The Little World

The ship is down safely – sitting in its own box all complete – ready for transfer to the WWII forward base at RAAF Cunoath Downs. It’s a secret airfield in the middle of the Western Australian bush. Secret only in the sense that no-one goes past it on the road because it’s too far away from civilisation, water, electricity, beer, and anyone who really cares. The Japanese probably know all about it but are too embarrassed to mention the fact. You’ll see more of it in the future, but you’ll wish you’d seen less…

Nevertheless, when they finally pull up most of the stumps on the main runway the first aircraft to base out of there will be the Northrop Delta 1 A61-1. It’s the only one the RAAF owns and they sent it secondhand from Laverton, where they didn’t want it any more after they stacked it into the ground. It’s a fine transport for anyone who doesn’t mind their knees in their chin.

The completion of the Special Hobby kit was straightforward after the second upper camouflage colour went on. It’s a clean paint scheme right now, completed as a matte finish. The matting done with Tamiya flat sprayed on has certainly lightened the surface appearance, but unfortunately there is a little silvering at the edges of the roundels. This is not going to be a problem later on as Cunoath Downs is famous for muck. Other places have sand storms – Cunoath Shire has dirt storms. This is the cleanest this airplane will ever be.

The landing gear farce was fixed by gluing sprue into the wheel spats and then gluing the tyres onto that. The broken struts were replaced by steel pins, and the whole can cope with the pressure. The propellor is removable – bedded into Uhu yellow putty – so that it can be moved about in the studio. The quest for a photorealistic moving propellor is somewhat of an El Dorado but I am going to give it a try.

The whole thing cost $ 31.00 AUD plus postage from Melbourne, so it is not a bank-breaker. I am pleased as punch with it and will carefully read all the Metro Hobby emails in the future to see what other specials they have.