The Little World

Don’t sugar coat the pill. Give it to me straight. I can take it.

Is the Amodel kit going to go fit together or am I just going to end up sobbing in the corner?

Well, actually, the news from Kiev is good. The basic pod of the Vampire goes together exceedingly well. If you favour the wing root seams on the top a little and accept that there may be a little need for putty on the bottom, the basic flush fitting actually works. I would not guarantee it on old Humbrol tube cement, but a little intelligent use of a liquid poly and coating two surfaces rather than just one means you can get the wings on and hold them in tight conjunction long enough for a good seal. The wing thing is still over-engineered with components needed to make the ducts but that is the current fashion in short-run kits.

The real frightener is the tail booms. They are hollow and two-part, with a central horizontal stabiliser joining them but a butt joint where they touch the wings. I could see a potential for a weak joint there so I grabbed the discarded sprue out of the waste bin and started filing down custom re-enforcements for each side. It was a cut and fit job as the hollows are not uniform.

Then it was a case of making sure the stab was going to fit and sitting a bit in contemplation – there were actually 12 ways that the tail assembly could be wonky and distorted when glued up – and I had little real faith in the precision of the moulders.

But you can only sit so long before you have to start gluing something…and if you start with one joint and get it square you can hope that the rest will follow. It was a bit of a juggling act for a while with the booms and stab but in the end I achieved a reasonable compromise to the positions. The butt joints are now immensely strong with the internal strut and I have decided to fill gaps with cyanoacrylate glue as well.

I must admit to a vast sigh of relief when we finally got to the silver paint stage without tears.