The Little World

I have been called to account by the Commitee of Scale Righteousness for the paint jobs on the aircraft that appear in Stein’s Air World. Several of the senior members have pointed out that there are glaring inconsistencies in the shade, hue, intensity, and reflectance of the various aircraft. I have been told that there are colours that are not 101% authentic, and asked to explain myself.

Okay. Sit back and grip the arms of your chair. If you’re sitting on a stool grip whatever comes to hand. Here goes.

It’s. A. Museum.

A model of an air museum. It has a snack bar and an admistration office and toilets and lifts and old bombs and engines and drop tanks. It also has a staff that restore and repaint the aircraft…and a changing management that comes out with different directives from time to time. It has a budget that sometimes buys authentic FS paint in 10 ltr tins and sometimes buys a drum of house paint from the local hardware store. It has apprentices.

In short – Stein’s Air World is a depiction of the sort of thing that happens when enthusiasts get together and try to collect and reproduce history. They get it right as often as they get it wrong and they have discovered that the paying public doesn’t know the difference or care all that much. A bright sparkly paint job on a preserved plane might just get more attention than the careful restoration of something that the military shoved off the end of a runway in 1945 as too much trouble to bury.

And the accountant pointed out that when they paint the aircraft the same as on the Airfix kit boxes, the Gift Shoppe sells 200% more of the kits. As long as you can keep the shop staff from opening the glue and sniffing it, you are makin’ money.

We also interviewed the owner of Steins’s Air world…Stein. He said, and we quote, ” I don’t give a shit. They’re my planes and I like to paint them so they look nice. “. A deplorable attitude, to be sure, but what can you do?