Inconveniences In building Models By James Goss      Now don't get me wrong, I really love to build model planes and fly them with my friends at our local flying fields. There is nothing that I like better, but what I am talking about here is some of the inconveniences that we run into while building a kit, or an arf. I am not talking about the expected hassles, you know the ones I am talking about here, and we all have these. Here are some of the common things that we all expect to happen on every project: Such things as gluing your fingers to the plane, gluing your hand to your face, pressing your finger through the sheeting, building two right wing panels, gluing your eye shut (Cecil), cuts and stabs with your hobby knife, burning the **** out of your fingers with your heating iron, ca fumes in the eyes, electrocution from that faulty line cord on your Great Planes slot machine, building firewalls upside down, getting the thrust angle backwards on the firewall, letting the drill bit go just a little bit too far, fog in your canopy, forgetting to glue a former, spray cans of paint that will not spray or either puts out large globs of paint, putting hinges in the wrong location, ca tip always has a clog in it, paint peals off with the masking tape, having both ailerons going in the same direction, and yes; even having a prop on backwards. What else can go wrong? I guess that when you can build a model and not have any of these problems to plague you, you can be called a master modeler. I always have a calamity of events to happen on each and every project I start. These type of inconveniences do not bother me anymore because I have grown accustom to them. I take them all to be part of this illustrious hobby we are in.      If you haven't had all of the above experiences, then you haven't been in the hobby but for a short while. Just give it time and they will all come around sooner or later. Here is an example of the type of inconvenience I am referring to in the title of this article. You have finally bought that arf you have been wanting on for some time now, and it is almost ready to take to the field. You just know that it's going to fly like a blue streak when you get it in the air. You have just been thinking that this is a really nice arf and it is going together very fast. Boy, I may just start building these arf planes instead of kit planes. “Honey, it looks like I will have it ready to fly tomorrow,” I said to my wife. All I like is to install the fuel tank and this baby will be ready to go. The fuel tank came with the kit, as did everything else that was needed to build the plane. I am using a gas engine on this plane so I followed the instructions for assembling the gas and not the glow version. It says to use the gray stopper because it is for gas and the black stopper is for glow. So I reach over to get the stopper and I see only one black stopper in the bag. Where is the little gray stopper? I start looking high and low for it, but it is simply not there.  Now I start to really panic, without the gas stopper there will be no new plane in the air this weekend.      Now I am not a person that likes to use profanity, but if I was, I could have out-cursed a sailor for the next five minutes. Here I am, ready to go flying the next day and now because on this little stopper I was grounded.  There was not another gas stopper to be found anywhere in my shop. After I calmed down a little I called the company and sure, they said they would get it out right away, and they did, I got it in the mail in just three days. This was still a real inconvenience to wait even three days though. How would they like to wait three extra days for their money? All the companies that I have contacted in reference to missing parts have always been very nice and prompt to deliver, with no questions ask. This is fine and good, but still they had missing parts to begin with, even if it was only one small stopper. Over the years I have had missing parts from some of the best-known kit manufactures around. You would think that the packing team would have a check and double check system that would assure them of a 100% complete kit. Missing wood parts is not quite as bad in my case because I keep a good supply on hand. I know this is not the case for a lot of other modelers. If it's your first or second kit you will not have very much stock to fall back on, so any missing parts here is really an inconvenience to us. If you build arfs only, you will not have any material at all left over from your previous kits. I would like to see the day when a manufacturer of good quality kits could guarantee us modelers that all parts would be in the box when you opened it, or they will send you a free kit. I realize that this may be a difficult thing to do, because somebody could easily take advantage of this deal. I do know that most modelers are good honest people and would never do anything like this just to get a free kit. If the kit manufacturer did have this guarantee they could reduce the price of the kit by an average of at least $5.00.  This is because they would now make sure that everything is in the box and would not have to re-ship parts at their expense.  It takes a lot of time from a company's workday, starting with the phone calls, locating the parts, packing and shipping for the second time around, and then they send you the wrong part again. Now we have got to do it all over again.      Can anybody think of some situations where you had to notify a kit company of some missing parts, and when you received them they were still the wrong parts?  Did you really blow up and go berserk, or did you just laugh it off and say “God bless those people”? I guess receiving the wrong part twice would require us to call it inconvenience squared. If you have had this inconvenience squared experience, let me know and we will have a section in the newsletter devoted to this topic. I bet that most all of us have had it to happen at least one time in our modeling career, so think hard back over the years and jot it down on paper.