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Promoting A Hobby Shop

I visit two hobby shops regularly – another two every six months – and a couple more not at all. The chosen ones are close at hand when I am at home or coming from my weekly club meeting. The occasional ones are out of the way but rewarding for small items. The rejects are…
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The Monument To Discouragement

Sits sad and alone in the public park. No-one visits it…willingly. Sometimes you arrive at a point in the building of a model kit when it makes you sad. It might be the bad fit, the broken parts, or just the lacklustre nature of the prototype. It might be the advent of a much better…
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I Miss The Old China Station Scheme

I mean I miss the warship paint scheme that was favored in Victorian times: a white hull and upperworks with buff funnels and the occasional black funnel cap. Brass, too, just to trim up the works. Oh, I understand perfectly the need to paint them a uniform grey in wartime to let the ship approach…
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If You Went To The Theatre As A Drama Critic

What would you do if the show was good? Bet you would be torn by the temptation to slam it anyway. After all, that is what you are paid for and you have a reputation to uphold. The fact that you might do so by blackening that of others is beside the point…and Pierrepoint the…
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Sikorski Sea Dragon – Part Three – Grey On Gray

I just did that to gee up the Pommie Pedants who will insist that there should never be two spellings of the colour…or the color… The helicopter is surprisingly handsome for something that hangs its engines out on stalks and puts rubbish bins in front of them. I could have asked Italeri to mould the…
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Sikorski Sea Dragon – Part Two – Changed My Mind

Not the JMSDF – this one will be the US Navy version. It has the big refuelling probe and the Gunship Grey overall finish. I was given a bottle of Model Master Gunship Grey enamel a few years ago and this is exactly the model for it. Model Master worried me for a whiie as…
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Sikorski Sea Dragon – Part One – A Matter Of Numbers

I think there is trouble in the Italeri printing works where they make the boxes for their kits. The top of the box has superb artwork depicting a Sikorski MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter in US Navy colours. One end of the box repeats this. But one end and one side are marked as MH-47E –…
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The Box Office, The Cast, And The Audience

Which is the most important part of the theatre? If you know, tell me. I am trying to decide the same thing about the modelling exhibitions that are held annually in Perth. Whether they are of cars, boats, trains, planes or houses, they all have essentially three components; those who show, those who they show…
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Dog, Wallet, Rifle…

I have been blessed. I am a member of a scale model club that is fool enough to have me. That’s funny, but not funny. All our lives we move in circles that are of varying quality. Workplaces, family groups, open associations. Some we trust, and some we trust-lite. I’m a member of a model…
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Getcher

Getcher act together, getcher kit started, getcher butt in action. Just getcher… It is no good looking at a box on a shelf. Before there is a box on a trolley that contains YOU, start building the kit you’ve bought. You’ll be gone soon enough – do something positive now, while your fingers move and…
