The Little World

A recent estate sale brought this creature into my life; Lermontov the leaky frog.

He is so named because he is from Russia, is made up of old parts, and is leaking sand all over the photo table. He is an apt analogy for the Novo Airspeed Oxford model. Lermontov cost nothing – the Airspeed Oxford was a whopping $ 1.00 AUD. I keep a careful note of costs.

It probably started life with FROG in about 1963 but the mould went over to Novo in the USSR in 1978. It was re-boxed and possibly had local decals substituted for the original UK ones. The box art you see is an adaptation of the original. Yep, that’s the masking tape price tag.

The parts have all the FROG failings – sink marks, flash, and ejector-pin marks, but they are fixable and all the bits are in the tatty old box.

The decals are history, but the reprinting of the instructions is actually quite good – a beginner could start out with a kit and finish up with an Oxford. I shall devote this one to the BCATP as a companion to the Avro Anson and Cessna Crane – the bottle of Canadian Trainer Yellow has plenty of paint. There are roundels in my decal files and the registration and buzz marks are pure black on clear backing – easy to do.

I was almost contemplating a very expensive die-cast model for this type, but good old FROG/Novo/stash saved the day.