I
knew I was for it when Bob the Plastic Pusher got that look in his eye as I
sauntered into the shop. Joe, my
man, he simpered, I've got just the thing for you.
We just got in a shipment of 1/72 Wensleydales.
Be the first at the club to show one!
Uh, right What's a
Wensleydale? It's one of those
one-off Brit prototypes with a really interesting history.
Cute as a bug's ass, too. Well,
let's have a look Bob was back out
from the stock room in a jiffy with the hand truck, trundling a stout wooden box
that would have held a medium sized watermelon.
I thought you said this thing was 1/72?
It is. They went a bit over
the top with the packaging. No
crushed-in-transit parts on this baby! Pasted
to the top was a sheet of newsprint with a crudely rendered image of something
that looked vaguely like a tandem wing Lysander, in bright pink.
It did have something about it that sort of got to me.
Mmmm how much?
A mere $197.95 and it's yours to romp with.
Aw, why not?
First
Look
And
so it came to pass that my stout wooden box came to repose on the modeling room
floor. The chiropractor tells me I'll
be good as new in a month or so. Meanwhile,
what hath ESIW wrought? And I do
mean wrought here; ESIW turns out to mean Elbonian State Iron Works.
Inside the box there reposed four sprues of finely molded parts in cast
iron, neatly packed in straw. A
separate compartment held a delicately hand-blown glass canopy with etched
frames and cutting lines. The
instruction sheet consisted of two large newsprint pages with seven walk-around
images of what appeared to be the full-sized aircraft, and a potted history in
several obscure languages.
History
Fortunately
the pictures rang a bell that sent me to the gen mine and, ah, yes, here it is,
a feature article in a 1972 issue of an Eastern European magazine a pen pal had
sent me. It seems that Elbonia,
which will be familiar to readers of the Dilbert comic strip, has owed its
independence to its neighbors being in deep denial of its existence for
historical reasons too complicated and disgusting to repeat here.
That suited the Elbonians fine, but led to a quandary when, having heard
that the the airplane had been invented, they decided to start an air force.
Their service parameters required not leaving their own airspace, which
meant a very short takeoff run and a very low airspeed.
That, in the years before the deployment of helicopters, meant they
wanted a Lysander. The RAF couldn't
spare any, but the staff at
Westland
saw no harm in showing them the Tandem Wing prototype which, by then, was
evidently going nowhere. That
suited, but the Elbonians pointed out they saw something odd in shooting at a
ground target they were flying away from; wouldn't it make better sense to see
it coming? A
midnight
trip to the boneyard down the road sorted that, and voila, the Elbonian Tandem
Wing Swamp Strafer came to be. The
thing actually did take off in a short space and did fly very slowly, so
everyone smiled for the cameras and off with the new Elbonian Air Force to its
homeland. Unfortunately, 97% of
Elbonia is knee deep in the thickest stickiest mud in
Europe
which made the whole country a very effective roach motel for aircraft, so they
ended up just parking it in front of the Presidential Hovel and painting it
pink, as per the box top illustration.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Construction
On
lugging the sprues out of the box, I found myself contemplating 42 nicely molded
parts, although the attachment points were a tad thick.
Nothing a small blow torch couldn't cope with, so I set to work with that
and the grinding wheel and files. In
a matter of weeks, I had everything cleaned up and laid out on the bench.
In the bottom of the box were several manila packets of fine colored
glass powder. The cartoon-type notices
on the envelopes indicated I should mix the glass powder with water to make
a slip, smear it onto the prepped iron parts, and use the blowtorch to glaze the
parts. That not only gave me the
authentic (I assume?) colors but the enamel makes the iron rustproof.
Pretty slick! Then it was
just a matter of welding everything together.
Assembly is simplicity itself, as the fuselage is a solid one piece unit
with the cockpit fiddlies riding on the upper end of the forward U/C insert.
The wings have a gratifyingly solid alignment thanks to the massive
plug-in lugs, which fit precisely with the aid of a small mallet (not included).
Seam filling was no problem, since the glaze ran into the cracks and left
them invisible. There were no
decals included, so I raided the bits box for the national markings.
Conclusion
Well,
it isn't your typical Tamigawa shake-n-bake, that's for sure, and the shelves at
K-Mart won't be flooded with them. The
result is a colorful and unusual resident for your shelf that is sure to
generate some interesting conversations. It
will also be a hoot when the inevitable touchie-feelie moron tries to pick it up
and fractures his toe. Highly
recommended for those with "some modeling skills" and the necessary
metal-working equipment!
Now
if I could find out what kits no. 1 through 6 were, if they existed.
Joe
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