The Lost Art of Dry-Fitting: Ouragan Part 2

You have to put the parts together and look at how they fit. Doing this involves the risk of looking and feeling foolish when the whole thing comes apart and lands on the floor. But that does not excuse you, Grasshopper, from doing it.

I think I will declare myself to be Plastic Kit Monk. My method of building plastic kits will be “Slow Hand Style” or “Drunken Crane Style.”

Yes. That’s it. It certainly makes the inscrutable lack of flexibility displayed by ye olden masters much more understandable when you try to teach people who don’t want to be taught. “Hold the brush this way..”

“Oh I can’t do that! What a fool, expecting ME to do THAT!”

A quick chop to the throat, out the door of the castle and into the moat. Next student.

In this image, I have taken that sub-assemblies and put them together, holding them with humanoid fingers visible in this low-resolution imagery.

I’m looking for a way to put a little weight in the nose. It’s not going to be easy. I wish the worthies who had built this plane had deigned to enlighten us on whether it really needed a weight, but nobody seems to know. I guess it’s embarrassing to have a tail-sitter, and if you put a weight in there, there’s no way to tell is it’s “needed.”

It’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in action.

I’ve decided to put one small weight in behind the instrument panel.

Then I can attach the panel to the weight. I use lead fishing weights (still legal to sell–but barely). I’ll put one in there and it will give me the needed weight and solve a problem with the panel. All of this comes from the lousy Heller instructions. They’re not as terrible as some, but they’re not good, either.

The pitot tube is attached to the splitter plate in the kit. This old kit is actually quite nice. I just wish the instructions were better. Heller, to their everlasting shame, provide only paint numbers that match their brand of paint.

For shame.

Oh well. With a name like Heller, it has to be good.