The Little World

I have been delaying publication of the Bristol/Fairchild Bolingbroke final photos for several reasons; the weather is cold, the paint is slow to dry, and I have been making mistakes. Fortunately, not the sort of errors that are irreversible.

The colour scheme of the Bolingbroke is taken directly from the Avia book I mentioned in the last column. But unlike some of my previous models, this one has been camouflaged with a freehand spray job. It used the .0.3 needle and tip in the airbrush and in this case Tamiya paints thinned with their lacquer thinner – trying to beat a cold wet front coming in from the Indian Ocean. The basic paint went on well, and I was pleased with the satin overcoat – this is, after all, a museum aircraft, and can stand a prettier paint job than it would have had in service.

It was a good learning experience – but research on the net keeps suggesting to me that a more accurate way to do British A or B pattern camouflage will be to use harder masking than open brush. I shall try the much-vaunted Silly Putty snakes on my next build and see if it is a good idea or not. I have enough planes planned to go though nearly every variant of the process for a practical comparison.

The Bolingbroke is a fine kit – new Airfix seems an ideal combination of complexity and simplicity. To be frank, I’ve never been seriously disappointed with Airfix yet – even the old re-issues. The amount of filler needed is absolutely minimal.

The mistakes alluded to earlier involved the rubber de-icer boots. I forgot to paint them on before decalling the ship and thought I could mask off the wings and tail as an after thought. I could, and the boots look good, but I managed to peel off portions of some of the decals when the masking tape came up. I had to repaint a roundel and attach new fin flashes. A learning experience.

The DF loop antenna came out well – stiff wire coiled over a pencil and then cut off and glued in. Tougher than the resin loop on the Anson.

I’m nearly ready to try a weathered aircraft, but I’ll do a few more museum cuties before I do. And I need to find a lot more civilian cars and trucks of the 1950’s and 60’s for the museum visitors. 1:72 or 1:76 North American civilian vehicles are hard to find.