Dearly beloved, you may already know the story of why the model aeroplane sits on his tail. But just in case your memory isn’t what it used to be…
A lot of propeller driven aeroplanes have tailwheels, which suits the tail-heavy weight distribution of a plastic model. This is very different from the weight distribution of a real aeroplane. (Let’s say ‘weight’ rather than ‘mass’, but it doesn’t make any real difference on this planet). A non-flying model of an aeroplane typically has no engine(s). All the weight is evenly distributed in the (relatively thick) plastic skin. By a happy coincidence, in this case your model sits back on its tailwheel, nicely.
However, if your model aircraft has a tricycle undercarriage, what it wants to do most is to sit on its tail, with its nosewheel in the air. So you need to put some ballast in the nose to make it sit nicely. In the old days, toxic lead shot or fishing weights, maybe plasticene. Working out the right amount of ballast and getting to fit can be tricky.
If you don’t know about this already, and the instructions don’t tell you, you find out too late. When your model aeroplane is glued together with every orifice sealed, sitting happily on his tail.
More enlightened model manufacturers give you some clues – like Tamiya with their 1/48 MiG-15:
Unlike the original 1/72 Airfix version, as you may recall.
The Monogram 1/72 A-10 had a different approach – a transparent strut which the instructions didn’t really show you how to fix, as if it was some sort of dirty secret.
There isn’t much room inside the nose of a 1/72 A-10 to add enough weight. Obviously the real thing has a big gun in the nose, and loads of depleted uranium ammunition (in the old days, at least). The environmentally friendly alternative, tungsten alloys, are also notoriously dense. If they weren’t so brittle, perhaps they could run the country.
However, as Hasegawa show us, the ballast approach is feasible for your model A-10 – they even tell us how much:
Disappointingly, they don’t recommend depleted uranium ballast (unlike at least one manufacturer of 1:1 scale helicopters). Even though a single cm3 of DU would give us the required 18 grams, and offer a tangible connection to the original aircraft.
Then again, perhaps literally tangible DU isn’t such a good idea after all. We can look at the ICM Chernobyl collection another time.