The Little World

It fits…where it touches. And this is a no-touch model…

It was all going swimmingly ( until the modelling bench hit the iceberg and the band started playing ” Nearer, My God, To Thee… ” and I was cheerfully impressed with the cockpit tub of the new Amodel Yak-3. The fuselage sides have a useful, but not overbearing, level of detail and the tub can be inserted from underneath as the wings are glued to the fuselage.

Very civilised. Painted the tub and set it aside.

The fuselage went together reasonably well with only the average amount of filler needed. Then I tried the wings. After I fainted and had to be revived with brandy I looked at them again. I fainted again. I would have kept this up all afternoon, but we ran out of brandy. The gaps and overlap of the wing at the fillet is the same on both sides. I fettled the joint as carefully as the brandy would permit, but eventually had to concede that there was going to be a gap problem. I glued it with a sense of dismay.

To distract myself from that, I moved on to the tail assembly and discovered that the vertical fin was decidedly out of vertical. It leans to the right, which must have been dangerous in Stalin’s Russia. The tabs for the horizontal stabilizers were vestigial, and the dihedral was uneven on either side.

This was going to be a model that could only be built to a certain standard – the one set by the moulders. And in this case it looked as if that was going to be a low one. But I am a man with a Mach 2 airliner on his tarmac, and do not daunt easily. I determined to allow the horizontal stabs to work in as well with the wings as could be done and to let the fin and rudder lean – most people will see the model from one side or the other.

I resorted to bondage and discipline. There are clubs for that sort of thing, I am told, and I am eager to take my roll of masking tape and pile of foamcore blocks along and see what might be done. If the rig seems like overkill, it merely reflects my frame of mind  at the time.

Note that the cockpit dashboard decal even decided to unstick itself after being buried in there, but I was past caring.

So, in the morning, when the masking tape came off I decided to go hard or go home. And as I was already at home and the money had been paid out I reached for the Dreaded Instrument. And you’ll see what I did with it tomorrow.