Loft Insulation

Like a lot of modelers (most, I would wager) I buy many times more kits than I actually finish. This leads to the steady accumulation of a backlog of unbuilt kits that grows over time. In British model magazines this collection of unbuilt kits is known as "loft insulation", probably because most British modelers tend to store their stash in their attics. Me, I used to store mine out in the garage, but it turns out that this form of storage can be lethal to models, especially aircraft models.

Many of my airplane models are very old. I can't remember when I bought my OEZ Su-7, but it's been decades. I have a Heller Potez light bomber that may be the oldest model in my entire collection, a conclusion I base on the antique style of decoration used on the Heller box top. I have several old Monogram X-15s that date from the previous release of the kit, and... The point is that I have a bunch of old airplane models, and they are becoming almost impossible to build.

Not because the plastic is going bad. I find well-aged styrene that has been stored for long periods of time in my garage to be workable. A little more brittle than usual, but entirely functional in every other respect, and most of my models don't even show much warpage. And, since I've been building models on a fairly consistent basis since 1966, what kind of modeler would I be if I couldn't handle a few warped parts? I mean, really. Model reviewers have heart attacks when they find warped parts in review kits, but come on, just deal with it already.

No, what goes bad are the decals. I can usually build car or armor models without decals, either by substituting other decals, going without, or masking up my own. But an airplane model is often very difficult to finish in any kind of convincing way without decals, or even with fake decals. Sure, I could finish an Su-7 by slathering USAF decals on it, but how convincing would it be? And there's something about storage in the garage that ruins decals. Sometimes the decal becomes visibly ruined. I was just reviewing the contents of the Italeri 1/72nd scale B-26K Counter-Invader I had in my garage and found that the decal carrier film had "granulated" and turned into something resembling 120 grit sandpaper. That's ruined, me buckos, in any language. Other times, the carrier film breaks up when wetted and the decal breaks up like the sub-Arctic ice pack in late spring. Sometimes the decals just go haywire - I had one a while back where the carrier film remained intact, but all the ink washed off.

I'd guess that three-quarters of the models I've tried to build out of my garage stash have suffered from bad decals in one way or another, most of them unrecoverable. In those cases, I selected incorrect but functional decals out of my stash just so I could finish the clunker model and hang it from the ceiling of the garage. Some of these "just so I could finish it" schemes are attractive, but they're all bogus. A Britten-Norman Islander in gloss orange with Finnish Air Force markings? I don't think so, but it looks nice. A P-63 King Cobra in markings permanently borrowed from a Fighter Command Tempest V? Again, it's not likely, but it looks nice.

Looks nice, but it doesn't pass muster as a real model.

So what's a boy to do? I had (at last count) about 12 aircraft models in the garage that I was pretty sure had suffered from decal damage. Leaving them sit wasn't going to make them any better, so I decided to just knuckle under and build the things. I got me a big ole bottle of MEK, a trashed paint brush, sidecutters and a knife, and I built them. I built them all. Models piled up in one box, and expended sprues piled up in another box, and unused parts populated a new annex of my spare parts collection. I picked schemes that were simple enough that they could be done with spray cans or an airbrush without masking. I didn't bother with excessive anal-retentive cockpit or landing gear detailing, and in most cases I - gasp! - built them with their landing gear up in the first place. And then I coated each and every decal sheel with two coats of Microscale decal film, and I applied the decals with mild decal solvents.

The results are mixed. Some of these garage-stored kits turned out very nicely. MPM's XF-85 and XP-55, for example, turned out so nicely that I backtracked and detailed them for more intimate viewing. Others, not so much. The Algerian Su-7 that I so had my heart set on turned out all right, but only if you stay about eight feet away from it. My old Israeli Neshr didn't turn out so hot, but it captured the critical recognition feature of the original - those funky black and yellow triangles - so it'll do. And my PV-1 Neptune? That was a complete disaster, decal-wise. I couldn't even salvage the decals after I'd coated them twice with decal film - they would simply never release from the paper, even after an hour of soaking, perhaps because the paper had turned porous and the decal film had cured in the voids, permanently bonding the two together. Either way, I found bogus decals and it looks okay, but only if you stay about ten feet away (the numbers on the rudders are, amusingly enough, from a BRDM-2 armored car model).

So I'm in the process of cleaning out my old garage-stored kits, and I'm hoping that my decal woes will now end, because I now store decals in the cool darkness of a plastic shoe tote in my closet, where I'm hoping they'll last a usefully long period of time without going to pot. I'm also breaking down and storing any reasonably high-grade kits in the closet as well, such as the rather expensive Fw-200 Condor and He-177 Greif kits I laid in, not to mention the spanking-new Italeri XB-70 and the Lindberg Snark.

But you know what? I don't mind that much. Like a lot of modelers I suffer from a syndrome where I plan a lot of models, and I even start a few, but I rarely finish any of them. This business of sitting down and getting these old garage-stored models out of the system has been fun because I've actually been building, and finishing, and that's what modeling is all about, at least in part, isn't it? I've finished, or am very close to finishing:

Special Hobby I-15 biplane
MPM XF-85 Goblin
MPM XP-55 Ascender
OEZ Su-7BK
Academy PV-1 Neptune
PM Models Neshr/Mirage V
Academy Me-163B Komet
Academy OV-10A Bronco
ICM Il2-M3 Sturmovik
Lindberg XFY-1 Pogo
Dragon Ar-234 with Julia parasite
Heller Potez light bomber

Fun!