The Little World

Thank you, thank you. I fully deserve your applause – I have made propellers and engines the HARD way.

Not that I had any choice in the matter. The parts were there and the instructions were uncompromising – ” Do as we say or die “. Or, in the case of the engine mounting struts: ” Do it our way and die and then look carefully at the instructions and realise that we cannot be trusted with simple numbers, let alone a pencil “. If you ever contemplate owning Skoda motor car, remember this…

The propellers were conquered by means of my Photoshop Elements program and its simple graphic sections. You can make a printed paper propeller jig for any number of blades. Then you affix the the blades in the hub with cement and clap on the spinner to seal it in. Yes, I did hand the propellers.

The strut saga has taken me all day – a good deal of it trying to decipher what AZUR mean with their parts numbering. It was only after a wrong cementation that I realised they had misnumbered and mis-drawn most of the diagrams. Fortunately the part came off undamaged and sheer persistence plus laying the struts out on a sticky sheet paid off after a couple of hours.

The engines are attached to the struts but not as yet to the body of the aircraft – that will come after painting. The geometry would not send a rocket to Mars, but this, after all, is a French bomber.

I did not have the heart to tackle the landing gear beforehand. I have no idea what the Prague-wits have up their sleeves.