The Little World

It’s not your eyes. Your eyes are fine. It’s not your computer. You need not re-calibrate it. The scale model Vampire T.11 really looks like that. And its counterpart in the Negev does too.

The desert sun has very little air shade, no ground shade, and winds that blast from all directions. The paint that the museum staff put on the planes is baked and whisked off nearly as soon as it is finished. Some exhibits get re-painted more often – some, like the REAF Vampire , are left for several maintenance cycles before anything gets done.

In the interim the canopies heat up, cloud over, go brown, or crack. Some of the more valuable ones get a blue poly film shield applied but some are just left to fate. This is the case with the Vampire. The perspex is likely from two separate repairs, but eventually all the panels will look the same.

The other interesting thing to notice out at Schmatterim is the fact that the undersides of the aircraft may be in much better shape than the top bits. There can even be some gloss left to the paint under there if the plane has been parked in the right spot.

My thanks to the loyal readers who slogged their way through three Vampires. I promise things with only one tail for a while.