It’s a theme I’ve visited before, maybe too often, but I
guess the dawn of 2016 is something of an epiphany for me. The last thing I
want this blog to become is an “old modeller’s whining space,” and I’m the
first to admit that there’s been an element of that in a fair few posts, so
this one is all about acknowledging where your limitations fall and agreeing to
play by those rules.
In the past I would probably have stressed a lot about not
being able to install the tow cables on the Brummbar I mentioned back in
January. This time I’m not stressing – I know that the way it is engineered it
is beyond my skills, and there is no mileage in fighting that fact. Similarly,
Dragon’s edition of the Trimaster Me 262 B1a/U1, quite apart from the
fight-you-all-the-way fit of the model, is an exercise in how fiddly Dragon
could make the etched accessories. It’s great that there are tiny levers in the
cockpit, and even grab handles inside the canopy, but when your eyesight will
barely even resolve those parts with
magnification, you need to agree that working with them is an unfair
expectation of yourself, and try not to place so much value on it.
That said, I have to wonder if Japanese engineers are
entirely serious when they design these things. Are they making kits for the virtuoso hobbyist who can tie knots with
tweezers and control objects smaller than the capillary action horizon of
superglue? If they are, then they must just be having a laugh at the other 99%.
That’s why I love Tamiya, their bedrock policy of make it buildable for the average-skills customer. Tamiya outsells
Dragon in my stash by ten or twenty to one, and it’s really no mystery as to
why.
So when faced with the Me 262 canopy, having put the job off
as long as I could, I examined the fit of the instrument panel that goes inside
the canopy arch and found it had no location devices. It’s meant to be glued in
directly, then? To a transparency? Requiring you to guide that tiny,
irregularly shaped part to a solid, precisely aligned contact with the clear
part, and hold it there until the glue had set? No sweat, sarge, my 53-year old tremblers can cope with that no bother…
Not. So the instrument panel part and the etched grab handles do not feature on
this model, just like the reinforced armour glass part inside the windscreen,
and for the same reason – how to you attach it without amateurishly marring the
oh-so-delicate clear parts irreparably in the process?
Enough is enough, this thing has a date with the airbrush –
right after I finagle the fit of the windshield which is made obtuse by the
offset location of the gunsight on this type, and further so by the compromised
fit of the fuselage halves in the first place. Okay, okay, I said no more
whining!
But you get my point. Eventually we build models big enough
to actually see their finest details, and we gravitate to the brands that best
compliment our dexterity. There is no denying that there are brilliant
craftspersons out there who do the most delicate and wonderful work, and I envy
then, I truly do, but if I’m going to continue to derive the same pleasure from
the hobby I always have, I must know where to draw the line, and drop those
microscopic detail parts back in the box. 1:32 and 1:24 are starting to look
real attractive…
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