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.

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