The Little World

Well, she’s got pretty good seams on the top and bottom of the fuselage, and the wing roots are no worse than an Amodel or RS kit. But oh, Lord the ailerons…

It looks as though the mould that was supposed to close up for that portion of the wing shifted in the machine. There are blank steps and the tops and bottoms of the wings do not match. The only saving grace is that you don’t see it from the top. Don’t know yet whether I’ll putty it up and try for an improvement or just regard it as a quirk.

A deeper concern is the lack of any detail in the cockpit – particularly aft of the pilot’s set. The box art of the kit shows a  structure reminiscent of the sort of cutout on the Curtiss P-40. The canopy casting is dreadfully fogged, but I’m still not willing to be reduced to painting it black or casting a tarpaulin over it. It’ll get a furniture polish treatment to see if that clears it up and then I’ll think about a scratch-built panel inside there.

The installation of this canopy will be odd – it slides in from the side and has to hop over the seat to do so. As it is a bad fit side by side I don’t suppose it really matters, but there you go. I should have made different engineering choices had it been me making the mould. Hobby Boss did a brilliant job on the long-fuselage P-40 and that could have been done here to let the canopy down in a conventional manner.

Alternately, I could just plant flowers back there and make the place look bright…