The Little World

You get the impression looking at period photos of Canadian training facilities that every aircraft is painted a uniform yellow. Wrong – There were more variations than a butterfly collection.

I was as ignorant about this as anyone until I started to make aircraft for RCAF WET DOG. I got away with an all-yellow Harvard and the same style on an Anson ( one in acrylic and one in enamel ) but after that I had to admit that there were black stripes, green and brown camouflage, and any number of silver and yellow patterns. I gave up and just painted what I could see.

This is one of them – only one yellow warning patch to keep the other trainees alert. There is a big buzz code on the bottom, of course, as these are students after all, but the rest is clean aluminium. The antiglare panel would have been useful above the clouds but down at field level it would have just been another dark moving patch amongst the Alberta buffalo herds.

And you can see I wasn’t kidding about the exhaust pipe heater. I’m a little surprised they didn’t lead the main exhaust pipe through the cockpit and have the pilots straddle on it…