The Little World

Flying a Vampire must have been an exhilarating experience for pilots who had trained on propeller-driven aircraft. Or perhaps I should say propeller-pulled aircraft…as there were very few pusher planes past the WW1 era. Of course pilots who had flown with twin-engine bombers and other multi-craft would be used to a clear field in front of them, but few would have had such a short distance to look over. Perhaps the pilots of DH Mosquitos would have recognised the view.

Still, if you came close to the ground and were at all concerned about the performance of your nose gear, you would have been doing the last few feet with your knees drawn up…

The DH. 100 is finished – it’s a model of a museum aircraft seen in the Hangar Museum in Calgary, Alberta – but with slightly different numbering. This is because I had the numbers and the Canadian roundels and was not going to go out and buy more…The museum plane is in quasi-service colours so I felt free to interpret it for myself.

Here’s an in-build picture of the red rescue panels in place. I love schemes that are easy to mask.

The decals used were those peculiar reverse ones from the Australian producer in South Australia…but this time I have tamed them. The secret was to paint a dot of Tamiya decal adhesive onto the position and then lay the reverse decal onto it. Then it all worked perfectly. I’m relieved at this as there are a number of useful Canadian roundels and fin flashes still left on the sheet and I want to get maximum value from it.

The canopy and tip lights are commendably well-fitting for an eastern European kit.

And I put on just enough of the stencilling to give the flavour of the plane without making me boil with rage.

Now I know they don’t generally do it…but I’d love to see what interpretation the Eastern European moulders would make for pilot figures. And why do they not do so – they make enough other fiddly parts on their kit sprues as it is.

Verdict? A successful kit and good fun to do.