Category: 1:72 scale
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Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk V – Part Three – Subassembly Day

A day at my model building club is a short one – I get there about 9:00 AM and leave at noon. But I can accomplish a lot in those hours…drink coffee, eat cake, make bad jokes, and cement the first parts of a kit together. The amount of cementation depends to some extent upon…
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Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk.V – Part Two – I’ve Seen That Somewhere Before…

The more I looked at the AW Whitley in parts on the sprue trees, the more I got the feeling that I’d seen something like it before. The French inter-war bombers came to mind, but it was the awkward chin window that stick in my mind. Surely they didn’t think it was a good idea…Where…
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Burbank

I appear to have started an aircraft factory. This was not my intention when I began my retirement modelling – I was just looking for one or two kits to while away spare time. Nostalgia. A mere bagatelle. Well, the Mere Aircraft Company’s Bagatelle Mk III turns out to have been a hell of an…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part Four – Neutrality Patrol

This colour scheme on the Grumman F4F Wildcat is apparently real – it was seen in 1941 in the Atlantic aboard the USS RANGER conducting something called a Neutrality Patrol. It’s the standard US Navy Yellow Wing scheme adapted to the eastern seaboard. Neutrality? Was the USA expecting attack from the British or Germans or…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part Three – Nodecal

Nodecal – the pill that makes you a better modeller. One review of this Hobby Boss Wildcat kit bemoaned the fact that there were no decals for the wing or fuselage bands. The review also went on to complain about the proportions of the tail and the scribing in the wing surfaces.Now, I’m not a…
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I Can Quit Any Time I Want To…

Honest.* But the success of the first diorama shelf trays being what it was, I decided to call past Officeworks, get some more A1 foam board, and then see what the hobby shop afforded in the way of decorations. Luckily, there were new Faller fencing sets in stock. Expensive, but totally worth it for the…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part Two – Four-Part Harmony

In each of the two pictures on this post there are four plastic parts. They’re glued up and setting overnight. The time taken to get to this point, including the washing of the parts, was about one hour. I’ve spent longer in the barbers. This would be a terrible thing for some modellers to contemplate.…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part One – Hello Yellow

My friend Warren once pulled up a Hobby Boss kit of the F4F Wildcat in early colours and it set me investigating. This plane turned up in one of the profiles out of a modelling magazine – I can’t tell you if the kit makers made theirs from the illustration or if the illustrator drew…
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Nothing Succeeds Like Excess

And isn’t that the motto of the times… Carrying on from yesterday, in the face of bad weather and with the desire to sit inside in the warm…I looked out all my old leftover cans of paint and texture material – the spare fences leftover from doll hoses and railway layouts – and the fake…

