The Little World

I knew this was going to happen, but I didn’t know it was going to be so soon. I am repeating a build.

No. I am repeating a build to a certain extent. I am doing what the prototype manufacturers and the air forces did – making the aircraft that developed from an earlier mark. In my case it will be for a different air force in a different country and a different purpose to the original build. The colour scheme will be entirely different and the airframe will have a considerable modification in one portion. But there’ll be elements of a previous model in there – that is what the originals did.

I built a Bristol Blenheim Mk I a little while ago – an Airfix kit that was finished up as a light bomber. It was the test bed for several things I had read about and in some cases they were successful. I learned a lot – the Blenheim is a proud exhibit in The Bomber coomand Hall at Steins Air World in Wet Dog. I was aware at the time that it was a rebox of an older Airfix kit, and I discovered that some of the sprues contained parts that were intended for a different mark of Blenheim.

The penny dropped and the mental lightbulb came on when I bought a picture book of Canadian aircraft of WW2 and found a Bristol Bolingbroke that looked a lot like the Blenheim IV. It is the Blenheim IV and the example I have found is a maritime patrol version that flew out of British Columbia. Finding a kit of the IV at the recent plastic model show was all I needed to get me up and doing.

I know I will discover that some of the sprues in the new kit are the same as the older Mk I variant. I will be doing dog work I’ve done before in making wings and engines. But the fuselage in the nose section is utterly different and the clear sprues confirm this. I am also delighted to see that they have sharp canopy frame mouldings. The Handley Page Hampden model I built recently was a pain in that area and I’ll be glad to get back to clean definition.

This sort of thing is going to happen again as I build up RAAF, USAAF, RCAF, and RAF aircraft – they exchanged, bought, were gifted, and stole lots of aircraft that prove to be common to them all. I shall try to build sensible versions of things that are plausible for each airforce and airfield but I realise that there will be repeats. What I’m going to try to do is to get the repeat aircraft from different plastic model firms to give me some instruction and variety in what I make.

I aim to learn or do at least two new things with each build – and not to regard any of them as the final word in the argument. I do not seek perfection – I seek knowledge.