The Little World

When you find a pair of shoes that fit exactly – and they are on special sale – and you have the money – you owe it to your feet to buy them. And the same applies to model kits.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here – I mean it’s model kit builders reading this column and who would pass up the chance of a great kit when it presented itself? You can starve yourself and the family and sleep on the floor after you sell the bed, but not buying a model kit is just sinful.

Fortunately I was virtuous. The North American Yale by RS Models came up on a Metro Hobbies sale just at a time when I was trying to complete the stable for WASMEX so I could show my RCAF training airfield. Still looking for an Airspeed Oxford or a Fleet Fort or a Cornell but this will do nicely for the time being.

I am more and more impressed by RS, KP, and Sword as I build more of their models. Clean sprue trees, good resin, and reasonably buildable PE. Reasonably is a rubber term…

This one packs itself onto two brown sprue trees and a clear shot. I see a detailed tube structure for the cockpit that would be terrifying in resin of PE. The injected parts seem clean and inviting. One can only hope the assembly will go between the fuselage halves with little cutting – those are thin tubes.

At least the instructions are clean looking – though I view communications from Prague with suspicion these days. I look forward to the point in the kit build when I can throw them out of the window…always a particularly satisfying thing to do with items from central Europe…

The decals look tasty. I am going to build a simple version to complement the Academy Harvard that already sits on the hardstand. And as there are cheap Harvard kits still on our local shelves, the excess designs may well get a run later.