The Little World

This North American OV-10 model has a rather chequered history – it was sold twice and gifted three times before it was built.

It is just this report on my column because it was a quick build. It started life in Korea as an Academy model, made its way to Japan into someone’s stash, and eventually to the second hand shop in Akihabara district in Tokyo called Leonardo’s. My daughter bought it for me on a holiday trip to Japan just before Covid hit.

I wanted to give a present to a friend, so it went unbuilt to him for Christmas in 2020. He passed it back to me when cleaning out his stash in 2021. I built it fast so that he could appreciate it…he got to see pictures of it completed.

I have never been disappointed in an Academy kit, and would choose them in preference to many others in the shops. They are good value and are always free of flash or other annoyances. Even a subject that I wouldn’t have approached initially becomes an object of interest once you get the sprue trees out of the plastic bag.

I appreciated each feature, but I would have been happier with a colour call-out for the schemes – the box art sufficed for the USAF version, but there was another one that other people might have liked. I knew that it was going to be a mess of stencils anyway so I just steeled myself to it. As long as a surface is glossy and you’ve got the radio on, you can stencil with your mind off…

I did appreciate the diagram Academy put in the instructions detailing possible load-outs for the aircraft. I am not an expert in this sort of aircraft so I would be committing laughable errors otherwise.

The aircraft will join an increasing range of Vietnam-era planes in the collection. Never thought I would do that. Must look into a diorama setting.