockpit on a markedly shaped aircraft. The accurate cut holds the line even on the raked windscreen, where masking by hand usually does not come off the first time. The set will also be appreciated by anyone building the model into a display case with other naval aviation machines who wants a uniform level among them.