The Little World

I was on tenterhooks when my daughter came back from Japan recently – I had tasked her with getting me a nice 1:72 model aircraft kit that we couldn’t get here in Australia. She obliged by searching out both a major and a minor hobby shop in Tokyo and bringing back 4 models – all unique. Only one has ever turned up here in Perth.

Note the price at Leonardo’s in Akihabara: 2000¥, or roughly $ 23. A small price to pay for history.

This model is the oldest of the lot – a Soviet-era model of a Soviet-era bomber. It is marked as a Novo model and bears the evidence of 1960’s – 70’s Soviet manufacture throughout. From the agricultural packaging to the crude instructions and the even cruder moulding, this is a gem. The decal sheet is the cherry on the top…and more of that later.

This kit may not have started out in the USSR, though the bomber was certainly a Soviet design of the 1930’s. I suspect it may have been derived from a Frog mould of the 1950’s…long worn out and sold to the Russians when Frog was closed. If this is the case, the Russians did little to refresh it – it is crude.

Not too crude, however, as to debar if from being built. After all, filler and sandpaper can recover a multitude of sins. The basic moulding is thick and chunky, however, and a serious attempt at it would require some savage sanding of the trailing edges of he wings and tail surfaces. I decided it is a kit best built to its own limits, rather than those of the modern state of the art. As such, this is well within my limits, too.

The flash is bad. The sink marks are bad, the ejector pins are bad…but it is all there, and as long as one is prepared to do what the Soviet modeller did way back when, something will result. If nothing else, it will tell me whether I wish to buy a Special Model or ICM version of the airplane.