The Little World

Also known as detached parts…and what you do with ’em.

As a kid 60+ years ago I built Airfix, Monogram, and AMT kits that had working parts. Ailerons, tail surfaces, car bonnets, ship’s turrets, etc. were made with joints and sockets that allowed things to wave, swivel, and retract. This was a major attraction that separated one kit from another – and frequently raised the price between makers.

The joints were crude in many cases but the motions they tried to simulate were rather sophisticated. The epitome of it all was probably the Monogram Helldiver model – the biplane version – that retracted its main landing gear when you engaged the propellor and twisted the thing backwards. I was careful with my build then and lubricated the working parts with Vaseline – all the time I had that model the mechanism worked smoothly.

There was a price to be paid past the retail one. The models had cruder parts that were over-size to make the features work. We never let this bother us at all.

Nowadays I am older and fussier. I try to make the models as realistic as the kit will allow ( a compromise between laziness and madness ) and when I encounter a working aileron set I generally fix them in place. I also fill in over-wrought seam lines. And I am careful to put one up, one down…

The tail surfaces can be another puzzle if they are pre-separated. It pays to look at photos of the real aircraft taken at the time they were in service to see what the tails did when unattended. Some were balanced so well as to stay in whatever position they were when last handled. Others fall wherever the stick or yoke falls to. Rudders can be posed central or very slightly off, and be careful with twin tails.

The real trap for young players is landing gear doors. Some systems lose pressure and the doors drop as soon as the pilot clambers out. Others latch shut even on the ground and need to snap open when the plane is airborne and the wheel is being retracted. Again, pay attention to real photos taken at the time and do not take the instruction sheet as gospel.

Canopies? Close ’em or open them as you please. If your cockpit is fully detailed you may want to show it off and if it is just an old Soviet or FROG kit you will probably elect to keep it closed. The business of filling up a cockpit would be rendered far easier if one of the major plastic moulders would give us a kit of 30+ assorted pilots and crewmen sitting in their seats in our scale. Then we could fill in the bare pits with some colour, at least.