HUGO'S WAY OF COMPLETING A MODEL AIRCRAFT KIT.

1. Look at instructions

2. Try to comprehend instructions

3. Throw away instructions, swearing that comprehension of instructions is impossible and resolve to ask questions of ARC members until they tell you to read the FAQ “before asking any more questions”.

4. Glue all parts that presumably go together. (ie. tires, ordnance...etc) Invariably get something wrong. Like glue Phoenix halves to wrong half of Phoenix halves. Fins end up glued together. (curse about it for half an hour while fixing it).

5. Sand off excess glue. Rescribe lines that were invariably lost due to sanding. Curse under breath while doing that. Swear that you'll get Tenax or something less messy than Testors tube glue when you have the money to do so.

6. Glue wing halves together.

7. Look at each fuselage half...figure out which paint exactly matches the interior of the cockpit...go buy paint because invariably the paint you have that you're supposed to use will be bone-dry and unusable.

8. Paint cockpit sidewalls...(swear that you don't have an airbrush and put that on your list of things to get that will more than likely be pre-empted by your vehicle taking what spare money you've collected for your airbrush, by breaking down).

9. Decide whether or not you're going to buy aftermarket, scratch build, or build OOB on your cockpit and (if aftermarket) frantically go around pleading, begging and hoping someone has it on ARC Marketplace and is willing to part with it or that someone on ARC Marketplace will point you in the right retail direction.

10. Paint the cockpit parts. Swear that you hate those small control sticks. Swear you'll get a magnifier lamp once you have the money, which will more than likely be AGAIN pre-empted by your vehicle taking what spare money you've collected for your magnifier lamp, by breaking down.

11. Glue cockpit parts together. Invariably end up gluing your fingers to the control stick, thus necessitating the removal of aforesaid control stick by means of tweezers. Whereupon at this point, the control stick goes on a ballistic trajectory (think trying to grasp food with chopsticks, same concept) and therefore, the Drat's Third Law of "solids visual effect translucent" takes effect, "upon contact with solid surface, a solid object can be rendered invisible to human or augmented sight". This will effectively end your modeling efforts for the day while you spend the rest of it searching futilely for the now rendered invisible part. By the next day, you will have given up and started scratch building a new part.

12. Once your cockpit is finished painting and put together, you will now endeavor to fit the part and then place the two cockpit halves together. More than likely the part will not fit. Putty the gaps unless the gap is big enough to fit the Grand Canyon. If it continues to not fit, Step 2 is scratch build or sand.

13. Once you have made the cockpit fit, you will proceed to the rear-quarter fuselage halves if necessary (some kits do have their cockpit separate from the rear-quarter). You can start rescribing panel lines. Scribing is subjective...and it all depends on how annoying you want this build to become. Two Laws apply here. Speed and Accuracy. The slower you scribe, the more likely your scriber will slip. The quicker you scribe, the more likely your scriber will slip. This is called the "Scriber's Law of Similar Results" roughly translated into “Damned if you do; Damned if you don’t!”

14. Attach the wings. It would be much easier if the aircraft didn’t have tail planes, but most of them do. If you don’t like tail planes, delta wings are much easier. Again decide if a aftermarket kit would be much easier to deal with (if you want the rudder pointing in a certain direction or flaps down…etc etc etc…ad infinitum ad nauseum). Decide if you want to put the dremel tool to your prized kit. Guaranteed what can go wrong will go wrong. More than likely your wings will droop necessitating an emergency propping with books and other assorted flat objects. Or even worse, your dremel tool will develop a weird fetish to styrene and eat more of it than necessary. To prevent wing-droop, it is advisable to attach the wings with crazy glue, whereupon you will, more often than not, glue your fingers to the wing joins. This may or may not result in a run to the hospital emergency room unless you have the foresight to have purchased the crazy glue “unsticking” agent. Either way, you can be sure of one thing: PAIN.

15. Take Putty and fill in the gaps. The wider the gap, the hungrier the gap will be…and you can be sure you’ll wish that putty came in the same size pails as wall spackle. The objective is to get the gap as small as possible before needing to putty. Most of the time, with certain kits, this is not possible. Some kit manufacturers pride themselves on their close affiliation with putty manufacturers.

16. Once the putty has dried, sand the putty smooth. This will probably result in more gaps necessitating the repeat of step 15 and 16 over and over and over and over…until you give up and say “that’s enough” and go on to step 17.

17. Decide which paint scheme you’re going to paint the aircraft then assume that the paint that you own has dried in the jar…as per step 7 and go to the store and buy up the stock of paint that you need. This is known as the Chikamori Dictum of Pre-Emptive Buying, which says “When you purchase paints without checking first if the jar is dry and unusable, the opposite will be true.” This will result in your having two useable jars of the colors that you need until such time as you decide to check your jars and find out that both of them have gone dry and unusable.

18. Mask off the aircraft and paint starting with the lightest color first. If you start with the lightest color, the rule of thumb is that the darkest color will always show through. White will never co-operate necessitating repetitive coatings unless you add some other color to it. This confuses white into thinking that it is some other color, presumably.

19. Attach the undercarriage. More than likely it will be made of weak plastic and persist in snapping in two. Whereupon you will have to resort to white metal casting to replace the part or asking on ARC Marketplace to replace the part, hoping that someone will have built their aircraft gear-up. Make sure you paint your undercarriage, having weathered it first.

20. Paint your underwing stores, such as bombs, missiles, and droptanks. Guaranteed there will be touchups required. More often than not, the stores despite their size will take longer to dry than the actual model.

21. Apply the decals. If necessary, use MicroSet or MicroSol to firmly affix the decals to the fuselage. More often than not, the decal will develop a firm emotional attachment to your fingers and refuse to part from them. A Q-tip should be sufficient as a divorce tool. Future your aircraft or whatever you use to seal in the decals to your model. Keep Future from being used on the floor. Hide it. Or use some form of sealant that will apply a flat finish if needed.

22. Attach your underwing stores to the model. Use Krazy Glue. Most of the time the stores will more than likely fall off. Often more than once. The Military call this phenomenon "TOFA", short for "Things Falling Off Aircraft" In modeling, call it "realism"

23. Photograph your model. Note that model photographs will turn out one of three ways: too light, too dark, too blurry and any combination of the three.

Addendum: Think about deep-sixing the model into the circular file at any point after Step 4. Contemplate taking up needlepoint