The Little World

I’m not the person in the factory who designs the planes, okay? I’m just the one at the end of the line who glues ’em together. So it’s not my fault.

The Liberator is a heavy bomber – in all senses of the word. It needs to be well-built to survive. So does the model. Full marks, then to the scale mould makers and designers who have formed the Airfix Lib with recessed mounting for the wings. Of course it has tab-in-slot as well, and this is good, but the real help is that recess.

The fit is so good that I am going to just brush some Mr. Surfacer in there and not use putty at all.

On the other hand, the designers who looked at the tail of the B 24 must have realised that it was a complex thing – two vertical stabilisers and what has proved to be two horizontal ones as well. The assembly of the vert to the horiz was a tricky thing due to the small, loose tab-in-slot design. It was solvent glue and then reinforcement with Zap cyanoacrylate with every blessed thing taped down to the building plane.

The final assembly of the tail is going to be a tricky exercise in jigging and poking…I would not go so far as to say that it will not involve jiggery-pokery.

The Special Hobby 1:72 Lockheed Lodestar also had a twin-rudder tail, but they made the horizontal part one piece from port to starboard and gave the tail a definite platform to glue down onto the fuselage. Result: everything 90º.

I am under no illusions with the Airfix B24. In case you were wondering about the position of the B-24 rudders, that is what you get when the cockpit crew cannot agree about reading the map…