I saw those words, with something of a disagreeable
surprise, in Eduard’s sets of generic WWII USAAF and USN harness. Surprise because, having used their
Luftwaffe sets, I expected there to be a general steer on which common types
used which design. Disagreeable
because I know my references pretty well and seat belts are not a subject they
go into in their discussions of classic aircraft, well, at all.
I seemed to hear Captain Jack Sparrow, in a rum-induced
grammatical phantasm, say in my ear “Well that is just so incredibly not
helpful…”
My nose is a bit out of joint here. You expect those who
have access to the primary information to be able to manufacture the product
would give a little – tell you which
peg goes in which hole, at least, instead of making you guess. Maybe hobbyists
who are serious enough to buy AM products have been demographically identified
as latent rivet-counters whose book shelves are crammed with esoteric sources
that provide all such information, so the firm can save five minutes and a
microgram of printer toner by not telling you. Or maybe we’re funnier as we
are…
Have you tried Googling “P-51 Mustang seat belts?” You get
an eclectic mix, composed almost entirely of after-market model bits and macro
cockpit photos, all of which are less than helpful because none of them really
resemble the parts on the Eduard frets (does that say something about generic
ideals and accuracy?), but nothing whatever about the real harness in the real
plane. There are plenty of instrument panel photos out there, but nobody, it
seems, ever considers the seat belts important enough to mention or depict. We
modellers, of course, are obsessed with them, because they should be there, and firms like the aforementioned Eduard have
made a good thing out of it.
I’m not saying there aren’t plenty of modellers who have all
the data they need for this not to be a problem, but I thought after a lifetime
of collecting that I had a pretty good suite of data on the type, good enough
to answer most generic questions regarding detail, and it’s a rude surprise to
find that it ain’t necessarily so.
How did I answer the question? I Googled a specific Eduard
Mustang etched set and matched the belts on that fret to ones on the generic fret.
That’s sort of going round by the back door, but it worked well enough to move
the project along. I’m never really happy doing things this way, and tend to
gibe at the necessity, but when the product has a shortfall it’s down to our
individual cunning to make up for it. That doesn’t always mean Microstrip and superglue…
Posts
