Confessions Of A Terrible Modelmaker (pt 1)

 Like a lot of kids I used to make plastic model kits when I was growing up. I even had the classic "Spitfires hanging from a string" display over my bed for many years. They fell down quite a lot.
 But truth be told, I wasn't actually good at making models.  Thanks to a combination of impatience and being epically cack-handed the end result was never going to win any prizes. Gluey-thumbprints, lumpy paintwork, wonky wings, decals slapped onto unpainted plastic - all present and correct.
 Not that this ever stopped me, of course.  I may never have won any "Model of the week" contests but I was having fun and I could pretend that I was Air Marshall of the Royal Dalanian Airforce when nobody was looking.

 After a while I drifted away from Airfix in favour of LPs, comics and alcohol and managed to spend the next thirty years or so without gluing my fingers together even once.

 Then one day I was poking about Matalan and somehow ended up coming home with an Airfix Typhoon kit .
Next thing I knew, the top of my fridge looked like this.

As you may have noticed, I still quite like Spitfires.

I have another 3 or 4 currently sitting on top of my kitchen cabinets while I work out where the hell to put them. 

 Naturally I assumed I'd be a lot better at sticking kits together. I mean, I'm older and wiser...right?

Wrong. 

 While I may be a lot more patient and less inclined to rush the job so I can play with the finished product, it hadn't occurred to me that I might still have the dexterity of an 80 year old alcoholic who had his arms amputated then sewn back on upside down.  

 Basically I still have the same cack-handed fingers that I had when I was 12, except now they are twice the size .

 Here's another slight problem. When you are trying to fit one tiny bit into another tiny bit it helps if you aren't simultaneously short-sighted and longsighted. 

 My neighbours think I have Tourettes. Nope, it's just that the bastard radio aerial just pinged off into the gap behind the fridge yet again. 

 But if you think this is going to stop me making kits, you are sadly mistaken.

Here's what I've been building recently.

 I saw it in Waterlooville models and thought it looked really cool, with the little finlets and all.

Plus, it's quite an obscure aircraft in a colour scheme you don't see very often.

 Take a closer look at the cover again. Bottom right hand corner. 

I didn't notice that until I got home.  It turns out that this is a hypothetical version and I can't help feeling that that's cheating. Why not just paint it bright purple and have it belong to the 2nd Fighter Bomber Wing of the Imperial Lemurian Air Korps?

 A bit of research reveals that the F6U Pirate is obscure for a reason. Quite a lot of the early jets were underpowered and tricky to fly but even by 1950s standards the Pirate was an utter turkey. The USN bought a few for trials then quickly got rid of them after they saw what the pilots were putting in their reports. 

 Evidence suggests that if the El Salvador Air Force had bought Pirates, they would all have quickly ended up embedded in one ploughed field after another. 

 In the next post we shall see how I actually got on with building this kit. 

I warn you now, it won't be pretty. 

MORE ABOUT THE UNFORTUNATE F6U PIRATE HERE.