The Little World

Even if you don’t itch. It’ll be good for you.

The bare tunnel between the open radiator grill and the open cockpit on this Frog model are extreme – even for the early days of moulding. Airfix and Matchbox at least gave you a pilot, even if he was attached to the fuselage side with plastic stalks. This is not good.

Solution was the scrap box . It yielded some Plastruct and Evergreen white styrene while the radiator grill was an almost-perfect plate that may have been in some other engine compartment in another kit. Two licks with a file and it popped in.The distinctive circle in the centre of it can be added later.

Yes, the real Typhoon cockpit is more detailed and the stringers are tubes. But when you have some old door frames and flat plate, it would be a shame to waste them. At least the pilot will have an armoured seat back.

The choice of painting the aircraft with the propeller attached is not a good one – it is dictated by the method of support for the drive shaft. In another build of this sort I wil eschew the Frog design and just back the front of the engine with a wooden block that could be drilled to hold the propeller shaft. The whole thing as moulded is do-able but with difficulty.

And the putty worms are a new product available in Officeworks as a knead-able artist’s eraser. They also sell Faber-Castell erasers for the same purpose, but at twice the price so guess where the smart money is going next time…