The Little World

But you should believe me. Honest.

The aviation aficionados may be wondering why a railway carriage company should be credited with building Harvard II aircraft – when we all know North American made the AT-6 Texan and SNJ. Well they also leased out the plans for the things to other makers – a lot like Lockheed, Fairchild, and others – and wartime necessity meant a lot of plants made essentially the same things. That was the beauty of efficient government control of production – when it had a war to deal with, the power base of manufacturing widened immensely.

This is not the first Harvard or Texan plane that I’ve built – an Academy and a Hobby Boss kit have also been built. The former was completed as a 1940’s RCAF trainer…the latter as an Israeli general service aircraft. The Academy kit was pretty good, and would probably be rated highest of the three, but it needed some fancy scratch building to make the distinctive Canadian exhaust heater system. This Airfix kit has it as a basic part on the sprue tree. I am ever so grateful I picked this up as it will fall exactly into my plans for a 60’s RCAF aerobatic aircraft.

The cockpit is sad and bare, save two seats sitting on beams from the fuselage sides. There are no control sticks or throttles and only the most basic of instrument panels separating the student from the instructor. Nevertheless it can be painted green and under a 60’s thick canopy will at least show colour if not detail.

Had I elected to spend 10x the price for the Eduard kit that came round earlier in the year I might have had an Academy kit base, some resin, and some PE, as well as a 5-plane decal sheet. I shall save money, print my own decals, and end up with just as pleasing a result.

Note that I print decals in multiples – I can never predict whether I’ll stuff up the first one.