The Little World

Well, the obligatory problems have arisen. No kit ever gets finished wthout them and you might as well get them over early.

The radio mast on the tail has broken off – but this is neither unexpected nor a big deal. The idea of a plastic manufacturer moulding a scale aerial on one half of the fuselage at the uppermost part of the tail and then expecting it to get all the way through the building process is pretty funny.

It’ll be replaced with a bit of wire drilled into the top of the fin and it will be all the better for it. The fragile nature of all the antennae and sensor tubes on scale aircraft means that I never put them on until the very last unless it is impossible to avoid.

More serious is the loss of the Avenger’s main defensive armament – the machine gun mount and seat unglued itself and pitched backwards into the turret. They are rattling about there in the darkness. the turret is mounted in the fuselage and the fuselage is closed up tight, puttied and primed. No way could I split it, then split the turret to do a re-gluing job. And no way am I going to ditch my birthday model because of this.

So when the entire camo paint job is done and the antennae can be put back on, a new gun barrel is going to be fabricated from wire, fixed to a slender block of wood, painted black, and inserted through the turret slot. And it’ll be glued down as best as can be with PVA. I’m not proud.

So it’ll be a Quaker gun – that’s been done before. Read about Doolitle’s raid on Tokyo.

Lesson learned – when you are going to have to commit to something in a build, put PVA on the joints as a security measure – in the darkness no-one will know the difference.