The Little World

Call me suspicious and cynical if you wish – I mean a person like you would…but I suspect that the ranks of photo reconnaissance aircraft are generally made up of fighter failures.

They are either not fast enough, nimble enough, or well-enough armed to succeed on the battlefield, and are relegated to flying above it taking pictures. The sort of place where they get shot at and down by the fighter successes – or the rocket successes. No matter how you play it, the photo trade is a hard business to be in.

The Swift apparently wasn’t – which is also an accusation levelled at my Suzuki Swift motor car by the possessors of more expensive machines. I see them whizz past me on the road all the time and am always cheered when I encounter them waiting at the same sets of lights later. Many of them drive on their brake drums, if not their ear drums.

But back to the Airfix aircraft. The belly tank was a perfect fit, and as ungainly as it seems, doesn’t touch the deck at all. The landing gear literally snaps into place in sockets and is dead-on to begin with. If ther is one feature that keeps me coming back to Airfix it is the improved landing gear. The Czechs are nowhere near the goal compared to Airfix.

I will pin my hopes on Airfix adding a Canberra to their new moulds one day. I cannot ask for a CF-100 Canuck with any realistic hope but one day an old Mastercraft kit may show up on a table.