1:72 Martin Baker Mk.6 for the Airfix Buccaneer (1 piece)

The Blackburn Buccaneer

The Buccaneer was designed for what other machines did reluctantly: attack at minimum height over the sea, where dense air tears at the airframes of weaker aircraft. Blackburn therefore gave it a robust structure, a fuselage waisted according to the area rule and boundary layer blowing, thanks to which a heavy aircraft could be brought onto the deck of a carrier. In the S.2 version it received a pair of Rolls-Royce Spey engines and in this form it served both with the Royal Navy and later with the RAF, where it also saw action in the Persian Gulf at the beginning of the 1990s.

A seat for a two-member crew

The pilot and the navigator sat one behind the other and both had a seat from the Martin-Baker company of Denham. The Mk.6 series is among the types that could get a crew out even at low altitude, that is exactly in the regime in which the Buccaneer worked. A model of the seat is the most prominent thing in the cockpit: it has its own convex shape of backrest, straps, a firing handle and the covers of the ejection cartridges.

What to do with it in the cockpit

A seat from a mold tends to be simplified to the limit, because an ejector pin and a parting line have to fit into it. A replacement will bring sharp edges to the backrest and the relief of the straps, which only need bringing out with a dark wash. The package covers one position, so for the fully filled cockpit of this two-seat machine two pieces are needed.

The procedure is straightforward: separate the part, sand down the pad left by the gate, spray it with a base coat and seat it in the cockpit tub before the fuselage halves are glued. Anyone who wants to go further will add seat belts from thin strips of foil and a connection to the pull handle above the headrest from a small piece of wire.