The Little World

Forgive me the George Orwellianism – I have been wrestling with the devil and it has affected my mind. I’ll be right after cocktail hour.

The task for last night – while the glue for the canopies of the Hampden was setting – was the reconditioning of a Nakajima Hayate. You can play with the concept of the ” Frank” and Stein as much as you want to – I’m too weak to respond.

I am a person who has purchased die-cast cars for years. I collect ’em, paint ’em, and make dioramas for ’em and benefit greatly therefrom. I wish the market for the cars would support more 50’s and 60’s stock cars…but I know it won’t…and I suppose I’ll be reduced to about one new car per year. In the meantime I have 1:72 aircraft and my airfields. The intriguing thing is that there are also 1:72 die-cast aircraft.

I’ve seen them for years and largely avoided them – the subjects were either too mundane or too exotic to interest me and the paint schemes suggested the toy store rather than the hobby shop. The prices were 3 X to 5 X those of plastic kits and offered none of the reward of building. I thought of them as a cop-out for the modeller. I did not realise that they changed over time and had become a valid division of the Little World in their own right.

When a member of the collector’s club offered a number of aircraft models for sale as part of an estate, I purchased some bargains – a P-47 and a ” Frank”. The Republic was perfect but the Nakajima had a broken leg – and it alerted me to the foolish design decisions that die-cast makers can come to in their quest for profit.

In short – they expected a plastic landing gear leg to support a cast metal model – when it would have been fully occupied in holding up a plastic one. I daresay the previous owner of the model hit the poor thing against a table leg or dropped it on the floor and the leg sheared off.

My only recourse with such a small plastic part was to drill it out, pin it with a metal shaft, and then reglue it with white glue and cyanoacrylate. I’m happy to report success, but it’ll only be for the most delicate show – and I cannot be certain that the weight of the aircraft won’t overbear the repair.

Seriously, makers…if you are going to put such effort and artistry into the painting and decorating of a die-cast, make the landing gear out of metal as well.

Addendum: It broke again. The sheer weight of the plane overwhelmed the repair – just sitting on the shelf. Next stop is the brass tubing stand at the hobby shop and a complete new set of legs for both sides. This has been a salutary lesson.