The Little World

If you are contemplating a big win in next year’s plastic modelling contest, I should get started now. Pop down to the hobby shop and pick up a totally exclusive, one-of-a-kind kit like a Mustang or Spitfire. And a packet of photoetched scale rivets for the detailing…

There’s a fine point for the competitive modeller when selecting a subject when the question of novelty or familiarity has to be answered. Will the judges be wowed by something they don’t know anything about or would it be better to give them one of the old standards? If you’ve got the only plans still in existence of something that only lasted five minutes in the air then no-one is likely to be able to criticise it. The fuzzier the Google picture, the better chance you have of making anything you like.

Of course the answer to this is not to build for other people anyway, but this requires a strength of character or a degree of laziness that we may not all have. A compromise is needed.

By all means make a Spitfire, but either make it extremely well, or hunt out definite proof of some obscure mark with a strange camouflage pattern and build that. likewise the Mustang or Me 109 or other common prototype. With any luck some bored fitter at RAF Little Farting whiled away a wet afternoon in 1943 by bolting on couple of dish pans to the airframe and if you have a photo of it you’re in with a chance.

And do not overlook the What-If model genre. You may be able to tickle the judge’s fancy with some colour scheme or weapons fit that never really was…but both you and Judgey wish it could have been…Be prepared for someone in the crowd to challenge it and be honest about the fantasy nature. And also be prepared for someone else to insist that he saw the exact thing in Saskatoon in 1938. Resist the temptation to point out that this enthusiast is 27 years old…

Source books remembered are fine, but source books actually in hand are better. They may be as inaccurate as you like, but the fact that they are physically there will excuse you following their lead. You cannot be accused of being a scale model liar if you are only repeating what you have been shown and can prove that, at least.