Category: 1:72 scale
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Vought Vindicator – Part Four – The Movie Star

I gotta find it – I gotta find the 1941 Fred McMurray/Errol Flynn movie ” Dive Bomber”. If only to see the real thing in ( fake ) action. Now that the Vought Vindicator is complete and the Yellow Wing Navy is well and truly started I need all the entertainment I can get. Well,…
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Vought Vindicator – Part Three – The Yellow Arrives

I am starting to formulate a style in my model building – in fact a number of styles, depending upon the scale and type of model under construction: a. Large model buildings are done from sketches and photographs with a fair degree of leeway in the design. I stick to simple lines and art deco…
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Vought Vindicator – Part Two – The Czech To Progress
I have written before about Eastern European short-run kits and their peculiarities. The first experience was bad, then good, then bad, then gradually better and better. It is very much a mixed bag of sweet and sours when you build Czech, Pole, or Ukrainian. The Vought Vindicator is actually quite on the sweet side. To…
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Vought Vindicator – Part One – The Yellow Spreads

I’m not going to use the title ” Yellow Peril ” because that opens a whole new can of nematodes – but the Yellow Wing Disease has definitely taken hold in the Little Workshop. The start of it was the free Airfix Brewster Buffalo scored at the plastic modelling club that made up to such…
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The Oulde Moulde

Or ” How I Learned To Overcome Despair “. It is just as well that I do most ob my building these days in 1:72 or 1:76. If I chose larger scales I would inevitably run up against a plastic kit that had been manufactured in 1823 and then my level of frustration and angst…
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Eleven Shades Of Grey

Or is it gray? I can never be sure, and I’m sure I don’t care…but I do care about getting the right shade when I start to paint an aircraft. The colour I want right now is the paint that they sprayed on the underside of USAAF planes. The famous Neutral Grey. Creos GSI list it…
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Plod, Nod, Or Sod It All?

Do you build models in parallel or do you build them in serial? Is your workbench pristine and pure – a minimalist’s paradise? Or is it awash in 14 kits and a broken toy that you prised apart for the gears? It can be a seriously diagnostic thing to see – a window into your…
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Grumman Martlet Mk. IV – Part Five – The Problematical Star

The Martlet is done and I am very pleased with it. The folding wing feature is perfect for my Air World museum theme and this time the paint job looks good. And I am expecting a world of weird questions when people see the insignia on the plane. The official story is this: The invasion…
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Grumman Martlet Mk. IV – Part Four – The Sausages Win

The debate in this column, in the wider modelling world, and in my mind about the best way to paint British camouflage patterns in 1:72 scale has finally been resolved and need not be investigated further until next time I get bored… Recently I free-handed the A/B camo pattern on a Fairey Fulmar in this…
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Grumman Martlet Mk IV – Part Three – A Long Way

It is said to be a long way to Tipperary but it cannot be much further than the distance between the modern Airfix kit and the 50¢ baggie of my childhood. Today’s work on the Grumman Martlet emphasised this to me as I undertook the delicate job of closing the fuselage. It required the subtle…
