The Little World

No, I am not referring to the Prime Minister of Lamaysia. I’m sure he is a very biddable old buffer – as long as the right approach is taken.

What I mean is this Revell kit of the De Havilland Twin Otter aircraft. It’s Revell Germany, so it may have been sourced from another maker* as a set of moulds – or they may have made it themselves. In any case, it has very much proved to be a curate’s egg. And now it is in my breakfast bowl.

The curate who first tackled it is my friend The Reverend Mr. Warren. He thought it would make a good general purpose air measuring craft for Hughes Aerial Surveys. So it might, though Revell are a bit skimpy on the cabin interior. You get a decent cockpit but nothing aft past the doorway.

Still, this is no worse than others and had the window arrangements Revell settled upon proved easier to manage, he would not have had half the trouble. As it was, the cabin windows and cockpit side panels are meant to glue in from the inside before the panels are joined – and they do not provide a great deal of sticking area to fasten. The windscreen is meant to go in as the fuselage halves come together, but this can be problematical at the best of times and this screen ain’t the best of fit right off the sprue. Mr. Warren did a manly job of trying to battle this but eventually had to saw the fuselage parts apart, and the result was so discouraging that he handed it to me with the injunction to turn it into a fireman’s practice hulk at the side of the Wet Dog Regional runway.

After I got it home I looked admiringly at how well he had put it together and then how well he had taken it apart – and decided that I wanted to investigate if this had spoiled the kit. I determined to take the primer off and the windows out and see what the original looked like. And that is where we go to the next post

* One of the sprues has an engraving that starts ” Made In ” and then a section has been blocked out. It is a short word, so it might be USA, India, USSR, or China. Take yer pick…