The Little World

The original tail of the F.13 is a beauty – looks like a bird’s plumage made in tin…very reminiscent of a WW1 design. But when the City Of Prince George was delivered it had a very much more modern and conventional fin with a balanced rudder.

Fortunately this sort of model was also made by a Canadian modeller from the same kit and he put his formula for the new tail onto the internet from – of all places – Prince George B.C. I copied out his drawing, compared it with the plastic Revell example, and made a full-scale plan. That’s a scrap proof-of-concept piece in the picture.

I was very fortunate in having several sheets of thin corrugated aluminium purchased years ago from the now-defunct Stanbridges hobby shop. They were probably intended for model railway use but the corrugations looked great as Junkers material. I tried the effect of cutting the sheet with the powerful little scissors made for etched brass. If you cut a left and right pattern the slight curling of the edges cancelled each other out.

Once mounted and super-glued in place, it quite looked the part.

And a final salute to the moulders at Revell. The fuselage and wing set together very well with very little filler. And the corrugations match up.

Whoops – went past Part two. You’ll get them both today, Just read backwards…