The Little World

By now you probably feel you have reason to question my sanity – I am starting to build my third De Havilland Vampire in 1:72 scale. One DH.100 as a Canadian museum piece, then a Swiss Vampire with extended nose, and now a two-seat trainer. What is it with these bats?

Well, the first was to celebrate the fact that the RCAF used to fly them when I was a kid, the second to explore a variant, and this last one to join the line of captured aircraft at Schmatterim Air Museum in Israel. You see, the Egyptians flew them in one of the wars and there’s a full-size one baking away out in the Negev.

Just on the sprue I can see the differences between small-run Czech or Ukrainian practice and the mass-produced item. There are a number of decisions taken quite differently as far as tail boom assembly go Much the same flavour in the landing gear, of course but a wonderfully detailed cockpit area and extensions to the horizontal stabiliser, as well.

As the plane will be a museum piece – baked, not fried – I will not be putting in the crew – they are very good modern aviators rather than Airfix blobs but I see the instruction sheet depicts them as flying with oxygen masks fitted – the figures have them open.

The transparencies seem clean and neat…which is kind of ironic seeing what I intend to do to them out there in the sun. The prototype aircraft has suffered very much.

The decals provided – RAF and Swedish Air force – are fine, if a little garish in the case of the former and a little dull in the case of the latter. I shall forego them with no regret, but the question of decal paper to make my own is looming. The stocks of it are out here in Perth and no-one seems to know when more will arrive.

A while back I did some research on the makeup of decal paper as such – the glue under the transfer and the over coating, etc. I actually thought I had the ingredients for it in the pantry and workshop. Then I made the the experiment – I have never made such a mess in my life. The sugar solution that was to form aprt of the decal sheet has been converted to an ice cream topping and I am going to order the real stuff on-line.