The Little World

I never used to take the slightest notice of Advice To Mariners. It could be blowing a gale round Beachy Head…or Bayswater for that matter…and I couldn’t have cared less. That was before I got an airbrush and a bad habit.

The habit is spray painting model aircraft, so don’t be judgemental.

The business of making model kits is dead simple when you’re a kid. Cement ‘em together and paint ‘em with a brush. You can do it on the kitchen table and the only worry is picking up your stuff before your Mum serves dinner. As an adult it all becomes much harder. You cannot pretend to be serious modeller if you do not spray paint something and once you have progressed past the $ 15 rattle can to the $ 250 airbrush, you are committed to succeed or die.

The problems mount, and one of the chief ones that they do not tell you about is the weather. You can spoil an airbrush paint job eight different ways based upon the atmosphere. A good paint job is only achieved by luck and bribery – in this case you slip money to the Met Bureau and ask for the tip-off on the next race.

One day dawned calm, become warm, and has continued so throughout the day. The humidity was very low – our section of Australia is a dry place. There were few flies yet. The venomous snakes and spiders were busy elsewhere. There was a slight danger of politicians but we learned to live with peril in the last few years and it was worthwhile setting out an airbrush job.

The job was two air-mail planes for the Ruritanian Poste. Leftover WW2 bombers that could still fly and deliver letters and parcels to Africa and Asia…one wonders why Ruritanians should want to communicate with distant continents, but perhaps there is a Ruritanian Sweepstakes and they need to send out letters to prospective betters.

Don’t know about you, but post offices to me are associated with the colour red. And a red bomber is as novel an idea as any other. So red – and white – were chosen, with a suitable post office logo for the tails. The reports further on of the two builds will detail the civil registration markings and there will be a regulation established for future planes as well. Old bombers only last so long before they fail to start or are lost in the mountains on a rainy night.