The Little World

Alors!

As soon as you see a good idea – then a better idea – all the ideas prior to it become bad ones. Students of model kit design are particularly sensitive to this, because we pay high prices for our education.

Remember the old model airplane kits you bought that had a slot on either side of the fuselage where the wing was meant to attach and a plastic tab on one half of the wing? You cemented it together in preparation for the day when it flexed and broke off. This could be soon if the plastic was 1950’s brittle.

Then the makers stated sharing the tab to both the top and bottom of the wing. A tougher tab and it generally held together until the fuselage join cracked.

Then someone tried burying the join of the wing and fuselage into a shallow rebate around the wing. Much better – with a bit of care the cement join would disappear, and if there was enough surface plastic to meet in there the wing would not break off. If you put enough force on it you could split the top or bottom seam on the fuselage, which was a foolish thing to do.

But now Hasegawa and Airfix have taken to putting stub spars through the fuselage, supported by interior structures. These can be detailed or not, but have the advantage of spreading the flexing force through the fuselage and isolating the top seams. The struts slide into grooves in the wing, the wing slides into rebates in the fuselage, and the whole is stiff and tough.

Other makers please note…