The Little World

I generally have complete faith in things I read. This has served me well with all the elections I’ve ever voted in – I follow the instructions on the how-to-vote card and so far all my candidates have been elected. I also follow the printed instructions on the back of the Betty Sydney cake packets and all my cakes have been baked.

But I am going to start treating the instruction sheets that come with plastic model kits with some skepticism in the future – I have just come a cropper with the Dragon kit of the A-25A Shrike.

Look at the heading picture of the starboard gear. Observe the position of the outer gear door. It is a split type that concertinas over the wheel cover. And in the position you see it, it is exactly as Dragon have illustrated it in their instructions. Worse – they have moulded pins and holes that lock it into this position. Here’s the view of the port side.

This has nothing whatever to do with what Curtiss made when the plane was 1:1. The outer door needs to sit up tight to the wing opening to actually cover the leg when retracted. Every wartime picture taken of an SB2C shows it clearly.

Someone in Hong Kong goofed and I followed them down the goof-ball route. Fortunately I have a pair of sharp nippers and was able to separate the doors from the legs and reposition them.

Not perfect, but not too far from proper.

Leaves me with the uneasy feeling that I may have put clangers into other aircraft models before by following the moulder’s opinions. I will do more careful reference research in the future.