The Little World

I mentioned the fact that I had secured two copies of the Special Hobby Vickers Delta Mk III kit from Metro Hobbies by post. They languished for some time before I felt the urge to build, but now that MX-B has come out so well, I’ve decided to keep up the momentum and start on Old 103* next.

The choice is based upon an internet photo of an aircraft parked out on some Canadian airfield just prior to WW II. It has not been painted with buzz numbers nor the three-colour fin flash, but the roundels are in place. On the fuselage they are small plain ones with no yellow ring. There is no squadron code on the side but the arframe number is in the usual place forward of the tail. I intend to put a Vickers emblem on the fin.

The fin is the tall Canadian one. This is provided in the Special Hobby kit as a separate moulding but there are no cutting lines on the kit fin, so there will be a bit of careful freehand sawing needed.

The other attractive feature of the old photo is the fact that at this stage of the game the plane was fitted with the full landing gear housing and spats. The suspension of Delta wheels is problematic at the best of times and I hope that this option will conceal the mechanism…which is likely to be wooden blocks. A tail wheel will be nice…

The rest of the build will probably be very similar to MX-B but I’ll put on small touches like red propeller tips to give a bit of visual differentiation.

*  Fictitious serial.