Category: 1:72 scale
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French Lancaster – Part Two – Part Works

No, not one of those wretched Paul Hamlyn newsagency schemes that sell you a part and a line of guff each week until you either spend $ 2000 or throw the remains in the bin… This is about the little sub-assemblies you can deal with as the main parts are setting. Cockpit, tailplanes, engine nacelles,…
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French Lancaster – Part One – Not My First Rodeo

Third one, actually – as I have built two other Lancaster bombers in the past. The first was an old Airfix kit in 1960, the next a new Airfix kit in the last 5 years. The old model was SOOTB as an RAF subject. The new model became an RCAF rescue aircraft. This Hasegawa kit…
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The Clean-Up

New year seemed to demand new experiences. Also new work. So I rather hurried to complete a model before midnight. It was not hard…just a small one. That meant that January could start afresh at the club with a new kit. The stash owner always has the problem of which to select. In my case…
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Atlantic Wildcat – Part Three – White And Grey

Like a West Point dress uniform. The Wildcat build started on Saturday and finished on Monday – with plenty of eating, drinking, and sleeping time in the interval. It was not the most complex nor puzzling kit ever built. But what a sweet model. There is a current air show Wildcat flying in North America…
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Atlantic Wildcat – Part Two – Look, Ma! No Instructions!

Do the wings go on the back or the front? Well, it was free. How can you complain at the lack of instructions with that in mind.? And how hard can it be to make a monoplane fighter? Not hard at all, as one afternoon at the bench showed. Even early Minicraft kits are good…
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Atlantic Wildcat- Part One – Older Than Dirt

But just as attractive. The is an Academy/Minicraft kit, which nails the age at 1996 – not really old at all, when you consider some of the fossils I have built. A donation, and welcome, but what should be done with it? Missing a canopy* but complete otherwise, with a spare tail plane and an…
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Less Can Indeed Be More

Well…more or less… This famous fashion dictum also applies to a lot of scale modelling. Those of us who model in smaller scales are often unable to apply the same structures or details that other people can achieve. We have to paint suggestions rather than cement on actual structures. We also spend less on individual…
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All My Best Models Cost Under $ 10

Because they are the poor, sad runts of the hobby shop litter – or the nearly-dead ones that just pass from stash to stash without ever getting built. I give them hope and dignity. I clip their parts off the distorted sprue trees without making noises of obvious disgust. I sand off flash and rivets.…
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Mi-2T Helicopter – Part Three – Andrusiak Air Field

It turned out nice again, eh? I was very pleased with the result of my Hobby Boss Mi-2t Hoplite helicopter kit. I couldn’t have asked for a better fit on the parts and I’m pleased to say that the masking experiment has resulted in some of the best windows and frame lines so far. The…
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Mi-2T Helicopter – Part Two – When I’m Washi-ing Windows

Wi’ nod to George Formby… My relationship to clear plastic parts and canopy windows has changed over the decades. My original plan was to cover them with cement fingerprints and I can report that my first years in the hobby were entirely successful. Even if the Mounties in Kaslo B.C. lose my 1966 fingerprints (…
