The Little World

” The Inevitables ” is a cartoon band of super-heroes that you eventually watch, even if you don’t want to…

The inevitables in a complex kit from Eastern Europe are the things that don’t fit and the things that are too complex.

The first was illustrated when I found gaps in the structure – yawning gulfs at the wing/fuselage interface. To be fair, I may have contributed to the situation by building the wings before the fuselage, but fortunately slivers of strip styrene filled the gaps and blended in with the corrugated structure.

The drop-down machine gun positions in the underside of the wings were just too fiddly, and I happily plated them shut – this was an export plane to China.

The tail skid ( tail skid…in a 1930’s design…) is complex, and detailed and I have no confidence that it will last the length of the build, let alone display of the model. When the inevitable happens, I will replace it with a wheel from the spares box, as Tupolev should have done.

The landing gear legs were distorted into a tip-up position, so I heated them briefly with a creme brulee torch and bent them straight again.