A Look at the Bat

The model consists of four parts:

• flying machine body (including pilot)
• wings
• clear plastic base
• clear plastic stem

To give an idea of what the final model looks like, I dry-fitted the wings and body together. (The wing sits snugly in a notch on the top of the body, so I didn't need to glue it in place in order to take a few pictures.)

As the photos show, the wings and tail have been cast relatively thickly - thicker than real wings would be. I imagine this might be in order to prevent the model from being too fragile.

No propulsive mechanism is suggested, so I presume the flying machine is actually a hang-glider.

Hobby Products makes three different models of the Bat. Ours is the flamethrower model.

The flamethrower consists of a blunderbuss-like nozzle (on one side of the machine's central keel) connected by a segmented hose to a sphere (fuel container?) on the opposite side of the body.

The final detail is the pilot himself. The figure is molded into the body of the flying machine, and depicts a pot-belled Dwarf lying on top of a platform beneath the flying machine. His hands are grasping some kind of control mechanism, and his body is festooned with cables and wires and straps. In the true spirit of pioneering aviation, the pilot wears goggles.