The Little World

Christmas was coming to the hobby shop and it was time to choose my present. In this case before the actual day, so I got a fresh choice.

The SNCAN Martinet was a Siebel 204 produced in France during the occupation and afterwards. It was used by the French air force and then sold on to other European users post-war. I would have passed the package by until I turned over the box and saw that it was going to be perfect for my Luftplatz Strelsau.

There is already one Siebel 204 there – the King’s Aircraft – but it is the earlier model with stepped nose and two-bladed propellers. Here we will have more powerful engines and a streamlined glass nose – as well as an entirely different and quite authentic Scandinavian livery.

The Czech Sneeze company are standard short-run builders so I anticipated slight warpage and indeterminate fixing points – but this would be no worse than it was for the King’s Aircraft. It was a Smêr model and there were enough foibles there. They were all ironed out in the end.

The interior was bare, and this might be a problem – but there were good internet images of the actual plane and I hoped that some are inside shots. I could really luck out if this was a cargo carrier.

One of the traps with this aircraft was seen in the engine nacelles. The landing gear attaches to interior plates that occlude the nacelle. Fine if you take extra care to make sure they are in the right position and very firmly cemented onto the bottom of the wing. Any loosening will collapse the gear after the wing is closed. Fortunately the legs are sturdy enough to stand the weight of the standard aircraft.

The directions were all graphic, but drawn with multi-colours to help visualisation. The decal sheet looked delightful – and if I mucked it up I could make my own from decal paper. I’d take the precaution of scanning it 1:1 beforehand.