The Little World

Every kit I get has some form of paper work associated with it. Mainly instructions, painting sheet, and decals. The BP Defiant is a good example of current Airfix practice.

The Instructions these days can be quite complex – if the makers are good communicators. This can depend upon whether they are a large firm or a small one – and also on whether they are dealing with the world though their own native language. In some cases the kits are intended for world-wide distribution from a non English-speaking country and they resort to diagrams and iconography to try to convey their message.

I’ve got news for some firms – it don’t work, Comrade. English-speaking readers read English, and if you can give them more of that you’ll get more of their money. Modellers are pretty good at visuals and can cope with line drawings, but you have to employ real artists to do those. Fortunately Airfix score well on all these points – they are a British firm supplying British prototypes from their own designers and an English-speaking manufacturing country – India. We all benefit.

The trick that sets Airfix above others is how they show a part in full 3-D being attached to the structure and then highlight that same part in the following step to let you see the relationship that it has with the next part. Pay attention to the visual and you can’t go wrong.

They also produce a useful painting diagram – of course they leave you to make your own equivalencies between Humbrol numbers and whatever you may be using, but if they produced a chart that drew connections between every paint maker and their own brand they would be giving the business away. Plus the chart would be the size of a bed sheet…

I note that they have also included a separate instruction sheet for the tiny little stencils that the modern modeller seems to demand. I am in two minds about these things – I use the larger ones that can be readily seen and handled, but snort at the others. They are like photo-etched rudder pedals in a closed cockpit – a source of pain, rather than pleasure.

The decal sheet for the BP Defiant is a good Airfix standard one – two variants fully set out. As this build is my first one, I have opted for the day fighter…but the build is nice enough that I will be putting it on my limited list of kits that I’d build again. That’s high praise.