The Little World

The wonderful thing about the Hobby Boss easy-to-build models is the bad thing about them…

They are exactly that – easy to build. You need to do the basic things like wash the sprues and study the instruction, but after that you find yourself going ahead in such leaps and bounds that you need to hold yourself back somewhat. The heading image is essentially what has happened after dinner and it is only 10:00 now.

The interior is laughingly simple and is dismissed with a sneer by many of the super-detail boys. Those of us who are practical and who actually need the plane to be finished in our lifetime are of another mind – a quick coat of interior green and a black instrument panel will be fine. I plan to put a pilot in the bare seat, so there is no need to go mad with seatbelts.

The basic top and bottom construction is superb – I really think that other makers could look at Hobby Boss’s ability to incorporate precision with simplicity when they slice up their models. Even the tailplanes went in with minimal distress – they have coded tags that do not permit a positional error – and there are plastic struts bracing them at the correct angle. I was able to dry-assemble them then touch the joints with thin Tamiya cement and it was done.

Likewise the landing gear – the struts are dropped into square receivers that do not permit wrong positioning. They’ll be taken off for painting, but go back on easily at final assembly.

This model is a specific thing for a photographic project – the quicker it is completed and ready for painting, the better. I bought it knowing I could count on HB. Now comes the business of the three-colour French camouflage to figure out – the sequence of masking puzzles me, but I suspect it will become clearer when the base blue-grey coat goes on. I must say I cannot imagine the scheme actually hid anything at the time it was painted on the real planes – either on the ground or in the air. I suspect it was a case of art triumphing over science.