The Little World

Well, I knew it was coming…I knew it when I saw the sheet of transfers in the kit – when I bought the extra packet at the plastic model fair – when I googled up all the various marques of plane that had the same name as the one a’ building. I knew that I would have to start cutting and soaking and sticking eventually – it is no good claiming that I was duped…

I used to love Decal Day. When I was a kid in Canada I couldn’t wait to start soaking things in a shallow saucer of warm water and floating the pictures onto a pursuit plane. I cheerfully put some of the worst graphics on some of the worst paint jobs…And they were all perfect in my eyes.

Silvering, lumps, distortions, off-centre roundels, and the most inappropriate combinations of graphics and grunge…Modelling in the 60’s may not have been accurate, but it was fun.

Now I am older and wiser and wrinklier and more anxious. Have I the right decals? Are they in the right place? Do they blend in? Will people realise that the aircraft serial number does not match the service record? Am I being altogether too precious… or not precious enough?

Okay. Okay. Okay, today I decalled the Douglas C-47 Dakota in  modern-day flying restoration form. Somewhere in Canada there is a C-47 that has been saved as a flying museum example and I have taken it as a prototype for my 1:72 model. The whole thing is done from Google images captured at air shows. The Italeri kit I built has no more accuracy than the restored C-47 – but it is a model of a real restoration. I am happy with this:

1. It is a model of something that exists. Exists, not just existed.
2. It only has to be as accurate as I can see on the net. I am not in Canada.
3. And thankful for it. Our Prime Minister is a dud but not as much of a dud as Trudeau…
4. It forms an exhibit in an air museum. That means it can be clean and glossy – the way I like my models. It may not be the way it looked in Burma, but it is the way it looks now.
5. I can have anything I want. Museums with money can do that. Even if they are being sold inaccurate exhibits by dishonest dealers, I can do the same and not be inaccurate.

To be fair to me, I did have to make a few of the decals myself on a Testors sheet of white decal paper. My Epson printer does a good job of that. Once I accepted the fact that I was going to have to cut them out of the sheet very accurately I could steel myself to the process. It was not that bad. I could make the tail markings and also make overlays that converted the standard SEA RAAF roundels to the dark blue/light blue Burma roundels. It’s one of those jobs that scares you off until you do it.

I tried Humbrol Decalfix for the main roundel setting – it worked, but I’m still not sure if the thick nature of the medium is alright. Read me again in the warmer summer months and I’ll tell you whether I think it a good material to work with. In any case, the roundels went down and snuggled in well, and the blue centres went on the next day without trouble.

I have put on some of the sillier little stencils but will stop before I go mad. Each additional dot is another thing to go wrong.

Clear gloss tomorrow ( It’s a museum plane after all…) and then the finishing touches of aerials and venturis. And the big reveal as the masking on the windows comes off. That is still an open question in the Little Workshop.