The Little World

The Avro Tutor may have taught hundreds of British and Commonwealth pilots to fly. The AZ kit of this has certainly taught me something: never buy another Czech biplane kit.

It is a bloody nightmare. A variation on the bad dream that was the Avro Anson ( is it Avro…? ). In this case the kit went swimmingly – yellow and silver paint and wheels on straight. Interior clean and all good…until the struts went on.

The non-fit of them was not a shock, but what WAS surprising were the flawed instructions. The sheet clearly depicts the cabane struts in a reversed position. I followed it and discovered the impossibility of it all next day. So it was remove the cabanes, reverse them, and try again. This was marginally better, but the main inter-plane struts did not meet their attachment holes – I suspected a similar misdirection…and sure enough there it was. All struts off and the upper wing was looking a little messy underneath.

I tried all combinations of positioning and found the best compromise – but there are several places where the struts do not come near their sockets. I have placed them into the lower wing and fuselage in the best place they fit and decided to just accept what happens under the upper. I’ll repaint wherever needed and just regard it as a warning for the future.

The rest of the finishing will be somewhat of an anticlimax, but I’ll stay true to the course and just make sure that we never see a picture of the underside of the top wing.

I will also look for a suitable new-mould Airfix biplane in 1:72 to build – even if it doesn’t fit in my museum. I need to get back my mojo after this annoyance. I never remember this sort of trouble with the Airfix baggies of the DR1 or Camel in my childhood – and they were simple things.