The Little World

Hard to say whether the original owner of this Italeri kit sat on it or rolled over it…but the effects were slightly dire.

The windscreen is cracked and a couple of parts missing. Someone thought so little of it that they put a $ 5 red sticker on it and our committee cleaning out the storeroom liked it even less. It was passed to my care to dispose of; I plan to make it a showpiece of the fire tanker fleet.

The basic mouldings are superb – Italeri standard all the way. It seems to be a kit that might be built in Army, Air Force, or Navy configuration. Coast guards and rescue services use them as well, so the sprues contain winches, torpedoes, rescue pods, and such. There are plenty of illustrations of the aircraft in use for all these purposes, as well as a fire tanker in the US, Canada, and Australia.

The fact that the kit lost its decals long ago is immaterial – I will be making custom ones for the Crows Nest Fire Authority anyway and the only difficulty will be to choose between the various colourful liveries that fire services use. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any uniform scheme between states, provinces, counties, or districts.

There is also some variation in the tank and pump arrangements so I will look at the equipment catalogues and see which I fancy.

One man’s stash trash is another’s treasure. The US Navy scheme would have been too dull for words.