The Little World

Trolling the aisles of Hobbytech recently I was feeling discouraged – they’d had a big Christmas and sold off a lot of goods – but there weren’t many small kits left that fit my criteria; cheap, simple, and a western prototype in the propeller or early jet eras. I wasn’t able to spend big on a four-engine bomber and I’ve got all the Mustangs and Spitfires I need at present. I know new supplies will come in, and I visit each week, but I wanted a project for a hot weekend.

Then I rounded the aisle past the weird shit section and the model kit you see in the heading image popped out at me. It popped because of two things:

a. I had just bought a Piasecki Flying Banana kit and was researching it.

b. It had the most horrible graphics I had ever seen on the tail. I am not a fan of the modern tendency to set the spray paint crew loose on expensive aircraft with a brief to make them look like something from Mattel. Mattel can do that themselves. Commemorative logos and artwork on the tails turns me off entirely.

This artwork was simple, overdone, and crass. I assumed that the decal designer had come back from lunch drunk and plopped it onto the sheet as a joke. I was looking to see if he did the unit insignia in Comic Sans…

But graphics aside, I thought a companion Piasecki would be nice and it was cheap enough to absorb the last of my Christmas money. I took it home and started the review process:

a. Everything bagged in the box – the box sealed on all four edges. I got what I paid for.

b. Good, clean sprues. A little flash, but not enough to be a worry. Well within knife and sandpaper country.

c. A clean nose canopy.

d. Those horrible graphics on a well-done decal sheet…

I figured that I could use most of that sheet and flush the tail graphics down the toilet. But I thought I’d better check the internet for some real images of the H-25 in service to see what was usable. I opened a google page, found the images, and discovered that the wretched graphic is real – it is painted on the tail of an H-25 in a US Army museum. That’ll be where the decal designer grabbed it from…

Then I scrolled down the page and got the best present of the week…read tomorrow…