Tales from the Workbench

Have you ever been working your way through a model and suddenly realize that you are missing some important bit of plastic, decal, or information that will prevent you from finishing it? I do that sometimes, and today is an example. I am finishing up the Heller Vampire FB5 using an old Modeldecal set. Dickie Ward (one of the greats of our hobby) had a simple philosophy: produce all the uncommon portions of the markings and let the modeller dig up the common things like roundels and serial numbers. Like everyone else of that mid-80s vintage, I picked up a lot of Modeldecal roundel and letter/number sheets in order to be able to do this.

Unfortunately I never picked up #48, which is a set of white numbers/letters in three sizes, including 8”. And that is what it turns out that I need. Yes, I should have noticed this long before now, but I assumed that since I had all the other sheets the white one wouldn’t be an issue.

By a stroke of luck, Hannants, who inherited the Modeldecal stock when Modeltoys left the business many years back, has a stock of MD48. But it is never economical to buy only one sheet and pay the postage, so I will likely pick up a couple of decal sets that have been on my list. Perhaps the Xtradecal Swordfish sheet or one of the Kits-World nose art specials. But it’ll still be a couple of weeks until it gets here. So the Vampire is on the shelf for a short while.

In preparation for a trip to the paint shop is a Tamiya P-47 razor, the white bits of an F-18, a ScottAv Bulldog, and the new Airfix Spit 19.

I had two P-47s in preparation, but the bubbletop was victimized by the carpet monster. I was adding the wing leading edge gun insert, and *ping* off it went into the missingpartosphere. I must have spent two hours searching the room, though I should have known better. I tried getting a replacement part (or more likely, sprue) from Tamiya America today, but only heard the phone ring 20 or so times until it went to voicemail. And voicemail doesn’t really do it when you’re asking a question. I’ll try again tomorrow.