The Little World

With my sincere apologies to Wayne Newton…

These two donks have been the most complex engines I’ve yet seen in a 1:72 kit. The fuel pipes and cooling assembly alone should have frightened me away, but I was too foolish to run.

Over a couple of weeks the constituent parts have been cemented on – and sometimes cut off again when it was realised that they were in the wrong place. Roden’s purely diagrammatic instructions leave a lot to be desired, particularly when they are stingy with extra pictures.

Still, I got there, and I can only hope the things are precise enough in their cradles to go into the correct position. The next step – top and bottom wings united by 12 straight inter-plane struts with two engines sitting suspended between them – is the most daunting part of the kit. Even the box art frightens me.

Oh, the top of the hull stays off until the wing assembly drops into slots from above. A simple thing to mask with tape and rubber solution, and as lon as you leave the control horns off until later, you can mask the yellow tail planes easily.