The Little World

Or you won’t be faring at all. Scratch-building at the order of the kit maker is a strange feeling.

I do not shy from it, as I scratch build many of my airport structures, but it still smacks a little of ” don’t care ” when the instructions demand it and there are no parts on the sprue trees. So far it is only to be some struts – but they will be complex additions to the tailplane as well as landing gear door actuators.

Oddly enough, even though this is legitimately a multi-version kit in the duplicated clear canopies and noses, the plug that was meant to smooth over the fuselage in place of the dorsal turret is nowhere to be found. It has a number on the instruction sheet but no sprue tree to supply it.

A more serious matter is the hollow wing I mentioned n a previous post. I have laminated two strips of thick styrene card and then shaped plugs for the wings. Set in with thick cement, theses were left to set overnight to get the most stable surface for attachment. But even that doesn’t suggest complete safety, so a brass tube from the scrap box has been made to run through the fuselage and wings altogether.

This has the advantage of absorbing any forces that might tend to split the fuselage halves on the underside when the wings are flexed. I cannot honestly say whether the tube or rod structure is technically better than fabricating a flat bar out of sheet styrene from the hobby shop – or of using a wooden spar – but the tube was in the scrap box and free is always good design.