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The New Kit Box

You do not have to be an 18th century rake… To recognise the experience of being captured by the appearance of a smartly-dressed courtesan with a painted face and patches on her cheeks. The ample bosom and the curled hair may be missing, but the end result – bitter horror at the raddled creation encased…
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CAC Wirraway – Part Six – No. 4 Sqn RAAF

I have been googling No. 4 Sqn in WW2 with reference to the Wirraway. These were busy aircraft. The squadron was generally intended for reconnaissance when it was formed before the war and was working closely with the Australian Army and US Army in New Guinea throughout the conflict. It looks as if this was…
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CAC Wirraway – Part Five – Foliage Green

And Sky Blue, and let the colour contestants retire to their corners and come out fighting. I was fortunate to receive a book from a friend full of careful tests and colour patches for WW2 aircraft. It contained references for RAAF Foliage Green and Earth Brown and I was able to mix reasonable matches with…
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CAC Wirraway – Part Four – Gappy vs Gapless

It is pretty simple to guess whether kit builders prefer their models with good or bad fit. But if there is going to be a situation in between – where do you want the gaps to fall? The aircraft modeller generally sees it in wings and tail, with the ambitious factories inventing new places to…
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CAC Wirraway – Part Three – An Evergreen Cockpit

When the world gives you bare cockpits you just go out and build your own. The High planes Wirraway is a kit on a budget and there doesn’t seem to be enough in the kitty for much interior. I count a cockpit floor, two seats, two control sticks, and a couple of instrument panels. As…
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CAC Wirraway – Part Two – The Grind Begins

With a grinding… Specifically, inside the wings and the fuselage, Both these areas have cast re-enforcements running diagonally over their rough plastic. I suspect they are extra conduits for the molten styrene to flow through so that sufficient bulk of material reaches past thin areas. Other makers may design sprue tree elements outside of the…
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CAC Wirraway – Part One – The Challenge

Apparently that is what the word translates to from one of the aboriginal languages. In modern day terms it was one of the licence-built derivatives from a North American design – the root of which gave us the Yale, Harvard, Texan, and NA 16. And probably a Soviet copy somewhere, if they ran true to…
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As Al Capone Said…

” Dis organisation is moider. “ I have lost yet another major part from a new kit. I doubt it will be found and I do not want to buy another kit for just one part. So it is out with the old Pinkysil silicone moulding rubber and some resin – I will copy the…
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Super-Detail The Coffee Cups

On the navigator’s table – in your 1/144 Wellington bomber. Buy our after-after-market pack of resin, PE brass, and precision-milled titanium castings and get that 1940’s RAF vibe going. $ 46.98 is nothing at all when you consider the level of realism that you will see on your workbench. The fact that no-one else in…
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Late Night Modelling

A doom-laden exercise. Unless you are building an Aurora ” Famous Monsters ” kit you’ll be making trouble for yourself. As modellers we have routines and patterns that govern our lives. You just try walking past the hobby shop and not going in to see if there are kits on the shelves. You will be…
