The Little World

Those of you who are Kinky Friedman fans will know this phrase. It applies to a lot of the work on the Mach 2 Convair 440. Not the least being the choice to eschew the kit decals – big troublesome designs for an airline I do not know – and to paint the thing as an RCAF transport. They had them, you know, and during an era with a foolishly complex colour scheme.

Note: the RCAF has a number of foolishly complex colour schemes in operation right now – commemorative paint jobs and such. It speaks of too much time on the hands of the maintenance crews and too many art-school graduates in staff positions.

The red/white side flash is referred to as the symmetrical scheme. It’s attractive, in a busy sort of way, and if there were a ready source of decals for it would not be a problem. As it is, I have had to mask and paint it. The success in this is subjective; it is better than it might be but worse than it could be as well. I think I would have been happier if there had not been bleed spray of red under the masking tape.

Still, it all yields eventually to a careful paintbrush, and there is always next time for perfection. This philosophy can be extended to politics and sex as well…

The windows are another point. The cockpit transparencies weren’t, and did not fit in any case. They had to be sealed up and puttied over and required a paint job in blue to simulate glazing. The side windows were so crude as to defy placement in any case so a ruse with MicroKleer was tried. The picture will be somewhat impressionistic, I fear.

Still – how many other model airports have an RCAF Convair on the charge sheet, eh?