The Little World

An up and down experience, the Canadair Sabre. As are many aircraft…that’s why they have elevators and engines.

The Airfix kit was delightful – the Mr Color paint was not what I wanted…but that was my fault. The clear coatings went very well. The decals were an experience. But the ensemble has come together better than I expected.

I shall not make the same mistakes* on the next Sabre – it will be a service fighter of one of the RCAF squadrons stationed in Europe in the 50’s with a camouflage scheme. Fortunately the Canadians had cameras and delighted in using them during their deployments and many of them loaded the cameras with Kodachrome film – Kodachrome keeps its colour even to this day. The photographers who decided to try Agfa colour slide film at the time are sad people now – all their fighter planes have faded purple and green camo…

I was very pleased to see the pilot figure included with the kit. No idea if the red bone dome is authentic, but this is a fly-by team so why not?

The only thing now is to pose it with the red and blue MiG15 and see if I can find more 50’s team schemes. I’m not going to do them as a priority, but if there are aftermarket decal sheets they might make a good sub-theme for the Air World museum one year.

• I shall make NEW mistakes. Bigger, better, brighter mistakes. That’s ambition. That’s reality. That’s stupidity. And I can do ALL three…