1:48 Lysander Smoke Curtain Installation Container for Airfix kit

An underslung container for laying a smoke screen

The Westland Lysander went down in history mainly for its night flights into occupied France, but its first duties were something quite different. A high wing, a fixed landing gear and the ability to take off from a short meadow made it, in 1940, a machine counted on for the defense of the islands. Part of that defense was a device slung under the fuselage which was to release a smoke screen in flight and cover the coast or friendly units.

What is in the package and what you need with it

The set contains the container itself, cast in resin. The aircraft kit has to be your own; the name directly names the manufacturer whose kit the mounts are built for. Moving the part over to a different kit is possible, but count on having to adjust the spacing of the mounts yourself.

A procedure that has proved itself

• First: separate the casting from the casting block with a saw, not by breaking it off
• Then: wash the part in lukewarm soapy water to remove mold release residue
• Before gluing: try the fit on the mounts under the fuselage dry
• Finally: primer, paint, and only after that cyanoacrylate glue into the mating surface

Resin holds a crisper shape than injection-molded plastic and takes a finer rounding of leading edges, but at the same time it is more brittle and cracks if dropped from the table. Sets of this type are usually bought in a pair with another store for the same aircraft, because one machine carried several kinds of load and the modeler then chooses which version to build.