Hi,
Yesterday I didn't have the grand kids to baby sit so
I decided to get out the Dragon's new Flame half track and take a stab at it. Read over Teacher's very fine article a couple of times on building it, and took a good look at his photos and made some notes on the instructions according to his comments. (Thanks Teacher for a very fine article.) So I decided to start on the 'compressor' unit thingy, just to see what it was all about.

To make a long story short, it took me most of the morning to build as this little bitty sub-assembly, as it consists of something like 45 or 46 individual plastic parts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I literally can not believe this thing!! The plastic tips that connects a lot of these pieces to the spure are bigger than the actual parts themselves.

Luckily, and I do say luckily, I only lost one of part (K7) due to 'tweezer launch.' And I didn't even take the time to look for it as I'm pretty sure even God woud be hard-pressed to find it as well. Instead I substitued some very small wire for this piece and used CA to connect parts K28-29 together. While I was at it I also drilled some small holes into the ends of parts L-11 and CA-ed some wire into the ends of these and into the holes I drilled in part K-28 to hold this section more securely.

I'm pretty darn sure that this is as detailed a piece as I ever what to build in modeling, at least in this small of scale. I thank the modeling gods that I was able to put the thing together, but I believe I will put this kit up for a while and go back to this company's Inital Tiger kit so I will have something much bigger to work with. Ha, ha!

My hat is off to Dragon for designing such a detailed and intricate model, but now I'm kind of wondering just how much is enough. Think that I've pretty much found my limit here.

Take care, Sgirty

Ah, the tweezer launch saga. Don't ya' hate that? I have four of the 251's awaiting the glue and paint. I can only hope I don't launch any parts, but lets figure the odds. Don't give up. :-) "Q"

Talking about tweezer lauch, I had a funny case of that a few years ago. I was building a mini cooper and I was cutting the headlights from the sprues when murphy's law kicked in. The tiny headlight launched itself from my tweezer into the great unknown (or so I thought)
I sweared, and started thinking how to scratch-build a replacement. I then made a mould from "green stuff" 2-part putty and formed another headlight from clear sprue and formed the part by heating the sprue and then pressing it against the mould. After some tedious cutting and filing, I had two headlights.
Then, after about 6 months I found the missing part, it was on my modeling table, on top of a turf container. About 30cm from my face! :-)