The Little World

I bought the Avia book about Canadian aircraft of WW2 on a whim at Hylands Bookstore in Melbourne earlier in the year. Hylands is a peripatetic purveyor of printed matter – I have been to 4 of their premises in the CBD of Melbourne over the decades and each time it has been a unique experience. One was in a basement, two have been on the second floors of old buildings, and the latest is in a deserted Asian cinema arcade. It is a bookselling adventure.

The latest visit yielded a book that was probably intended to be the first of a series – but I suspect it is a singleton. Either the author or the publisher turned in their dinner pail, and what I’ve got is all I’m going to get. Should any reader of this column know different – if the Avia press from Canada is still producing picture books – please get me in touch with them. A reward is offered for information.

Okay – I got the first book – it has pictures and drawings of some the aircraft of the period, and I have dived into Google to see if there are others. Sometimes there are – in many cases, though, the pictorial evidence is slim. I have to look afield to see what a camouflage scheme might have been. I have to imagine what an airfield layout might have been. Might may make right in other circumstances, but with scale modelling you are bound to come up against someone else’s right…

I’m lucky in that I know Warren  – ex-RAAF ground crewman – who can fill me in on service practice. I can Google pretty deeply into some topics – though the most interesting things are never placed on the web. And I can poke round secondhand bookshops looking for the discarded aircraft manual or reminiscence book from the post-war period. These might be dreadful literature but they can be a goldmine of hitherto unseen photos.

And the kit makers these days are remarkably specific in what they produce – the markings and camouflage can be tied to one particular aircraft at one point in time. You’re fortunate if that is the one you want to model, but even if you diverge, the kit schemes are helpful. I do appreciate the manufacturers who make the effort to produce a colour page for the instruction sheets.

In the case of the people who want to change planes in mid-air, so to speak, I would appreciate decal sheets that allow squadron codes and serial numbers to be built up with individual characters from a stock sheet. Also have them in white, black, yellow , and anything else needful. The decal setting solutions seem to work well enough to make this a neat solution.

Finally – though this is not a consideration for the Bolingbroke build –  I cannot imagine that it would be impossible for the hobby accessory makers to come out with a mildly adhesive rubber sheet that could be draped on wings and fuselages for an easier way to do camouflage. I guess I’m looking for a flexible mask that can be reused but that does not require additional solutions painted onto the first coat of paint. I’ve got a strange idea that might work, but I am going to wait until I have a very cheap test model to try it – and if it fails you’ll never see the disaster. I’ve learned that much from the Soviets.